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~~Welcome to news on the proposed Desired Future Conditions ~~
Here's the very latest news ~~~
Please see Environmental Stewardship's latest post on the Desired Future Conditions, here.
_______________From SAWDF's point of view, here's our November commentary on what happened with the DFCs after the close of the public hearing period. Bottom line, the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District did its best to set a "conservation standard" for our aquifers ~~~ please read here.
Here are the background stories on the DFC process:
THE LOST PINES GROUNDWATER DISTRICT HEARING ON THE PROPOSED DFC was held AUGUST 18, 2021, as the last of the public comment hearings for the five groundwater districts in Groundwater Management Area-12. Lost Pines held its "DFC Workshop" for the board and the public on September 15, 2021.
We appreciate everyone's participation in this mystifying but essential exercise of "joint planning" that Texas water law requires.
If you go here on the SAWDF news blog, you will read about a very important resolution passed by both the Lee County and Bastrop County Commissioners Courts, and you will get an explanation of what's at stake.
The Courts have asked, on behalf of the citizens of each county, the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District to vote to reject the proposed Desired Future Conditions and instead adopt new DFC that do not allow deeper drawdowns than the currently-effective DFC allow, because the proposed DFC do not establish the required balance between development of groundwater resources, and conservation and protection of those resources.
State Representative John Cyrier, who represents Lee and Bastrop counties in the state legislature, agrees with us! Please go here to see his letter of support to the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District.
A copy of the Lee County Resolution, which is virtually identical to the Bastrop County Resolution, is reproduced at the bottom of the news article.
Last but not least, please go here, for a very important article which appeared last month in the well-respected Texas Tribune, about landowner well failures due to the Vista Ridge project. It's a must-read, along with the following information!
WaterDefenders.org ~~landowners and scientists working to protect water resources and landowner rights in Central Texas.
Fast-paced growth is here, with people flooding into Texas from the drought impacted western states, especially California.Texas needs to avoid the mistakes of the “California Water Model” – massive movement of groundwater to dry areas to serve unsustainable development.
On the heels of the Big Freeze energy grid failure, we know you agree that Texans cannot afford mismanagement of our water resources.What can you do? Show up at hearings happening now, make a comment or submit a comment before they are due in your area. Help us set the course for sustainable management of our water resources.
We urge citizens in five groundwater conservation districts to ask their district --- and the four other groundwater districts in Groundwater Management Area 12 (GMA-12)--- to reject the current plan to set the “desired future conditions” (DFCs) for GMA-12.The five groundwater districts of GMA-12 are comprised of these counties: Bastrop, Lee, Burleson, Milam, Brazos, Robertson, Freestone, Madison, Leon and Fayette.
DFCs are a planning tool for managing and balancing production of water with conservation of the critically important resource – the water underlying us.Technically, "DFC" are what we want our aquifers to look like in fifty year intervals in future; GMA-12 resets our DFC in rolling five-year intervals. In reality, GMA-12 is deciding how much drawdown in our aquifers we must tolerate in future.Landowner wells in rural Burleson and Lee counties are already ‘sucking air” in the first year of the 60-year Vista Ridge mega-water pipeline to San Antonio – some 142 miles away. Other mega-projects are underway on the same water resources with potential harm to our rivers and streams, including the Colorado, Brazos, Trinity and Navasota rivers.We asked you to address your concerns to all five groundwater districts in GMA-12 during the current joint planning period because we are all in this together!All of the public comment periods have closed but....Click here for the reasons why the “proposed desired future conditions for GMA-12” need to be rejected and sent back for revision.
Click here for a handy "Desired Future Conditions 101".
Please read the information we provide below about who we are~~~
Thank you!
Your water defenders at Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund
and Environmental Stewardship.
_________________________Water Defenders Coalition
Sustainable Water for Texas
Uniting Land, Water, and Community
A coalition of organizations that bring together the strengths of land, water, and community to advocate for a sustainable future by protecting the life force that unites us all — WATER!
MORE ABOUT WATER DEFENDERS
Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund
The mission of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund (SAWDF) is to take action to protect and conserve the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer in central Texas, as well as the rivers, streams, and springs that are nurtured by it, and to defend the rights of those who live over the aquifer and who seek to leave a legacy of sustainable water resources for future Texans.
