Although there is no public debate over whether or not to allow water/groundwater marketing, there is now a very vibrant debate going on within by Our Desired Future and the organization called Texas Center for Policy Studies about what to do with excess water and I have had some experiences and qualifications that should give some credibility to my perspective on that issue. Regarding the debate over: What to do with Excess water? If you mean part of pumping permits reduced, conserved or not used, first you have to realize that is just something on paper, reducing demand is something you physically did but creating water supply is not, its not actually water in the ground. Granting permit amounts by 2 acre foot per acre of land or annual amounts the same as peoples maximum year of pumping to be allowed to be pumped annually as we do here with Groundwater in Texas, means that we have over-allocated several times more in permitting than our aquifers annually yield, they can only yield or supply so much and that doesnt change, especially for karst aquifers. The EAA has tried cloud seeding, well injections, artificial recharge, cedar clearing, and even when these things do add more water into the aquifer, the water is not sustained or stored significantly long because it also goes out faster through leaks and holes, some are called springs and artesian wells. The EAA did a study about that after implementing these projects and discovered that the annual yield of the Edwards Aquifer had not increased. Therefore could not be a basis for claiming an increase in groundwater supply to rationalize not reducing over -allocated permits and to rationalize raising the total permitting cap for pumping allocation. By law in the EAA Act of the Texas Legislature, that was a requirement for raising the cap. However, when it was discovered that the capacity of the aquifer to yield more water annually had not increased, the legislators raised the pumping cap anyway against their own mandate which the EAA board used our pumping fees to lobby for because they themselves did not want to be blamed for not following legislation about that. And also in SB3 mandated that maximizing pumping should be a priority in pumping management strategies. The problem with that is that when pumping allocations are over allocated, or over budgeted, you cant stop overspending, or overusing the aquifer enough to ensure everyones wells have water and springs keep flowing and bad water doesnt creep in permanently reducing the amount of freshwater supply your aquifers capacity and wells can annually yield. That means if we have maximizing pumping a top priority, we cant at the same time save many of our springs and wells from going dry and prevent damage to our aquifers capacity to store water water suitable for human water supply. So when we reduce the amounts of the permits say based upon implementation of conservation measures or reducing water use demand, it doesnt mean we have more water in the ground in excess to do anything with. Also it doesnt increase the Supply of water in the ground or the capacity or volume the aquifer can annually yield. The problem is once people make money marketing water permits and then start getting pay back from the government or public money for reducing parts of their permits or for not having the water if their wells dry up (getting the pay back vests legally the permit as a private property right, even if they were over allocated, then it becomes legally and financially very difficult to manage water supply as a natural resource, public supply and/or water security instead of as managing for private and corporate financial interst and that means water going downstream for other non commercial intrests like having enough water flows at surface to prevent public health disasters and surface water supplies which are a shared common resource and for ecosystem health downstream of springs, and coastal wetlands and estuaries all are sacrificed because they have no priority or standing for decreasing vested property intrests. The EAA has been a failed attempt to manage to save springflows and allow groundwater marketing, go look at Comal Spring today and during this next summer or pictures of Comal Springs last summer after mid July. even though we had money and processes in which to do good science, how the science was done was controlled by the EAA board and the stakeholder steerin committees and they only wanted the science that would support not reducing thier pumping and not to hold them liable for harms later and did not choose do the science needed to protect the water supply or the water quality. In fact they wanted to accelerate crisis and keep crisis or water shortage critical periods as long as possible to make more money off their groundwater marketing then. So we have a very well funded legally and sceintifically managed board that on purpose refuses to manage to monimiz critically low aquifer periods and actually focuses pumping and water marketing then during critically low aquifer levels keeping them lasting longer and becoming more severe, Even against state legislature mandates to reduce amount of pumping that occurs during critical periods, the EAA board does not require any f its pumping permit holders to reduce pumping any during critical periods and its been that way since 2008 and then when the HCP was used as a way to bully legal agreements with the cities to not hold the pumpers liable for damages the low aquifer levels and low springflows cause....then they really over pumped and wooops there went our major springs in the Comal....no mystery there they dried up. In accounting when you spend less it doesnt mean you increases your budget. If you spend more than your budget, you are not going to balance or stop over spending if you consider the money you dont spend or save on one thing for spending on something else or as excess money to spend, just like conserved water or reducing permits doesnt create extra water supply. There is still No excess water to allocate as long as we are over budget, over-allocated beyond our aquifer sustainable yield. Consider a Parking Office at a University issues several times more parking permits than places to park. The number of parking places does not increase by reducing the number of permits. Also the number of parking spaces available does not increase either as long as the number of permits is still over the number of parking places that actually exist.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:54:04 +0000
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