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Groundwater Management on Texas Gulf Coast: Ensuring Agricultural Sustainability

Join Ronald Gertson, President of Coastal Bend Groundwater Conservation District, as he discusses the peculiarities of managing groundwater on the Texas Gulf Coast while sustaining agricultural usage. Learn about proposed water conveyance systems and the guiding objectives used in rule development for conservation districts. Explore considerations for groundwater management, including sustainability, recharge, agricultural use limitations, and cooperative management with neighboring districts.

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Groundwater Management on Texas Gulf Coast: Ensuring Agricultural Sustainability

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  1. Peculiarities of Groundwater Management on the Texas Gulf Coast While Sustaining Agricultural Uses Presenter: Ronald Gertson President of the Coastal Bend Groundwater Conservation District and Region K Water Planner

  2. “We can’t afford to de-water or leave behind rural Texas” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs

  3. “If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished”

  4. Gulf Coast Water Conveyances Proposed by Planning Groups Source Destination 39 Lower Guadalupe River Bexar County 40 Lower Colorado River (Matagorda County) Bexar County 41 Canyon Lake Bexar and Comal Counties 42 Canyon Lake Kendall County 43 Milam, Lee, and Bastrop Counties Bexar County 44 Bastrop and Gonzales Counties Comal and Guadalupe Counties 45 Gonzales and Wilson Counties Bexar County 46 Gonzales County Seguin and Schertz 47 Colorado River Lake Texana 48 Canyon Lake Hays County 49 Cedar Creek/Richland-Chambers System Tarrant Regional Water District 50 City of Alice Duval County 51 Lake Alan Henry Lubbock 52 Lower Colorado River (Bastrop County) Hays County 53 San Antonio Bay (Calhoun County) Bexar County

  5. Annual Rainfall Source: http://web2.airmail.net/danb1/climate.htm

  6. Analysis of total 1999 water use by county in Texas, illustrating dominant supply source Source: 2002 State Water Plan

  7. “He who laughs last, thinks slowest”

  8. Guiding Objectives Used in Rule Development for CBGCD • Protect the aquifer from over-pumping that could result in: • Negative impacts to the local economy and the environment. • Subsidence • Do so with the least possible impositions on local users. • Do so with minimal risk of litigation. • Provide for the collection of sound data to be used for defensible water planning and management.

  9. Groundwater Management Considerations for the Gulf Coast Aquifer (and others) • Sustainability / Recharge / Modeling? • Use? – The other side of the equation. • Agricultural use and production limitations? • Historic user protection? Farm program impacts? • Cooperative management with neighboring districts? / Absence of districts?

  10. Sustainability / Recharge / Modeling Where Policy Meets Science • What does it mean to manage an aquifer for sustainability? • What is recharge? • vertical infiltration + what – what? • underflow from and to areas beyond district boundaries? • stream contributions / spring outflows? • Does a GAM answer these questions?

  11. “Very funny Scotty. Now beam down my clothes”

  12. Demand?The other side of the equation What demands should be used in managing for sustainability? • Full permitted volumes? • Highest annual historic use? • Some average of annual historic use? • One of the above plus projected increases in local demands?

  13. Agricultural Use and Production Limitations? • Commercial nurseries ~ 15 ac-ft/acre • Turf grass irrigation ~ 7 ac-ft/acre • Rice irrigation ~ 5 ac-ft/acre • Row crop irrigation ~ 1 ac-ft/acre • Aquaculture ~ ? ac-ft/acre

  14. Agricultural Use and Production Limitations? Gulf Coast Aquifer management based on correlative rights could play out several ways - none of them desirable – • Set high production limitations - results in a truly ineffective means of preventing over=production. • Set production limitations at the more normal 1 to 2 ac-ft/acre – results in high-water-use agriculture becoming prohibitively expensive. • Set production limitations at actual availability divided by land mass – results in ridiculously low, impractical amounts.

  15. Our Solution? • Don’t use correlative rights as a groundwater management scheme. • Permit for beneficial use. • Grant historic user status. • When total use nears sustainability limitations – adopt restrictions for new users.

  16. “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody”Bill Cosby

  17. Our Solution is Not Without Holes! • What historic use, if any, gets assigned to wells that have been idled for various reasons? • Can a District continue to bring in new historic users as time passes? • When push comes to shove, will the District have the stamina to distinguish between historic users and new users?

  18. Issues Deserving Legislative Action • Single-county districts and the absence of districts in some counties. • District funding equity issues. • Preserving irrigated agriculture. • Recharge zones outside district boundaries. • Lack of scientific data to base decisions on. • Lack of legally sound management tools.

  19. More Questions than Answers The practical solutions are often either prohibited or not expressly permitted by Texas law, leaving even responsible GCDs at considerable risk of potentially costly litigation.

  20. “Things turn out the best for people who make the best of the way things turn out” Nevertheless…

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