San Marcos River Foundation Newsletter - Vol. 7, No. 1
Printed Quarterly on Recycled Paper - January 10, 1997
ANNUAL
MEMBERSHIP MEETING, BOARD ELECTIONS ON 1/29/97 AT AQUARENA
The Annual Meeting will begin with a social hour from 6 to
7 p.m., at Aquarena, with substantial refreshments. All members
as well as visitors who would like to know more about the
San Marcos River Foundation (SMRF) are very welcome. This
annual event is the time that the Board of SMRF hears from
the members regarding goals and ideas. At 7 p.m., the group
will troop from the party site in either the tent or the restaurant,
depending on weather, to the Submarine Theatre, where the
business meeting will be held, with a backdrop of Spring Lake
and its nocturnal inhabitants.
The Board election will be first on the agenda. Nominees this
year include Kay Moore and Kyle Wilson, who are currently
board members and running for re-election. The two new nominees
are Charles Blankenship and Deborah Lane, replacing retiring
board members Cathy Supple and Mary Beth Garrett. Charles
is the recently retired manager of Beall's Department Store.
He is the Chairman of the Board of Scheib Opportunity Center,
and an active volunteer with them for many years. He is also
active in the First Christian Church. He and his wife Joy
are founding members of the local Habitat for Humanity chapter,
and have been members of SMRF since its inception. Deborah
Lane is the manager of Blue Pearl Coffee House in downtown
San Marcos, and moved to San Marcos two years ago from California.
She has been a very dedicated River Ranger equipment manager
since she moved here, inheriting her tendency to be involved
in the community from her parents, Jim and Jo Lane, long time
SMRF members. She continues her strong interest in the environment.
SMRF is lucky to have such willing and able people.
Of course,
nominations can be made from the floor the night of the meeting,
or by mail before January 19th. Call Secretary Mark Boucher
for details on those procedures, 754-8075.
Other
items on the Annual Meeting agenda will include:
Reports
of Treasurer and Committees.
Project reports on Kiosks, Birding, Interpretive Center, Grants,
Fundraising, & Educational Room.
Results of Fish Hatchery River Impact Studies.
Update on San Marcos Surface Water Supply Plan, and Water
Reuse Initiative.
Status of three permit hearings, and discussion to develop
a SMRF position on each.
Discussion of SWT Impact on Sessom Creek.
After the members adjourn, a short Board meeting will begin.
All are welcome who wish to stay.
PRESIDENT'S COMMENTS
Compared to the previous several years, 1996 was relatively
quiet. All three of the protests on permits of the A. E. Wood
Fish Hatchery discharge and City's water withdrawals were
relatively inactive until the very end of the year. 1997 promises
to be very active in comparison, since all three permits are
coming up for action. This will stress the resources of SMRF,
but we hope to be able to manage our funds and volunteer time
wisely to accomplish our goals of preserving the flow, natural
beauty, and purity of the San Marcos River.
For details on the permits and hearings and to learn what
you can do to help in the effort, read on in this newsletter,
pages 3 & 7. Be sure to attend the Annual Membership meeting
on January 29! The Foundation continued its usual activities
of community education and outreach during 1996 in planning
River Awareness Month last April, in helping to build and
refurbish information kiosks on the River, sponsoring River
cleanups, supporting Texas Watch water quality monitors like
the River Rangers, developing a Birding Guide and Hotline
(396-BIRD), continuing to work on the children's educational
room at Aquarena, monitoring erosion and pollution on Sessom
Creek from construction, assisting in obtaining a historic
building for a River interpretive center for the City of San
Marcos, planting cypress trees, seeking grant money, and other
activities and projects too numerous to mention. When I sit
down and try to itemize the many activities of the Foundation,
I wonder how all of this is accomplished by the modest collection
of volunteers we have.
FOR THESE MIRACLE WORKERS, I GIVE MY HEARTFELT THANKS AND
ASK GOD TO BLESS YOU FOR YOUR UNSELFISH DEDICATION TO SAVING
OUR BEAUTIFUL RIVER.
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MARK YOUR CALENDARS WITH VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
January 29
The membership meeting will need some workers to set up refreshments
before it begins. Volunteers will chop and cook and bake the
day before in Dianne Wassenich's kitchen.
