When the water well stops
Blue Hole has shut down due to bacteria levels, the result, no doubt, of stagnant water.
Jacob’s Well, the origin of Cypress Creek and to Blue Hole downstream, is not flowing, and for the first time that designation has been used the creek bed between the Well and Cypress Creek is dry. This may be the 5th time in recorded history The Well has stopped flowing, but the first time the water connection between The Well and Cypress Creek has broken.
And yet, we see far too many lawns incongruously green. We also see new, very water thirsty businesses—like RV parks—granted well drilling permits to operate using groundwater in amounts both unregulated and untracked, at a time when the need to conserve would seem so acute one would think such businesses would be discouraged, even prohibited.
But, since Texas’ laws and codes are more business friendly than they are realistic; more, Make Money Right Now, than long-term planning needs; we’ve come to the point where the iconic waterways our area identifies ourselves by are in trouble. And thinking that trouble will be cured with rainfall and cooler weather is to deliberately snub the realities that got us here.
The business-friendly bent of Texas’ politics and politicians has become an extremist pathway to self-destruction. Exaggeration? Take any one subject—unregulated methane emissions in West Texas, or the overuse of residential pesticides/ herbicides, or the unregulated pumping of water from what are long known to be rapidly depleting aquifers—and the solutions can be simple if each are addressed in a reasonable time and manner.
But, we’ve ignored these single realities and let them build, until our backs are increasingly against a wall of time and withering environmental conditions from which the way back becomes more difficult as each year passes we ignore them.
The open market of consumer desires—for our place in the Hill Country, for our water- thirsty lawns that we fertilize to keep green, and poison to keep bugfree, and watering at will despite the weather dictates—has been our lead for decades, and this self-blinded approach has to have a point of restriction that slows us down, even draws us back. Yet, few of us wants to self-regulate. In fact, many act as though resources are unlimited and none of our actions have consequences, even though well levels and water quality testing would prove otherwise.
In this partisan age, many government officials— from local to federal—still view their jobs not as a reflection of partisan politics, but in the light of what their job is supposed to be. If you ask the intentionally underfunded and toothless Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, we might find they would prefer to have the ability to enforce regulations rather than rubber stamp one more certain violator’s permits.
The groundwater conservation districts (GCD), created after statewide outcry as a way to protect our aquifers, came into being with neither funding or the power to actually do almost anything to protect our watersheds. The voters spoke, but apparently the lobbyists laid down the law. But if you ask them, they want to guide us away from the abyss.
And the need to protect our watersheds has never been more pronounced than right now, but we have politicians in place who listen to the few even as the majority want them to do something very different. Which means we need better politicians willing to do what’s necessary to protect not the income of the few, but the resources of everyone.
Without real leadership, we are now to the point where our excesses are almost impossible to ignore. Conservation— real, dedicated conservation— would go great lengths to keeping more water in our aquifers, but the real issue is, are we willing to put safeguards in place that show water is not a cheap and renewable resource, but the single most vital resource all life depends on?
The evidence proves many of us are not willing to do what’s needed, which is why we need laws and codes as our guide. The last conversation on water tracking of private wells met with such vocal opposition politicians backed down; but the need to know what we have and what we’re using is just too great to cower behind a misbegotten definition of water rights.
But it’s not just government knowledge of private well usage needed, but, more importantly, the well owner’s knowledge of their own water habits; until they know, getting a clear idea of conservation needs can’t happen. That information might seem unnecessary until you realize there’s more than 139,000 private wells in Texas, thus 139,000 well owners who may think they don’t use much water, even though studies show they often use many times what they think.
Until we enforce existing regulations, but also get a better handle on what is now untracked water usage with all these private wells, there is no way of knowing how to plan for a future where springs don’t go dry each time there’s a drought. And with the population growth over the past few decades, and what’s projected in the near future, we cannot continue to turn aside our gaze to our own actions.
Like the rest of America, the Texas Hill Country is faced with tough choices and some problematic years ahead. Our growth might slow, but it’s likely to not stop, and the need to conserve water for the whole will only become more intense. The only way forward is to vote for politicians who reflect the need of the whole rather than the incomes of the few, and it’ll take the next five elections— at least—to achieve than end. Let’s start this year.
Clay Ewing