Posts tagged bastrop

At a recent candidates forum, I took Ed Skarnulis aside and asked him about what the “real” issues were and he told me there was something big on the horizon that no one was talking about. He told me how the counties north of Bastrop are sucking our Bastrop County water supply dry. If you thought the Alcoa crisis was big, Alcoa pales in the face of this major threat to Bastrop county’s water supply future. I got the following from Mitzi Van Sant who I recently interviewed at a candidates party at her home in Smithville (you can see the video in another blog post on this web site).

Read this if you care about the future of your water supply in Bastrop County. This affects everyone, not just builders.

BASTROP COUNTY DENIED WATER NEEDED FOR GROWTH

Letter to the Editor by Steve Box, Environmental Stewardship

Wednesday September 17, 2008, will be noted in history as the first official vote by the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District to deny a water permit application in Bastrop County because of high volume water pumping activities by its neighboring Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District. AQUA Water Supply Corporation applied for permits for seven (7) wells to be drilled in the County to meet the projected needs of our communities in the next 50 years.

After study by the District’s groundwater hydrologist using State mandated modeling techniques and permitted values from neighboring Districts, it became very clear that the water permits already issued by Post Oak Savannah for the Porter’s well field in Burleson County draw down the aquifers in Lee and Bastrop Counties to below conditions that are desirable and sustainable into the future.

As a result, the Board of Directors of the Lost Pines District voted to grant only three of the seven wells AQUA needs to meet the water needs of the residential and business developments in their service area. Besides the AQUA water application, there are applications for additional water on file by other applicants that will likely be denied also. These are huge deficits to our future water needs and have huge implications regarding the future water supplies for our region.

For some time now I’ve been watching the water wars develop right here in our back yard and Wednesday they hit home sooner than expected. To give a quick overview, the planning region in the Brazos River basin north of Bastrop County which supplies Williamson County north of Austin has planned for many years, despite protests from the Lost Pines District, to pump high volumes of water out of Lee, Burleson, Brazos, Milam and Robertson Counties in order to provide the future water needs of their region.

Post Oak Savannah has responded to the water marketers by selling them huge volumes of groundwater in excess of what is available on a sustainable basis (pumping = recharge) which then draws on the aquifers of neighboring counties like ours. And they are profiteering from this to the tune of about $75,000 per month even though not a drop of water is being pumped yet. Even though AQUA water has current needs for water to service local subdivisions the water marketers are tying up the water that would be available for our use while they don’t even have significant customers or the means to pump or transport the water.

Meanwhile, the Lost Pines District has had to modify its management plan to accommodate this high volume pumping by greatly lowering the future levels of our aquifers to levels they originally considered undesirable – an action that threatens our water supply and environment.

It is time for the people and officials of Bastrop County to be fully informed of what is happening and be given the opportunity to weigh in on the issues. I am told that many of the shallow exempt wells in the county, along with many springs, seeps and base flow to the Colorado River, are threatened by these actions.

If you too are concerned, you should write or call the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District and ask that the district hold a public meeting to fully inform the citizens of our community about the implications of these issues to the citizens of Bastrop County. Request that the District take a firm stand against the actions of these other districts by insisting that the groundwater supplies of the Carrizo-Wilcox and associated aquifers of the region be protected in a manner that sustains the water available for Bastrop and surrounding counties far into the future. For more information you may also contact Steve Box at 512-300-6609 Steve.Box@att.net or go to Environmental-Stewardship.org

Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District contact information: Joe Cooper, General Manager, P.O Box 1027, Smithville, TX 78957, (512) 360-5088, e-mail lpgcd@lostpineswater.org or www.lostpineswater.org

Steve Box
P.O. BOX 1423
BASTROP, TX 78602
512-300-6609