February
5
The re-dedication and photo opp for SMRF's refurbished kiosk
next to the Lions' Tube Rental will be at 11 a.m. Please attend
if you can. It will be brief. Jo Ellen Korthals of SMRF's
Board has worked on this with Signcrafters, and funds were
provided by the Lions, who were also major donors to the beginning
endowment fund of SMRF. Parks and Rec of the City of San Marcos,
the Lions, and others will be invited to attend.
February
8
Sally, the 16' Texas Blind Salamander will be in the Carnaval
parade through downtown San Marcos at 10 a.m., so the volunteers
who would like to drive the truck, load her onto the truck
or trailer, and ride along with her (wearing white eyemasks
and red gillfeathers to match hers) will need to call Dianne
Wassenich, 512-393-3787, to stay in touch, and get times and
places. Definitely attend the parade if you can't help with
Sally.
February
19
A carpool will leave from the Hobby Lobby parking lot (the
old WalMart) at 8 a.m. to go to Austin for the TNRCC Commissioners'
Meeting on the San Marcos Bed & Banks permit to draw water
from the San Marcos River. There are almost 200 protesters
of this of this permit, and there is still time to get involved.
Please come. The more the merrier!
February
19
SMRF's informal monthly work meetings (Nuts & Bolts) have
been at 6 p.m. on the third Wednesday each month for several
years. The new meeting site will be the private room at Grins,
so that it can be a more fun social event, with food and drink
for those who wish. Check the Community Calendar in the San
Marcos Daily Record for updates. These meetings are important
for those who wish to become involved in SMRF's events, projects,
and to get hearing updates. River Awareness Month (April)
will be planned.
February
28
Volunteers are needed to cook and serve the Friday luncheon
at the Cottage Kitchen that River Foundation members sponsor
every year. Call Chair Dianne Wassenich at 512-393-3787 to
volunteer. The menu will be different this year, since the
cooks are tired of salamander gumbo. Parmesan polenta with
Italian turkey sausage and peppers, mixed greens with artichoke
hearts and Dijon vinaigrette, garlic bread, and everyone's
very best homemade pies and cakes will be served. Cooking
will happen at Dianne's kitchen on the day before the luncheon.
If you don't call in time to get on the list of volunteers,
please come on the 28th to eat lunch for $5. The event benefits
the Heritage Association, since they remain the first and
most substantial donor to the Foundation, to the tune of over
$30,000 in the past 12 years. Lunch is served from 11 a.m.
to 1 p.m.
March
1
The Spring San Marcos River Cleanup will be on Saturday. Those
who will clean the upper section of the River (on foot or
by boat) will meet in City Park by the Lions' Tube Rental
at 10 a.m., and those more expert canoers who will clean downstream
sections all the way to the confluence with the Guadalupe
River will meet at 9 a.m. at Spencer's Shady Grove Campground
in Martindale. All of SMRF's Adopt-a-River groups need to
plan to attend. The barbecue dinner to thank participants
will be served at 6 p.m. at the Spencer's campground, so participants
must show up at one of the two gathering sites in the morning
to be counted if they wish to come for dinner. Sponsors include
TG Canoes, Pecan Park Retreat (the Goynes family), the Spencers,
SMRF, and Texas River Recreation Assoc. Info, Tom Goynes,
392-6171. Free boats and camping for hard workers.
March
19
Nuts & Bolts monthly work meeting, 6 p.m., Grins Restaurant.
Besides permit hearing updates on the fish hatchery discharge
and the City's permits to draw drinking water from the San
Marcos River, final plans for River Awareness Month in April
will be laid.
Any
time
SMRF needs a webmaster to set up a SMRF website. It will be
very simple work, since we already have a newsletter written
that can constitute the body of information for the site.
Later, as more documents develop that need to be available
to the public, the webmaster can add them, or teach other
SMRF volunteers the procedures. SMRF's birding website, which
was set up last summer by Cathy Supple, is a great act to
follow. (http://www.centuryinter.net/birding) Supple is now
in the process of installing a counting mechanism on the site,
so that the number of "hits" (or visits) to the
site can be tallied. Her hard work on this birding project
is much appreciated.
