Megan Navarro
WIMBERLEY — A new community education series, designed to cultivate water resiliency in Hays County, has begun hosting workshops.
In partnership with the Mothering Earth podcast, Hays County and the cities of Wimberley and Woodcreek, The Watershed Association started the series — titled Water Wise — focused on educating the community about water conservation efforts, something that is crucial to maintain the natural resources. According to its website, Water Wise is designed to bring together the voices across the region to welcome dialogue, share practical solutions and empower residents to become stewards of the land and water.
Salwa Khan, the voice behind Mothering Earth, has been doing her podcast for approximately 11 years to discuss environmental issues. She explained that one of the issues she has seen not only locally, but also all over the country, is the need for more native plants everywhere because, while important, it’s not just a matter of water, it’s also a matter of bio-diversity and the extinction of different plants and animals who depend on those plants.
After hearing several people concerned about water in the region, Khan knew that the educational series was something that she would like to champion.
“[The series] is about cultivating water resiliency, which is absolutely necessary because of the current drought and the fact that, even if it rains a lot, we still have very limited water supply for the number of people in our region. So, we want to provide information about water in our region and give people practical steps they can take to conserve water, especially outdoors, because a lot of water use is outdoors,” she said. “Currently, of course, we can't water outdoors. We are under drought restrictions, but, once that's lifted, which, at some point, it will be, and even now, people are disobeying, you might say, and using water outdoors. A lot of the outdoor water goes to water lawns, so that, in fact, is one of our focuses. We're trying to show people that they don't need to have a big green lawn in order to have a beautiful yard. That, in fact, it can be a lot better if they were to use native plants, trees, shrubs, ground covers [and] wildflowers — a much more resilient landscape that, once it's established, it's not needed to be watered, except whatever rain it gets.”
Additionally, The Watershed Association helped orchestrate the Blanco Cypress Watershed Protection Plan — an interlocal agreement between Woodcreek, Wimberley and Hays County — around a collective watershed management. From there, it became apparent that outdoor watering was still a problem, making up potentially up to 40% of water use in the area, said Zane Liston of the association.
Having this educational series in the community is important because of the shortage, where there is not enough water to support the number of people in the Wimberley Valley in a way that allows for watering lawns, swimming pools and other outdoor uses, Khan explained.
“Everybody needs water to live. You need water to drink. You need water to cook with. You need water to bathe with. You need to wash your clothes. All these things. But there are ways in which we can conserve water and that's what we're trying to get to is that you need to show people that it is really important to conserve,” she shared. “We want to show people how they can do it because, I think, a lot of people, when you say, ‘we all need to conserve water,’ [they say,] ‘well, I don't know what am I supposed to do?’ So, let's show them what you can do.”
It’s also about cultivating a long-term resilience for how best to live in the area over time, Liston added. She explained that one of the upcoming events is going to be all about integrating native landscapes in neighborhoods.
“It's sort of about how long-term home values and property values will ultimately be dictated by the resilience of that and in the coming years, as the water crisis continues and as the drought continues, homes with native landscapes will be inherently more valuable, simply because they're self-sustaining,” Liston said. “They're beautiful and they're natural. So, we're sort of trying to get ahead of the curve like that by helping people really just ascertain a new sense of beauty with what already is in this region.”
The Water Wise Educational Series was held on Oct. 25 and Nov. 8. Coming up, there will be an event from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Nov. 15 and then, there will be one held Jan. 17, both at the Wimberley Village Library, and more anticipated for the future.
“We will be continuing. At this point, we don’t really have an end date,” Khan said. “We have a lot of other topics that we want to cover.”
The events are free to the public and there will be snacks, Liston said; also, for the November event, there will likely be a child activity at the library, so families will be able to attend.
“My goal for us is to make these events as accessible as possible and to repeat them enough that people are able to attend,” Liston said. “The hope is that we can get kind of consistent about how we do it and let the community know that The Watershed [Association] and we as a workshop series are really here to help solve problems in the community. We're definitely hoping to maintain a consistency where, if you miss the first event, you'll make it another time.”
Learn more about the series, and keep up-to-date on upcoming events, at bit.ly/43VVl8W.
