Lobby Watch: Industrial Users and Sprawl Drive Water Projects

The industrial water consumers and urban sprawl interests that led Texas' 2011 push to finance water infrastructure projects gave $8.3 million to state candidates led by Governor Rick Perry. With the current push for the state to finance up to $2 billion in water-project loans, it's time for lawmakers to devise tough safeguards to prevent this water bank from becoming Texas' next big political slush fund.

Read Lobby Watch to drink it all in.

T. Boone's Oil & Water Law Don't Mix

T. Boone Pickens' water company is urging the Texas Supreme Court to model state water law after Texas laws that govern oil and gas. Pickens' water-law scheme is a recipe for disaster if you don't happen to be an octogenarian billionaire.


Read the report

Austin American-Statesman: Well users say aquifer authority squeezing them

With more demand for water as the population grows and with hot, dry summers robbing the aquifer of valuable rainwater recharge, the underground water has become an expensive, crucial commodity."Under these market pressures, the price of aquifer water will almost certainly continue to skyrocket," concluded a 2007 report by Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics titled " 'Til Your Well Runs Dry: How the State of Texas Converted the Edwards Aquifer into a Multi-Million Dollar Commodity." EDWARDS AQUIFER

Well users say aquifer authority squeezing them

As aquifer authority brings pumping in line, San Marcos private school, church criticize enforcement of their usage.

By Asher Price
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Friday, September 05, 2008

SAN MARCOS — For roughly 25 years, the owners of the private Wonderland School operated their own water well, pulling up enough water to flush the toilets, supply teachers and pupils with drinking water, irrigate the modest lawn and operate a washing machine.

But in 2007, the Edwards Aquifer Authority, which regulates pumping of the giant underground reservoir that supplies water for more than 1.7 million Texans, informed the school for infants through sixth-graders that it had to pay a fine of $6,600 for unauthorized water withdrawals and either buy or lease pumping rights from another permit holder or else cap the well.

Broadly speaking, except for homeowners and ranchers, well owners have to buy rights to pump water out of the aquifer. The school, along with a neighboring church and several other businesses, say the fines are too harsh and have continued pumping water as they negotiate with the authority.

"The crime and the punishment aren't matching up," says Jim Fife, the principal and owner of Wonderland, which was started by his mother in 1965. Wonderland, according its to meter and drilling records, used about 46,000 gallons of water in July, reaching about 190 feet below ground. An Austin family of five, by comparison, uses roughly 25,000 gallons of water per month.

If nothing else, the skirmish illustrates how strained water resources are in Central and South Texas. With more demand for water as the population grows and with hot, dry summers robbing the aquifer of valuable rainwater recharge, the underground water has become an expensive, crucial commodity.

"Under these market pressures, the price of aquifer water will almost certainly continue to skyrocket," concluded a 2007 report by Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics titled " 'Til Your Well Runs Dry: How the State of Texas Converted the Edwards Aquifer into a Multi-Million Dollar Commodity."

The authority says the notice about unauthorized withdrawals is part of an effort to keep a tighter watch on the pumping of the aquifer that is beginning in Hays County and will extend to the South Central Texas counties of Atascosa, Bexar, Caldwell, Comal, Guadalupe, Medina and Uvalde.

In another letter to the school in January, the authority reduced the school's fine amount to a minimum of $500 but repeated that the school would have to either acquire groundwater rights from somebody who already holds them or cap the well.

Fife estimates Wonderland would have to pay at least $50,000 to cap the well and tie into the city's water utility. With groundwater scarce, buying pumping rights to an acre-foot of water, about 325,851 gallons, costs at least $5,000, according to the aquifer authority.

Officials at the Grace Bible Church next door say they cannot afford the authority's fines either.

"Naturally, it seems to me that it's a bureaucracy gone out of control," said the Rev. Jim Davis. "It's pretty heavy-handed and not very understanding of anything."

The authority said drought conditions and heavy pumping in 2006 cut the flow at the Comal and San Marcos springs, which are home to tiny endangered species and form the headwaters for the San Marcos River, popular among tubers, boaters and swimmers.

"We want to get a good grasp on what's happening with the pumping," said authority spokesman Roland Ruiz.

The Legislature, which created the authority in 1993, has long grappled with how much water should be pumped out of the aquifer.

In 2007, the Texas House rejected attempts by Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs, to offer greater protection to the San Marcos and Comal springs while allowing more pumping.

Rose said that although he plans to introduce legislation in the upcoming session that would give greater drought-period protections to the springs, small-time water users should be exempt from purchasing or leasing water rights.

Rose said the authority's governing board "ought to suspend enforcement of penalties until the rules are reconsidered."

Board member Mark Taylor said the authority is working on ways to ease penalties and fees for well owners.