WHOOPERS THIRSTY AND IN DANGER AGAIN
The San Marcos and Comal Springs are the main source of fresh
water for the San Antonio Bay and estuaries on the Texas Gulf
Coast during drought times. There just has not been enough
fresh water this winter. The whooping cranes who winter in
the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Bay have had to
fly several miles to drink fresh water several times a day,
since the salinity of the Bay has been the same as the Gulf
for many months, according to Refuge biologists. Even though
the Edwards Aquifer and the Comal River flow has risen slightly
from rainfall, the San Marcos River flow has continued to
drop to dangerously low levels. Scientists say that too little
rain has fallen in the recharge areas that feed the River.
Meanwhile, the entire San Marcos watershed, all the way to
the Gulf of Mexico, is affected. People who depend on fishing,
shrimping, oystering, tourism based on birds and recreation,
and all those who drink River water are still concerned about
the continuing drought.
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HATCHERY PERMIT HEARING GOES WELL
SMRF members, including several long-time riverside landowners,
turned out to protest the permit of Texas Parks & Wildlife's
A. E. Wood Fish Hatchery located off Hwy. 621 near the San
Marcos High School. The hearing, expected to last all day,
took only 90 minutes. The state's Natural Resource Conservation
Commission (TNRCC) and Texas Parks and Wildlife (TP&W)
did not challenge any of the parties. Many SMRF supporters
appeared in person and dozens of others sent in letters of
support. The main purpose of this initial hearing was to consolidate
parties and to establish the dates of the discovery questions
and responses, as well as the final hearing dates.
Besides SMRF and its dozens of supporters, the Lone Star Chapter
of the Sierra Club and the Texas River Protection Association
are also official parties. Altogether these three groups represent
several thousand people. It certainly makes the job easier
to have all this support.
Many of
the immediate downstream landowners spoke of growing up on
the river, drinking the water straight out of the river and
being able to see as much as twelve feet underwater. Now the
visibility is less than a foot and no one would even think
of drinking out of the river. There was moving and dignified
testimony by many SMRF members.
The next
six months will entail a series of questions and responses
from all sides with a final hearing set for June. Meanwhile
TP&W is having a study done by Fish-Pro, Inc. on types
of treatment systems and their costs. This is a long way from
the initial TP&W stance of "no need to treat the
effluent". SMRF hopes TP&W will decide on a system
soon so a hearing will be avoided, saving both taxpayers and
SMRF time and money.
SMRF will
decide in the next few months whether to ask the hatchery
to reuse all water, not dumping anything into the river, or
to build a treatment facility that discharges the 2.7 million
gallons a day into the river. So far SMRF does not have an
estimated cost for a complete reuse facility. It does make
sense that if the discharge is good enough for the native
fish in the River that the hatchery could reuse it for raising
their fish.
The principal
reason the SMRF water quality committee is considering demanding
complete reuse is based on information discovered during the
City's wastewater hearings in 1995. The 9 million gallons
a day the City will be allowed to dump into the same stretch
of river only 1000 yards downstream of the hatchery, maxed
out the computer model which showed that the City's discharge
alone would drop the oxygen level below the minimum of 6 mg/l
at the Blanco confluence. This is where TNRCC staff had recommended
the "exceptional water quality line" be placed,
but they realized they had to move this line upstream 1 kilometer
to avoid a conflict between their wastewater permit policy
and stream standards.
Therefore,
even if TNRCC required a strict permit (like the City's 5-5-2-1-6)
for the hatchery, the computer would likely show less than
the required 6 mg/l oxygen with the added hatchery discharge.
Unfortunately, TNRCC is very reluctant to consider the total
impact of two different discharges on a river, even though
in this case they are only 1000 yards apart. Oxygen reduction
by sewage or hatchery discharge usually occurs several thousand
yards downstream. This issue of what type of permit to ask
for will be discussed at our Annual Membership Meeting, so
SMRF members will have input.
It should
be mentioned in closing that the management and staff of the
local hatchery have been very open and cooperative in their
exchange of information with SMRF, a pleasant change from
the last permit hearing SMRF went through. (See following
article on p. 4 about the meeting with FishPro.)
SMRF INVITED TO FISH-PRO PRESENTATION
TP&W invited SMRF representatives to the initial presentation
by their consultants, Fish-Pro, Inc., regarding alternatives
to be considered for hatchery discharge treatment. Jack Fairchild,
Tom Wassenich Tom Goynes, and John Hohn listened and brought
up several points that they hope will be considered in the
proposed design of the facility. Ironically, this meeting
preceded the recent preliminary hearing by a few weeks, but
the study and the hearing are going on simultaneously on different
schedules. SMRF is very glad TP&W is considering treatment,
and hopes TP&W will choose to build a facility to reuse
their discharge and not impact the river at all. Ideally,
this study and costs for various treatment methods will be
available before much energy is wasted on the hearing process.
