Say Goodbye to the Hill Country
Here is my letter to the Editor in the Friday, December 3 edition of the Oak Hill Gazette:
Say Good-bye to the Hill Country. LCRA is accelerating the extension of service in advance of the Regional Plan.
I recently found myself in an office waiting room with some time to kill and picked up an old May issue of the “Audubon” magazine. Inside was this wonderful insert by Dan Porras describing how big cities worldwide, RELY on protected areas to provide their residents with clean drinking water. The article went on to suggest that these protected areas offered local, if unheralded and less controversial, alternatives to piping in water from afar.
“Protecting land costs less than building filtration plants. Like giant sponges, forests soak up water and release it slowly, limiting floods when it rains and storing water when it does not. Watershed protection near cities is thus smart- both economically and ecologically.”
Pure poetry isn’t it?
We steward a treasure in our Central Texas community. While we are blessed with one of the most productive aquifers in the United States it is also one of the most permeable due to its geology. The beautiful Hill Country, lands we so fervently try to protect and conserve on the outskirts of our growing city are extremely vulnerable. We don’t have stands of forest - the soil is thin, and in many places bedrock is exposed at the surface along with cracks, fissures, and sink holes that serve as direct conduits to the aquifer below, and which allow for little to zero filtration by soil or vegetation above.
You would think the logic to preserve the land over your water supply would resonate throughout the business communities, local governments, and citizenry. And in large part it does. But economics play the majority role in how our community grows. Neighborhoods, transportation, and water quality all get short-shifted in this decision making process. Economics is KING.
The consequence of this imbalance of power is “poorly planned growth”. And now that will be spreading even further into the Hill Country.
Some landowners value their property in broader terms than just commercial/residential development value. Many have long standing connections to the land. Most understand the conservation values to preserving the working farms and ranches, and extend that to protecting the native wildlife in the area. The same is true of some of our local governmental leadership in their efforts to ensure existing water sources are protected for our children and future generations. Some have advocated for a more conservative approach to stewarding our natural resources. Today, more are coming to understand the necessity of conservative management practices as water demands outpace capacity and degradation becomes increasingly measurable.
Now to get to LCRA….
LCRA is failing its mission to “ensure the protection and constructive use of the area’s natural resources”. They continue to push towards approval for their expansive new Waterline Plan over the Hill Country. Water from the Highland lakes will be piped into an area directly over our other local water resource- the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer, resulting in overdevelopment and the eventual destruction of that resource. A constructive use of one resource at the expense of the other. Contracts are being drawn stating that “LCRA is accelerating the extension of service in advance of the Regional Plan”. A plan that is currently being worked on to incorporate water quality protections for the area and that was in part funded by LCRA. They do this under the cover of current Fish and Wildlife regulations which are seen as inadequate and out-of-date.
They also do this despite the concerted efforts by governmental, land development, neighborhood, environmental, land owner, public interest groups, concerned citizens, and scientific representatives currently working on the Regional Water Quality Protection Plan.
The negative impacts to the waterline plan have not been fully reported to LCRA board members. Board members are made up of representatives from all over the state and some may be unfamiliar with local concerns and efforts being made to generate updated conservation guidelines to protect our underground water resource. These board members are scheduled to meet on December 7 to vote for or against LCRA moving forward with the Hamilton Pool Waterline Plan.
Do not allow LCRA to destroy one water resource in their efforts to disperse another one. It makes no sense to jeopardize this asset. We need to preserve every water source above and below ground.