Another drought plan strangled before it sees the light of day

— Agenda-setting throttled too - now the monthly meeting agenda has to be made by committee

—Board moves regular meeting date to fourth Tuesdays

—Kinney County Groundwater Conservation District’s Wednesday, July 9 board meeting also included hiring a new hydrogeologist (I always wrote “hydrologist,” mainly because it saves keystrokes, but I’m going to start using “hydrogeologist” if I can remember to do it).

Those three things are for another day. This installment just covers the dead drought plan.

The biggest reveal here is that the years of work done to figure out which wells most impact the spring won’t help develop a drought plan.

Any plan the district comes up with can’t just single out a few wells. It has to restrict pumping on everyone equally.

I suspect the district’s legal counsel knows this.

So we begin.

How to kill a drought plan I

On Facebook a while back, KCGCD President Wes Robinson mocked Director David Palmer for not giving a drought committee report at the March meeting.

At the meeting in May, Robinson said the drought committee’s report got left off the agenda by “accident.”

This month, he said the drought committee - or its chairman, Palmer - failed to report to the board before reporting to the board.

Hmm. Actually, Robinson said, “And I asked you to provide all the information that you were considering to the rest of the board. You never did that.”

Seems unfair, especially since Palmer never saw the contract used to hire our new hydrogeologist before the board meeting in which the hydrogeologist was hired.

Director Charlie Gaines didn’t see it either.

“Was a contract sent out prior to the board package tonight so people could have a chance to review it?,” Gaines asked.

The response was no.

But Robinson got a copy. “I reviewed it,” he said.

Seems like all the directors should be involved in hiring someone who could cost the taxpayers, what, a hundred grand a year? Plus travel, room and board? I’ve done a Freedom of Information Act open records request for that contract so eventually I’ll be able to say what the costs are expected to be.

Even so, Robinson said he will reappoint the drought committee to include all the directors from the board.

Readers, you can’t not know that this drought committee redo is just a way to change the rules in the middle of the game. And to delay the outcome. Again. This will be drought committee four, or five, and drought plan two. Or three.

But Robinson said it was because Palmer gave away the game ahead of the board meeting.

“This (drought plan) was apparently provided to the public before it was provided to the board. There was a solicitation at the Fort Clark Springs (Association) board of directors meeting for attendance because you were ready to present.

“Elizabeth Hodges stood up and said the plan was completed and encouraged the board to attend because you were presenting tonight,” Robinson said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Palmer said.

“It makes it very difficult to act on anything that came out of your committee when you’re reporting back to the public, not your board. It’s a three-man committee,” Robinson said. “You’re not meeting in public.”

This, when later in the meeting Robinson said that the committee chair gets to decide if the committee meetings are open to the public.

Palmer defended himself.

“If you’re saying that the public had this, that’s….,” he said.

Robinson interrupted.

“I don’t know if they (the public) did or not, but apparently they had knowledge of it,” Robinson said.

“No, they didn’t,” Palmer said.

“They did not,” Hodges said from the audience.

Palmer added that the drought committee put its best effort into the report, with lots of information.

Introduction of Drought Plan 2. Or 3

Hear Palmer introduce the proposed plan, starting with his asking the groundwater attorney, who was attending remotely, if he had a copy of it. Ellis said he did.

The plan sounds extensive.

Start at 25:15.

KCGCD regular meeting July 9:

Video by Adam Olson for the Las Moras Springs Conservation Association

How to kill a drought plan I, continued

Robinson then claimed it “was being used as a political tool.”

Gaines said he only saw some of the information that evening, before the regular board meeting commenced.

“That makes it even more suspect, Director,” Robinson said.

“No,” Gaines said. “But we’ve had a couple of drafts. We’ve talked about it. What we decided….”

“How does the public know it’s complete two weeks ago today?” Robinson asked.

“It’s not complete, Wes,” Gaines said. “There will be two different plans outlined…for the board to consider. If the board approves either…” Gaines said.

“It has to get out of committee first,” Robinson said.

“What we have come with are two different plans. They’re similar but with different triggers. We’re going to present those two in outline form to the board next month,” Gaines said.

“You have to get it out of committee before you can get it to the…” Robinson said.”

“We did that tonight,” Gaines said.

“No,” Robinson said, “because we’re all on the committee now and we’re going to have...”