SMRF TEAM VISITS ATHENS HATCHERY
As part of their Thanksgiving holiday, Jack Fairchild and
Tom Wassenich took a side trip on the way to the Dallas area
and toured the new TP&W Freshwater Fisheries Center at
Athens, Texas. Mainly, they wanted to observe methods of treating
fish hatchery discharges, having heard that TP&W was using
a filtration system and/or a wetland. It turned out that there
was filtration, but it wasn't working. The "wetland"
consisted of a direct discharge into the woods on the banks
of nearby Lake Athens.
Built as a sportsman's center to encourage the understanding,
appreciation,and participation in Texas fishing, the 18 million
dollar facility had just opened in November, and is about
half completed. Only the aquariums and displays were complete
while the large hatchery was still under construction. The
aquarium water was designed to be recirculated through an
extensive filtration process which was not working that day,
and all the aquariums were too murky to view except the one
which contained the largest bass in Texas.
The discharge
went down a small natural dry creek bed which was not able
to handle much water, so it overflowed and went into a wooded
area about 50 feet wide, then flowed into a slough of Lake
Athens within a few hundred yards of what appeared to be the
pumps for the Athens drinking water supply. If this is where
the discharge from 60 acres of soon-to-be-completed ponds
is going, there will be a real water quality problem in the
lake. Hatchery discharge into the cold, fast flowing San Marcos
River is causing problems here and Lake Athens is still and
warm in the summer. Perhaps TP&W will provide better treatment
before they open that area of their facility.
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OUR SCIENCE TEACHER DEFINES WETLANDS
The term "wetlands" is used frequently in referring
to treatments for wastewater. What exactly is it? It could
be a natural or a man-made wetland. It could be a natural
bog, a marsh, or a quiet pond. It might have once been a wet,
swampy area that was drained to accommodate growth, or to
get rid of those pesky mosquitos or noisy frogs. In fact,
wetlands are nature's "kidneys", like the forest
is nature's "lungs". These huge wet cleansing centers
work with the aid of microbes and reeds and plants.
Some harmful compounds found in wastewater can be broken down
by bacteria. Ammonia is changed to nitrate, phosphorus to
phosphate by microbes, while other pollutants are contained
by accumulation and sedimentation, such as phosphate to peat,
and heavy metals sinking into sediments.
Wetlands
made by man are extremely effective and low in cost and maintenance.
They work best in small towns and rural areas because of the
amount of land necessary to handle the wastewater volume.
It is essential to have a large enough wetland excavated to
handle the volume of discharge even in wet weather years.
The maintenance of plants, sediment removal, and monitoring
of the water quality must be done regularly. Some wetlands
work as "polishing" treatments, after intial aeration,
filtration, or other treatments do the heavy work in cleaning
up wastewater, and provide improved habitat for birds, insects,
and other animals as a side benefit.
SALLY GETS A FACELIFT
Children visiting Aquarena recently helped give SMRF's Texas
Blind Salamander a new coat of papier mache. Later, members
finished her up with a new coat of paint, so she could visit
Austin on New Year's Eve for a Save Our Springs Alliance party
and fundraiser. See her at the Annual Meeting at Aquarena!
EMAIL IS EFFICIENT
The next newsletter in April will have a list of email addresses
for SMRF members. Send your email address to President Jack
Fairchild at jefrchld@itouch.net, and if you wish to fax a
document, his fax line is 357-2093. Email will help get notices
out to members more efficiently when a crisis arises.
VERY BIG NEWS - GRANT FROM VAUGHN FOUNDATION FOR A HYDROLAB
The Foundation and Hays County contracted with Madge Altes,
a grant writer located by Richard Salmon, Grants Coordinator
for Hays County, to write a proposal to the Vaughn Foundation
asking for the specialized equipment needed by the Foundation
to monitor discharges and water quality in the San Marcos
River, on a round-the-clock basis. Environmental work is one
of the fields the Vaughn Board supports. The check for $5000
arrived in December, just in time for President Fairchild
to attend a seminar on these hydrolabs, to learn about the
newest models on the market. The hydrolabs can now store up
to 120,000 water quality measurements and be downloaded into
a PC computer.