SAWDF brings landowners together to advocate for the sustainable management of the groundwater they own beneath their soil ~~they look to their groundwater conservation districts for this management, as a part of groundwater districts' mission to protect local water supply.
Environmental Stewardship
Environmental Stewardship (ES) works to protect and preserve the Texas Colorado River, associated aquifers, and the bays and estuaries of the Texas
Gulf Coast by combining its first-hand knowledge of the waterway with an unwavering commitment to the rights of the community, to the ecological health of waterways and aquifers, and to the rule of law.
Environmental Stewardship is a Waterkeeper Affiliate of the Waterkeeper Alliance. ES brings together the sciences of surface water, groundwater, and ecology to advocate for the sustainable co-management of our surface and groundwater that, together, provide the water for our life-supporting ecosystem.
Both coalition members are Texas nonprofit corporations and qualified 501c3 organizations.
The Water Defenders' current campaign:
Groundwater Management Area 12 (GMA-12) has proposed Desired Future Conditions that unreasonably impact you, your land, your property rights, your community, and your environment.
Sustainable management – not aquifer mining – is the only way to protect our local communities and the environment from groundwater over-pumping!
Go here for the rest of the story, and all the details! Click here for a handy "Desired Future Conditions 101".
Water Defender Resources
Here are some links to SAWDF and ES Resources that will be updated during the public comment period.
Environmental Stewardship and SAWDF materials
GMA-12 Desired Future Conditions.
July 13 - Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District, Desired Future Conditions Hearing.
July 12 - Fayette County GCD Desired Future Conditions Hearing
Our Reasons to Reject the Proposed DFCs
Both Environmental Stewardship and SAWDF laid out our reasons for asking the Board to reject the Proposed DFCs and remand them back to GMA-12 for revision at the Fayette County GCD Board meeting on Monday, June 7th. You can review what was presented by clicking on the presentation information below.
ES Technical Presentation - Steve Box and Joe Trungale
ES Legal Presentation - Eric Allmon, Perales, Allmon & Ice, P.C.
ES Legal Letter - Eric Allmon, Perales, Allmon & Ice, P.C.
SAWDF Presentation - Andrew Wier and Michele Gangnes
SAWDF Letter - Michele Gangnes
Public comment on the proposed DFCs ~~ we love this example from a supporter in Bastrop County:
May 25, 2021
Subject: Proposed DFCs
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 10:57:05 AM
Dear Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District Board President,
Thank you for volunteering for this critical position as stewards of our ground water and river ecosystem health. It is so important to the health of the environment and economic viability of our communities.I appreciate you are in a very stressful position with threats of litigation, and companies wanting to market the valuable water resources. Your challenges continue but this is your opportunity.
You must choose between what is good enough to get by and what is right to do.
The proposed DFCs will ultimately deplete ground water and flowing streams. Please reject the proposed [DFCs and] re-adopt the current DFC’s until such time dependable sustainable solutions for aquifer
management are agreed upon. Please find the courage to adopt DFC’s that will protect, long term, the environment and current
landowners’ water access and install monitoring wells to verify the
effectiveness.
Sincerely,
SAWDF's comments to Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District
Michele Gangnes, June 10, 2021 (with thanks to Andy Wier, SAWDF Director)
Good afternoon, Mr. Vice President and Board Members,
My name is Michele Gangnes. I am a landowner in Lee County, an attorney, and a founding board member of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund.
Steve Box from Environmental Stewardship covered points relevant to my comments and I will try to avoid redundancy, but some points need emphasis.
ES and SAWDF have formed a coalition under the name WaterDefenders.org, as a means of public outreach and education. For SAWDF, that also includes public advocacy.
I'm speaking to you today on behalf of SAWDF as well as on behalf of exempt well owners and landowners in Lee County, which is in the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District, and which is also a member of GMA-12.
Their request to you is to REJECT the proposed DFCs for the next five years, that the general managers of the five GMA-12 districts arbitrarily if not capriciously decided they had no choice but to impose.
There is clearly an emotional side to landowners’ reaction to the DFCs GMA-12 proposed, which you will of course recognize as well– there is a lot at stake for them. But the fact of the matter is, our assessment of the proposed DFCs as causing unreasonable impacts is absolutely correct, so I don’t believe you can dismiss us out of hand. You have some more work to do.
From the landowner perspective it would be wrong to ratify these proposed DFCs at the district level --- the proposed DFCs literally almost double the allowable drawdowns, without giving any defensible consideration to the legal requirements for setting any DFCs.