"We do have an interest here in protecting the springs," said Taylor, who represents parts of Hays and Caldwell counties. "The only way to do that is a good management plan based on the amounts being pumped from the aquifer each year."

asherprice@statesman.com; 445-3643

T is for 'Taking': Did Texas Sell T. Boone Pickens Powers of Eminent Domain?

A political shopping spree may have accelerated the efforts of Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens to hijack sweeping government powers of eminent domain.

Read the report

'Til Your Well Runs Dry: How the State of Texas Converted the Edwards Aquifer Into a Multi-Million Dollar Commodity

At a time when Texas’ water supply is stretched to the breaking point, the state has converted Central Texas’ Edwards Aquifer into a multi-million dollar commodity that is being auctioned off for private gain.

Read the report

Dallas Morning News: Dallas on lookout for water raiders

Dallas officials fear that the Legislature may jeopardize decades of local water planning, overhauling state water policy in a way that could threaten North Texas' resources and prompt even tougher limits on water use here. Read the article at the Dallas Morning News

Dallas on lookout for water raiders

State Legislature's plans may drain well-prepared district

December 4, 2006
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News

Dallas officials fear that the Legislature may jeopardize decades of local water planning, overhauling state water policy in a way that could threaten North Texas' resources and prompt even tougher limits on water use here.

Texas lawmakers, faced with drought and water shortfalls across the state, acknowledge that they need to address the issue. Dallas officials don't disagree – they just say planning measures shouldn't come at the city's expense.

The legislation they anticipate in the coming months could hinder the city's ability to manage its own water by forcing Dallas to sell or give away its reserves to water-strapped cities across the state; by limiting Dallas' water recycling efforts to send more flow down the Trinity River; or by requiring Dallas water customers to pay a water tax that would benefit only Texas' least-prepared communities.

"Dallas has been on the cutting edge of developing water resources, and the taxpayers have spent a huge amount of money on water," said Rep. Will Hartnett, R-Dallas. "Now that the rest of the state is realizing they have to play catch-up, they want us to help pay for their past unwillingness to bear the cost. That to me is totally unfair."

With the state's population booming, planning for an adequate long-term water supply has become a priority for officials at all levels of government. The pressure's already on locally – Dallas may be forced to help Irving ease massive water shortages, which could force greater restrictions on Dallas' water customers.

Meanwhile, Dallas is pouring unprecedented resources into lobbying on the issue, paying nearly $125,000 to a private firm to protect the city's water rights.

North Texas shouldn't be punished, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm said, for being better-prepared than some of its neighbors.

"We've been good planners," she said, "and no one should take advantage of our hard work and investment."

Lawmakers say that while the issue will be "huge" in the session that starts in January, water legislation won't live up to Dallas' worst nightmares.

Sen. Kip Averitt, the McGregor Republican who chairs the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said he expects to see legislation soon that focuses on water reuse, conservation, and environmental flows – the scientific term for balancing river and lake ecosystems with human water needs. He said a water customer tax is, so far, not part of the plan to fund statewide water infrastructure projects.

But when limited resources are at stake, Dallas officials say, a bill meant to hydrate parts of the state could parch others. Rainfall varies significantly from year to year, from east to west, from urban center to farm town. Populations are exploding regardless of where the water is, while the drought drains some of the best-prepared water districts.

Dallas Water Utilities is relatively comfortable, even though its sources are 35 percent depleted. The North Texas Municipal Water District, meanwhile, is strapped. Its main reservoir – Lavon Lake – is 63 percent depleted, and Lake Chapman, its secondary reservoir, is so low that the district is no longer taking water from it.

Flood of bills expected

Experts say a legislative approach to state water planning is long overdue – and elected officials thought it would happen two years ago. State water districts and water development companies spent at least $5.3 million lobbying for water interests in that session, according to figures compiled by Texans for Public Justice, a lobbying watchdog group.

They were left largely unsatisfied.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst declared water a priority in the 2005 session and led the charge to change state water policies. But the bottled water tax he proposed to finance water projects was rejected. And while the Senate backed a bill to define water-planning strategies at the state level and create a user tax to fund new water infrastructure, the measure was never brought up for a House vote.

A key element – an analysis of how much water rivers need to maintain their ecosystems, and how much municipalities can realistically draw from them – was reincarnated later in a special "environmental flows" committee appointed by Gov. Rick Perry.

Dallas officials figure that water measures will get much further this time, and they want to be ready.

Some elements of a comprehensive water bill, like conservation and planning measures recommended in a state board's recently approved plan, would be beneficial, they say. That plan, updated every five years, is a blueprint to meet a projected shortfall by 2060.

Others, elected officials say, could threaten Dallas' water rights and supply – and the pocketbooks of its ratepayers.