This purchase will be made soon, and will ensure that the
kinds of constant testing needed for scientific evidence during
hearings will be collected. The Foundation is very grateful
for the generous donation by the Sara and Ben Vaughn Foundation
of Austin. Thanks also go to Hays County Judge Etheredge and
the Commissioners for being farsighted enough to have a Grants
Office, which brings millions in grants into this city and
county to a wide variety of deserving groups, like SMRF! Plans
are in the works to make other grant applications for computer
equipment and a legal defense fund in the coming year.
CHAMBER NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE BEGINS A COLUMN IN THE
RECORD
In the middle of each month, a Sunday Daily Record will carry
a column called "River City News" to cover what
is happening, environmentally speaking, in San Marcos. The
first column covered the reuse of wastewater effluent as golf
course irrigation water, as it is done in Gruene. The guest
speaker at the recent Natural Resources Committee meeting,
Rob Puetz of Sundance Golf Course in Gruene, made a presentation
to the group about his successful partnership with New Braunfels
Utilities. The info he presented was used to write the column.
After the talk, the committee had a round table discussion
with Quail Creek Country Club representatives who are interested
in using the new City wastewater plant effluent for their
irrigation purposes. This reuse option is one that SMRF has
long been interested in, since it would reduce impact of effluent
on the River. This Chamber committee will meet at noon on
Monday, January 27, at Grins Restaurant to hear City Manager
Larry Gilley present the status of the two drinking water
permits the City has applied for to withdraw water from the
River. There are no dues required to attend these Chamber
meetings, but attendees buy their own lunch.
SUNDRY WATER/RIVER MEETINGS ATTENDED BY SMRF MEMBERS
John Hohn has recently attended a meeting at the Bamberger
Ranch at the request of President Jack Fairchild, since Fairchild
was tied up in the 4-day Fish & Wildlife Edwards Aquifer
Workshop (see p. 6). Sponsored by the Hill Country Foundation,
the Bamberger Ranch discussion group has regular meetings
covering water issues and Dr. Fairchild and Tom Wassenich
have attended past meetings. Hohn also tried to stay awake
(his words) during most of the Sixth Annual Conference on
Water Law held in Austin recently, and has enjoyed served
on the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority (GBRA)-Hays County
Citizens Advisory Committee.
Martha Latta and Dianne Wassenich attended a January meeting
in Seguin held by the consultants hired by the TransTexas
Water Plan group to gather public comment on their feasibility
studies. The purpose of the meeting was to get public input
on the way the public hearings will eventually be conducted.
Several other focus groups on the TransTexas Water Plan that
met in San Marcos and Lockhart have been attended by SMRF
members Tom Wassenich, Dr. Fairchild, and John Hohn. At the
San Marcos meeting, the only other participants were Dr. Glenn
Longley and Dr. Rich Earl of SWT.
Tom Goynes
and Dianne Wassenich have been appointed by Executive Director
Andy Sansom to the new TP&W Rivers Conservation Advisory
Board which will begin meeting in January. Other groups represented
on the board will be major canoe clubs, river and bayou preservation
groups, and large fisherman organizations. Good networking
possibilities, all the way to the coast, will be possible.
Comments
were filed by Dr. Jack Fairchild on the Texas Water Development
Board draft Water Plan that will be submitted to the Legislature
for action on water laws this session. Additional comments
were filed by Dianne and Tom Wassenich, as individual citizens.
The Sierra Club alerted SMRF via their State Capitol Report,
to the need for these comments, with instructions on how to
get a copy of the draft. The Sierra Club State Capitol Report
is only $15 per year, and invaluable for those who want to
know when to speak up. To subscribe, send a check to Sierra
Club, P.O.Box 1931, Austin, TX 78767.
Dianne
and Tom Wassenich are new board members of the Save Our Springs
Alliance of Austin, and have attended several meetings in
northern Hays County and Austin in the past few months.