What does that mean? I think if you read Mr. Allmon’s letter for ES you will know from a legal standpoint and I don’t want to be redundant.
But what it means for landowners is that the districts in GMA-12 propose to virtually guarantee big pumpers --- pumpers with non-exempt permits -- will have carte blanche ---- no impediments at all ---to drying up hundreds of exempt domestic and livestock wells with their pumping, not to mention no impediment at all to damaging our aquifers, our communities and our rivers, springs and streams.
Why that is wrong is NOT UP TO THE PUBLIC to prove to you --- it is your duty under Texas law to adopt DFCs that will not have these unreasonable impacts and that will achieve a balance between conservation and protection of our aquifers, and development of our aquifers.
You still have time to do what the law requires you to do.
.
The proposed DFCs for GMA-12 protect only permit holders --- the big pumpers ---- by allowing drawdowns that allow them to pump to the limits of their permits, while local domestic and livestock wells are left high and dry --- the proposed DFCs unreasonably impact our aquifers, and they unreasonably impact exempt wells, whether wells are mitigated by a district or not; andthey unreasonably impact private property rights of landowners by diminishing a capital asset --- the water under them ---, and their agribusinesses.
You must do the work to balance the DFCs. I will just point out here that threats of litigation from Vista Ridge are not a consideration that you may lawfully use as an excuse for these DFCs.
If you require data to understand that you have not done your duty, it is available, in Lee County, because my organization SAWDF brought it to the attention of GMA-12 earlier this year and things have only gotten worse since you ignored our comments. According to the Lost Pines District’s recent projections, revealed at a public meeting in May, up to 150 Lee County Carrizo wells will be out of water at some point due to Vista Ridge’s maximum pumping in the Carrizo Aquifer.
It is also available in Burleson County, where Vista Ridge is based and the Post Oak district’s efforts to address unreasonable impacts of your proposed DFCs also fell on deaf ears at GMA-12.. As of May, Post Oak reported having mitigated 44 wells, also due to Vista Ridge’s pumping.
I will point out that dry wells in Burleson and dry wells in Lee County are occurring under CURRENT DFCs --- DFCs that Vista Ridge is not violating --- which means there’s already something wrong with this picture and now you propose to double the allowable drawdowns for Vista Ridge, and compromise even more exempt wells.
I don’t profess to have data to competently speak about Brazos Valley GCD’s pumping impacts and the DFCs. But I have some questions I wish your constituents would ask and that you would answer as directly, simply and honestly as possible:
Just how do YOU protect landowner rights to groundwater?
How do YOU know that the Carrizo-Wilcox, Sparta and Queen City aquifers can sustain the permitted pumping that you are going to allow?
What research has BVGCD or GMA-12 done to answer that question of sustainability? That is, how do you know you are not actually managing the depletion of a precious natural resource rather than figuring out, any part of the conservation and protection side of the equation, and documenting that work?
How many exempt wells will the proposed DFCs impact in this district?
How many exempt wells do the DFCs need to impact before BVGCD will modify the proposed DFCs; 50%, 75%, 100%.?
If it is more than 50%, how is that balancing production with conservation and private property rights to groundwater?
If your constituents don’t know what’s at stake, that blame is not entirely on them. There is an education and outreach component of what groundwater districts do, in our opinion. If you were to address the questions I just asked in plain English, not just with a computer run that suddenly turns into a set of DFCs without any basis for that to happen or any good explanation of why you thought this approach is adequate, I think you’d get their attention pretty darn quickly.
We will submit written comments to the district after we hear the proceedings today – I hope you give the public access to a recording of today’s hearing prior to the end of the comment period.
Thank you for letting me speak. Please vote against adoption of the proposed DFCs.
ES's presentation to Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District, hearing on proposed DFCs
Steve Box, ES Executive Director and Board President
Proposed DFCs
Environmental Stewardship’s
Concerns and Requests
Presented to
Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District Board of Directors
June 10, 2021, Virtual
Environmental-Stewardship.org:Our Request
We are asking the Board to manage our aquifers responsibly by rejecting the Proposed DFCs in favor of DFCs based on:
sustainable management of the aquifers,
protection of exempt landowner domestic and livestock wells, and
maintaining the resilience of the Colorado River to drought
Go here to see ES's short slideshow for this presentation.