Dallas' chief lobbyist, Larry Casto, said that an across-the-board tax on Texas water customers, suggested in past sessions to fund water infrastructure in the neediest parts of the state, could give Dallas residents little while rewarding cities that have ignored planning.

"There are cities that have crossed their fingers and hoped for rain, have seen bond elections go down in flames without ever having built anything," said Mr. Casto, who will work with premier consulting firm HillCo Partners to protect Dallas' water rights. "If you're a Dallas customer, you've already paid for your reservoir system."

Going with the flow

Then there's environmental flow. It's a popular notion, and something the state may strive to regulate, Mr. Casto said. But it's also something Dallas, a water-rich city at the top of the Trinity River, must watch closely. If a powerful lobby of parched cities across Texas demands that Dallas send more water down the river, he said, North Texas could see decades of deliberate planning flushed away.

An example: The state could require Dallas to get a special permit to recycle wastewater, instead of sending it downstream. Long term, said Assistant City Manager Ramon Miguez, Dallas intends to supplement its supply with 60 million gallons of recycled water a day.

State Rep. Robert Puente, the San Antonio Democrat who leads the House Natural Resources Committee, said recommendations from the Governor's Environmental Flows Advisory Committee will be considered in the upcoming session. But he said legislation will be based on science, not politics.

"We need to make sure there's enough water in our lakes and rivers to get all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico," he said.

Other water priorities for Dallas include asking the state to stop fining cities for "unpreventable" water main spills. The state fined Dallas $7,500 last year for a main break that leaked chlorinated water into a stream and killed fish – a break related to shifting soil quality. The city is challenging the fine.

New York Times: West Texans Sizzle Over a Plan to Sell Their Water

Angry West Texans and some state officials are demanding a halt to a deal that allows a group of politically well-connected Midland oilmen to tap the desert and sell billions of gallons of water from the state's public reserves.

West Texans Sizzle Over a Plan to Sell Their Water

Angry West Texans are demanding halt to water deal

December 11, 2003
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL, New York Times

ALPINE, Tex. — Angry West Texans and some state officials are demanding a halt to a deal that allows a group of politically well-connected Midland oilmen to tap the desert and sell billions of gallons of water from the state's public reserves.

The venture was advancing without announcement or competitive bidding by the powerful Texas General Land Office, which controls 20 million acres of public lands and the liquids and minerals beneath them.

The agency has never licensed private sale of its water. The eight-man water partnership, Rio Nuevo Ltd., seeks to be the first, pumping out and selling some 16 billion gallons a year to municipalities and ranchers in drought-parched far west Texas, where many people fear that their own wells could go dry as a result.

Since last year, people involved in the matter say, the land office — steward of a nearly $18 billion permanent school fund to benefit public education — has given an exclusive hearing to Rio Nuevo, prodded by the speaker of the Texas House, Tom Craddick, Republican of Midland. The proposed deal has raised a ruckus in this remote town of 6,000 and its Big Bend country sister communities Marfa and Marathon. Since the news leaked out two months ago, lawmakers and others have called on the land commissioner, Jerry Patterson, to avoid any action pending further examination.

Adding to the furor are accounts that Rio Nuevo sought to deliver its water by sending it down the Rio Grande — a plan the state's agriculture commissioner called "cockamamie" — and to pay the state 20 cents an acre for water rights to 646,548 acres in six counties, a yield to the schools of about $129,000.

The company now disavows that figure. The proposed scope was cut to 355,380 acres in four counties at fees Rio Nuevo now says would yield the schools about $7 million a year. The company also says it plans to invest $350 million in water pipes and pumps. Who would buy the water and at what cost is not yet clear, though a likely customer could be the City of El Paso. But Adrian Ocegueda, a spokesman for Mayor Joe Wardy of El Paso, said that studies of the impact on the water level should precede any deal.

A bipartisan State Senate subcommittee was formed to look into the matter, its five members writing Commissioner Patterson that "concerns remain about the lack of a formal process by which this, and any future proposals, will be evaluated and decided upon." Mr. Patterson and Rio Nuevo representatives sat through a heated meeting with 500 residents in this Brewster County seat on Dec. 2 and said a 90-day public comment period would precede any action.

At the meeting, John King, superintendent of Big Bend National Park, warned that the water plan "could cause irreparable harm." A shortage of water outside the 800,000-acre park, Mr. King said after the meeting, could send wildlife streaming into it, disrupting a delicate balance. Mayor Oscar Martinez of Marfa said he had seen several springs go dry. The water deal, he said, should "not even be contemplated."

By Texas law, unless a water district has been formed, landowners control the water beneath their property and can draw it out even if that depletes a neighbor's supply. This is known as the rule of capture, or "the biggest pump wins."