ADOPT-A-RIVER GROUPS NEEDED
Both Jo Ellen Korthals, SMRF's Adopt-a-River Chair,and Steve
Gilmer of the City's Parks and Rec Dept. have sent letters
to our Adopt-a-River groups to encourage them to sign up again,
and keep up the quarterly river cleanups on their section
of river. The March 1 cleanup will be a great kick-off time
for new groups to get involved, and there are plenty of sections
available for adoption. Call Jo or Steve if your Scout troop,
garden club, or coffee drinkers group have the inclination
to help. A talk can be given by a SMRF member at your club
meeting if that will help sell the idea. Cleanups do not involve
getting wet or canoeing unless that is the preferred style
of your group. Bank walkers are needed in many locations,
including the creeks and ditches that lead to the river, like
Purgatory Creek, which winds through San Marcos all the way
to Hunter Road. Sessom Creek is another trashy tributary.
Recognition in the local paper, this newsletter, and a good
feeling from having regular exercise are the benefits.
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EDWARDS AQUIFER WORKSHOP HELD AT AQUARENA, SMRF HELPS
Four whole days were spent by participants in the development
of a regional plan for the management of the Edwards Aquifer
at Aquarena in late October. The workshop was hosted by the
Aquatic Research Station and Aquarena at SWT, and sponsored
by U.S. Fish & Wildlife, SMRF, GBRA, Vulcan Materials
Company, and the Bexar-Metropolitan Water District. SMRF volunteers
provided refreshments for all four days, and took orders for
lunches and picked them up to keep the participants working
right through lunch. The refreshments were not only served
beautifully all day, but most were baked in the homes of SMRF
volunteers. Twenty three bakers and servers helped, along
with several businesses (see pictures below), as well as the
Heritage Association Cookbook Committee. Frances Stovall and
Mary Bonner of that committee sold several cookbooks after
their "taste test"
offerings were gobbled up.
The workshop was conducted by world-famous facilitators on
endangered species issues, and attended by locals Drs. Tom
Arsuffi, Glenn Longley, Nisai Wanakule, and Richard Earl from
SWT, Jack Fairchild of SMRF, Melissa Millecam and Mark Taylor
of the City of San Marcos, Randy Moss of TP&W, Ron Coley
of Aquarena, and Paula Power, SWT's Texas wild rice expert.
Every region of the Aquifer participated.
The workshop
divided into four groups for study: Hydrology, Biology/Comal,
Biology/San Marcos, and Socio-economic. Each group attempted
to identify needed info for decision making, and then prioritized
management options to accomplish the goal of "balancing
the socio-economic needs of the Edwards Aquifer region while
ensuring survival of species in their habitat". Although
the group represented has no power to implement their findings,
the workshop results should be valuable source material for
the new Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA) as they attempt to
carry out their mandate to manage the Aquifer.
BUSINESSES DONATING BAKED ITEMS TO SMRF FOR WORKSHOP
On the left is Manager Kitty Sheets of Sara Lee Outlet Store
at the Tanger Outlet Center with two big trays of iced chocolate
brownies. On the right is Nicole Sharadin, Cashier, and Sammy
Isham, Assistant Manager of Golden Corral at 1207 IH35 South
handing Dianne Wassenich of SMRF several dozen muffins fresh
baked by Manager Luis Castillo for the Edwards Aquifer Workshop
in October. Many thanks for the extra special baked goods--all
the visitors to San Marcos for this event were impressed by
the hospitality.
SAN MARCOS SURFACE WATER UPDATE -- TWO PERMITS
The first water rights issue, the Bed & Banks permit in
which the City seeks permission to exchange their wastewater
for San Marcos River water for drinking water, will come before
the Commissioners of TNRCC at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, February
19. SMRF has heard that this permit is DOA (dead on arrival)
but the legal procedures will still have to be followed to
the bitter end. Almost 200 protests to this permit were filed
with TNRCC, and SMRF members will carpool to this meeting
in Austin, even though individuals will not be allowed to
speak. The cars will leave at 8 a.m. from the parking lot
at Hobby Lobby (the old WalMart site), and all who possibly
can attend are asked to do so. When arriving at the meeting
room, SMRF members will fill out cards naming the issue they
are opposing so that the Commissioners will know how many
have made the effort to attend. Please call Dr. Fairchild
or the Wassenichs if you intend to come along, to make sure
enough drivers will be there.
A study committee within TNRCC has recently recommended that
Bed & Banks permits like this be denied. Nevertheless,
the City claims its application predated this decision, so
they insist on seeing the permit through the process. This
claim that their wastewater discharge into the river allows
them to take water out of the River downstream of the sewer
plant and call it free "private water", is apparently
the reason for the City's reluctance to go ahead with wastewater
reuse programs like New Braunfels has implemented to protect
their river. Wastewater reused on irrigating golf courses,
athletic fields, parks, and farmland would subtract from that
water the City hopes to claim for free under their scheme.
