Action Needed to Protect Our Water
To the Editor:
Action is needed to protect the future of Fayette County’s numerous households that depend on groundwater wells, and for the future of our Colorado River, which also depends on groundwater to maintain ecologically healthy flows, especially during drought.
The health and availability of our aquifers and the river both depend on how much pumping we allow in our aquifers. Will we sustain our aquifers and the river, and protect the future of our local communities, or will we allow over-pumping for growth and development throughout Texas at our expense? Think about the Ogallala to help you answer that question.
Please come and speak to the District – or at least express your concern by your presence – at its hearing on July 12 at 9:30 a.m. at Fayette County Agricultural Building, 255 Svoboda Lane, Conference Room 104 in La Grange, about proposed changes to how our aquifers, our local wells, and the river are managed in FCGCD (Fayette County Groundwater Conservation District]) and in Groundwater Management Area 12 (GMA-12).
I am asking owners of domestic and livestock wells (so-called “exempt” wells), landowners, and citizens generally to voice their concerns to the Fayette County Groundwater Conservation District (FCGCD) at this address 255 Svoboda Lane, Room 115, La Grange TX 78945 or this email address info@fayettecountygroundwater.com, by August 23, 2021.
The five groundwater district members of GMA-12 conduct joint planning for the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer and the minor aquifers underlying districts such as ours. Roughly the western half of Fayette County is represented at GMA-12 by FCGCD.
FCGCD conducts joint planning in GMA-15 for the Gulf Coast Aquifer on behalf of the other half of the county.
As a 50-year resident of Fayette County, a landowner and a water well owner I am asking my neighbors to join me in asking FCGCD to reject GMA-12’s proposed new plan for our water future.
The district needs our input on how much protection from unreasonable drawdowns of aquifer water levels we expect for exempt well owners and the river.
GMA-12 has proposed a plan that will let big pumpers draw down the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer to levels that will deprive the Colorado River of the groundwater inflows that keep it healthy, and will leave many exempt well owners “high and dry,” and needing expensive repairs to keep their wells flowing. Worse, this plan adopts the mine-to-depletion management policy that will ultimately impact the minor aquifers that we depend on here in Fayette County.
Keep in mind the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer is targeted to supply huge development and growth in other parts of Texas, while exempt wells in Lee and Burleson counties are already being damaged from pumping water for sale to San Antonio. Sadly, the unresolved and controversial new management policies will favor the big pumpers by having effectively eliminated the ability of the district where this pumping is permitted to use its management tools to slow down or stop the pumping when damage is being done.
Moreover, these new policies, and the pumping allowed, will assure the Colorado River will become a “losing” stream within thirty to forty years.
The bottom line is, joint planning among districts is supposed to help all of the districts manage the development of the aquifers in a manner that balances pumping against the conservation and protection of aquifers, while retaining their ability to curtail (slow down pumping) when the damage is imminent This GMA-12 proposed plan does neither.
Please attend the public hearing and write to FCGCD by August 23, 2021, to ask the district to reject the GMA-12 proposal.
Ask them to work to come up with a proposal that does not allow our aquifers to be “managed to depletion,” that protects the Colorado River, and that protects exempt wells throughout GMA-12.
Whether or not you speak publicly, your presence at the hearing will support that request.
For more information, go to www.waterdefenders.org.
Grover Shade
Muldoon