Asked why the talks with Rio Nuevo had not been announced at the time, Mr. Patterson said, "We don't announce a lot of things under consideration." He confirmed that discussions about the lease had been held out of the public eye by the three-member board on which he sits. "We were cautious," he said. "We had never done this before."

The water deal has the region on edge. It has set Mr. Patterson, a former state senator, against the agriculture commissioner, Susan Combs, a rancher and fellow Republican who said Rio Nuevo's plan grew out of a "cockamamie idea" — sending water down the Rio Grande, where much of it could evaporate.

Though big oil entrepreneurs, including T. Boone Pickens, have bought water-mining rights from public conservation districts and private land owners, the state has never opened its water to commercial marketing. But growing demand requires such sales, Mr. Patterson said. He said he would also consider sales of water under prisons, parks and other state property, just as the land office now leases rights to oil, gas, minerals and wind power.

"The big question, the only question, is how much water is there, is there enough to export without doing harm to the local community?" Mr. Patterson said at the Alpine meeting. But Mr. Patterson and Rio Nuevo said they could afford to survey the supply only after a lease was signed. Mr. Patterson also said the land office lacked the money to mine and sell the water itself, though it is preparing to buy a water mining and sales business in Central Texas. He said that because the land office had no track record for letting a water contract, the first one would have to be awarded without bidding.

Local people have turned out in record numbers to protest. "We're already taking more than the skies are putting back," said Tom Beard, a rancher who heads the Far West Texas Regional Water Planning Group. "The only reason they got this far," Mr. Beard said of Rio Nuevo, "is they're very politically plugged in."

An analysis by Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group, shows that six Rio Nuevo partners gave a total of $83,136 to Republican state candidates in 2001 and 2002 — the bulk of it, $72,886, from Gary Martin, an oil investor and businessman. Mr. Martin declined to answer questions.

Another partner, Roger Abel, a retired president of the Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation, said the project would prove publicly beneficial, taking water "from Texas for Texans" over a wide area.

A third partner is Steve Smith of Austin, founder of Excel Communications, who spent about $4 million buying the hamlet of Lajitas near Big Bend in 2000 and who has invested some $60 million more to make it a luxury resort. Mr. Smith did not return a call but Mr. Abel said he was responding on his behalf.

Other Rio Nuevo partners include Kyle McDonnold, a Midland lawyer, and four partners in a Midland oil exploration company called Falcon Bay Energy: Mike Ford, Anthony Sam, Robert Canon and Steve Cole.

Mr. Canon said that before he and Mr. Cole founded Rio Nuevo, another Midland company, Mexco Energy, had bought an interest in a Falcon Bay oil and gas projects. Mr. Craddick, the House speaker, is a Mexico director, but Mr. Canon said that Falcon Bay and Rio Nuevo were separate entities and that Mr. Craddick had nothing to do with Rio Nuevo.

Mr. Craddick, too, said through a spokesman that he had no connection with Rio Nuevo. But he did not dispute accounts that he had urged Mr. Patterson and David Dewhurst, the land commissioner at the time and now the state's lieutenant governor, to meet with Rio Nuevo partners.

Ms. Combs, the agriculture commissioner, said that around April 2002, Mr. Martin approached her with an idea of marketing state water via the Rio Grande. It was folly, she said, because sending water into the river would entail large losses from evaporation. Not long afterward and at the behest of Mr. Craddick, Mr. Dewhurst said, he met with Mr. Martin to discuss the project. Mr. Dewhurst, who was running for lieutenant governor, said he later returned a contribution from Mr. Martin when he learned the oilman had an issue pending before him as land commissioner. "I thought it was a terrible idea," Mr. Dewhurst said of the proposal.

Mr. Patterson said that at Mr. Craddick's urging, he, too, began meeting with the Rio Nuevo partners, even before he succeeded Mr. Dewhurst in January.

Then, in May, as the legislative session wound down, the Texas House and Senate passed a bill that would allow the Rio Grande watermaster to put into the river "privately owned water" for delivery to clients and directed the state's Commission on Environmental Quality "to expedite any application for a permit" to carry out the act.

Mr. Dewhurst said he remembered Rio Nuevo's pressing for such a bill, but said he did not focus on it during the session. Mr. Craddick's spokesman said the speaker had nothing to do with the bill.

Val Clark Beard, the county judge of Brewster County and its top-ranking official, was skeptical. "It was widely perceived as the speaker's bill," she said. "Unusual things get done at the end of the session."

Lobby Watch:Water Bottlers Funded Passage of $2 Billion in TX Water Bonds

For reasons that are not entirely clear, bottled water companies quietly bankrolled efforts to approve $2 billion worth of Texas water infrastructure bonds this month.
Read the Lobby Watch