Meanwhile,
if this course is pursued, San Marcans will be drinking from
the River downstream of the sewer plant, they will be using
a source that is proving to be less than dependable in quality
and quantity in these dry years, and they will be allowing
the very reasonably priced and available Canyon Lake water
that is left to be bought up by other cities, while the City
delays in reserving that water so its lawyers can pursue permits
already deemed not feasible. Does any of this make sense?
The City
is continuing to try to work out a cooperative agreement with
GBRA to develop a regional water plant, which will be served
by a GBRA pipeline from Lake Dunlap to bring water released
from Canyon Lake. The City says that using the lake water
they have already reserved is its first priority. In fact,
the City has been paying for this water for a some time, and
been unable to use it, since pipelines and plants were not
built in time.
The two
permits to withdraw as much as 59.5 cubic feet per second
(cfs) from the San Marcos River water are still being pursued
by lawyers hired by the City. Please compare this amount of
water with the 76 cfs of the entire River flow in August.
The City's permit application wording assures TNRCC that by
taking River water coming out of the Aquifer through the San
Marcos Springs that the City is becoming less dependent on
the Aquifer. This logic is hard to understand.
The second
City permit has not yet come up before the TNRCC Commissioners,
but SMRF is sure that work continues on this permit as well.
A recent Open Records request and review of the legal bills
from Booth & Werkenthin, Austin water attorneys for the
City, shows around $50,000 spent in the last fiscal year alone
just on water rights (permits). This is even without a hearing,
which would cause many hours of billing time, and thousands
of dollars. It is apparent that much maneuvering is going
on behind closed doors, and that even Council Members are
not always told of the lawyers' work on settlements with protestants,
and plant site changes. A great deal of the lawyers' billed
time is devoted to finding a way to deny SMRF and other protestants
a chance to have a hearing over these River water withdrawal
permits.
This money
could be more sensibly spent on getting water to San Marcos
quickly from New Braunfels, via the New Braunfels plant, on
an interim contract basis with them. After all the agreements
with GBRA and area smaller communities are worked out, the
San Marcos plant could then be built.
SMRF members
can help this to happen by calling or writing the Mayor and
Council Members to ask them to support true wastewater reuse
for irrigation and to develop a water supply based on sound,
firm water rights, truly independent of the aquifer---Canyon
Lake water. No gambling with taxpayers' money to try to get
off more cheaply with short term solutions, at the expense
of the quality of life in San Marcos. Elected officials need
to hear that not every citizen wants rapid growth fueled by
temporary cheap water, since taxpayers are the ones left holding
the bag when rapid growth occurs. Look at Austin, Round Rock,
and Georgetown, and try to learn from their experiences.
CHILDREN'S ROOM AT AQUARENA GETS NEW ITEMS FROM SMRF
Board Secretary Mark Boucher put his carpentry skill to good
use and made several "discovery boxes" for children
to enjoy in the room next to the aquariums. The boxes are
smoothly finished, and have an opening in the front of each,
sized to fit a child's hand. After reaching inside to feel
the item and guess what it is, the lid of the box may be opened
to peek and read about the River-related item. The boxes started
out with a turtle shell, a large exogyro fossil, a small swim
mask, and similar treasures. Dr. Tom Arsuffi, also a Board
member, donated two beautiful posters to the room, which have
been framed and hung. The brightly painted inner tubes used
as seating in the room have proved to be a little fragile
for children, so heavier gauge rubber will be used next time.
The room is scheduled to get a new rock wall built to look
like the Aquifer this winter, and perhaps a new floor.
NEWS FLASH!
SMRF RECEIVES $5000 GRANT FROM VAUGHN FOUNDATION FOR A HYDROLAB
HAVE YOU DESIGNATED SMRF AS YOUR CHARITY OF CHOICE (#1808)
ON YOUR REMARKABLE CARD?
SEE INSERT IN NEWSLETTER.
RIVER FLOW FACTS
102 cfs currently, 1/10/97
86 cfs on 12/1/96
109 cfs last newsletter,10/96
76 cfs lowest flow in the summer of '96 (Aug.)
46 cfs record low flow in the 50's drought
168 cfs average flow
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