by BRAD ROLLINS
Elected officials behind an ongoing ratepayer-funded effort to bring a longterm water supply to Buda, Kyle and San Marcos want to know why Hays County officials are suddenly moving into the water game in their own right.
Since its formation in 2005, the Hays Caldwell Public Utility Agency has spent millions of dollars leasing land over the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer in eastern Caldwell and northern Gonzales counties, pursuing pumping permits and doing preliminary design on two pipelines to transport water more than 40 miles back to the Interstate 35 corridor.
Then late last year, a newly seated Hays County Commissioners Court started splashing around in the water world, first by organizing a coalition to bid on a package of water and wastewater utilities being unloaded by the Lower Colorado River Authority. The county reactivated the dormant Hays County Water & Sewer Authority and began researching the process for forming its own public utility agency.
Then the commissioners court signed a letter of intent to buy 25,000 to 45,000 acre feet of water – an amount that would at least double the county’s total current water consumption – from a company with ties to San Marcos developer Terry Gilmore.
So when HCPUA board members sat across from county staffers at a joint meeting late last month, they had some polite, if pointed, questions.
“Would the water and sewer authority of the county work more closely with HCPUA and maybe even become a member?” asked San Marcos council member Kim Porterfield, who sits on the board.
But the person sitting across from her was not a fellow elected official. It was County Judge Bert Cobb’s chief of staff, Lon Shell, who sits on the water and sewer authority board but said he couldn’t speak on behalf of the commissioners court. Pct. 4 Commissioner Ray Whisenant, the county’s point man on many water issues, was scheduled to attend the meeting but begged off, Shell said, because of an emergency road issue in his precinct.
Shell said county leaders felt compelled to stake their own claim to future water supplies, but the county has no intention of paying for a water pipeline or selling water directly to homes and businesses. Uncertainty over the longterm availability of water-pumping rights from the Trinity and Edwards aquifers means county leaders must find alternative sources for their constituents.
“It’s complicated, and we felt we should at least start the process of finding out what it will take if we ever decide we need to [buy water],” Shell said. “By no means have we made any sort of commitment. I don’t think Hays County wants to be in the water business and I don’t think the county wants to build a pipeline. I don’t see that ever happening.”
He said the county chose to deal with Forestar, one of several private companies scrambling to lock up Carrizo-Wilcox water rights in the Simsboro area of the aquifer, because that company already has a relationship with LCRA, which owns the only incoming water pipeline in the western part of the county.
“We said, ‘Here’s somebody that has water. Let’s talk to them for a while and find out if there’s a way for us to work together,’” Shell said.
Some of the questions seemed to dance gingerly around Gilmore’s connection to Forestar. Shell said that Forestar, a spinoff of the Temple-Inland Corp., had purchased the water leases that had been acquired by Gilmore’s Sustainable Water Resources, effectively buying Gilmore out of the deal.
Contacted after the meeting, Cobb said the county’s own water efforts “were never meant to be pejorative to anyone. The intent was to get a stake driven into the ground so we have a possible future supply of water.”
“We are all shooting for the same goal – that’s to get potable water in adequate quantities at market prices into Hays County,” Cobb said.
Whisenant did not return a phone call for comment but released a statement that said, in part, “I look forward to working with the [HCPUA] as we all look for solutions to the task of supplying water of any source to provide for sound health and economic opportunity in Hays County.”
Kyle, Buda, San Marcos plan to pump water from Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer
The Hays Caldwell Public Utility Agency is planning a 40-mile-long pipeline to pump water from eastern Caldwell County to a collaboration of entities including the cities of Kyle, Buda and San Marcos. The first phase alone, scheduled to be online by 2020, is estimated to cost more than $100 million. The agency has already leased 17,000 acres in Caldwell County.
Flowing at depths of 200 feet to more than 3,000 feet below the ground, the Carrizo-Wilcox extends from the Rio Grande River in South Texas northeastward into Arkansas and Louisiana, providing water to all or parts of 60 counties in Texas. Bryan-College Station and Tyler are the biggest metropolitan areas that depend on the aquifer.