“No,” Gaines countered, “you weren’t on the committee at 4:30 when we met, ok, we did that tonight. The committee decided that we’re going to present two in outline form, the board will vote them up or down.

“If it’s up, then they’ll be submitted to Greg (Ellis, attorney) to put it in legal terms. Then it’ll go out to the public for a hearing and so forth….then the board can vote on it permanently or not.”

Robinson again said that will be done in committee.

“I’m revamping the drought management committee and everybody’s on it,” he said.

“OK,” Gaines said. “But your former committee that you formed has already met, has already done something. We have it finished….the drought committee that you already formed has finalized two outlines that will be presented next month.”

How to kill a drought plan II

Palmer asked the attorney for his opinion, which was lengthy. Then Ellis added that he would “highly recommend” an evaluation of the plan by the new hydrogeologist.

Ellis added that he didn’t know if Hutchison had specified what cutbacks would impact the spring.

He added, “And that’s what I think we need to have before we send this out to the public as a post rule (unintelligible, but the transcript said the word was ‘post’).”

Director Blake Ward said he would “reemphasize what Greg touched on there. I think that Vince (Clause, the newly hired hydrologist), you absolutely need to look this over, and I know it’s going to take time, but we’re kind of pressed. But as far as the zones (marking wells that have more or less impact on springflow) go, I think that’s more important than the model at this point….”

Zone 1 has the highest “correlation” to reducing springflow:

Zone map won’t help create drought plan

Which brings me to the requirement of fair and equal treatment. That production zone map is not going to help with creating a drought plan, and I would think Ellis knows it. As would anyone who was at the rules committee workshop held June 26.

The zones were sketched out many years ago to show the relationship between pumping and springflow, demonstrating that some wells affected the spring more than others.

But in forging a drought plan, you can’t just restrict pumping on just a few wells. It has to cover everyone.

“The trick to cutting back is, you have to cut back everybody equal.”

That was Victor Hilderbran, a director at the Uvalde County Underground Water Conservation District, at the June 26 rules committee workshop.

Listen to him here.

Advance to 41:00.

KCGCD Rules Committee workshop June 26:

Video by Adam Olson for the Las Moras Springs Conservation Association

Hilderbran’s district grants permits differently than KCGCD, by acres to be irrigated, rather than by the volumes pumpers claimed for themselves (that enabled landowners here to get as big a permit as possible, likely so they could sell, or “export,” water, not use it for farming. Our district was born because people wanted to make money by selling Kinney County water. The quotes are there).

Our permitting makes it much harder to figure out how to restrict pumping. Uvalde permits 2 1/2 acre feet per acre of land to be irrigated. When a trigger is reached, pumpers get restricted a certain fraction of those acre feet. Sounds fair.

Common knowledge

Which brings me to another point. When Hodges made her pitch to the fort association board to attend the July water meeting to support a drought plan, she didn’t say the plan was complete. She said pumping restrictions should be based on usage, not permit amounts.

This is common knowledge.

Hutchison said it many times: reducing permitted amounts won’t make a difference because pumpers only use a fraction of the total pumping amount permitted in this county.

That’s the scary part. They only use a fraction of what’s permitted and the spring has died four summers in a row.

Hodges noted that as of June 26, the spring was at 90 days zero flow. (The spring has since sprung again, with a nice enough rain that the pool filled. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, July 16, it was flowing about 9 cfs, which is almost enough to get the creek running).

The permitted amount here totals a little over 63,000 acre feet of pumping.

In 2023, pumpers used about 10,500 acre feet.

The desired future condition (DFC) of Las Moras Springs assumes consistent pumping of some 70,000 acre feet a year. Accounting for rain and evaporation, the spring’s DFC is supposed to be about 24 cfs (cubic feet per second).

In 2023 the district failed its DFC for Las Moras Springs.

Hutchison said such would be expected due to low rainfall, high evaporation and increased pumping. He cited “irrigation demands.”

He didn’t say by how many CFS the spring failed.

But if pumpers are only using 10,500 af, and we supposedly have 70,000 af available to pump (that’s the MAG, or modeled available groundwater) and the spring is dry for months at a time, what’s wrong with the equation?

“….if they were ever to use what they’re allocated, I don’t know what would happen,” Hodges said.

Hear Elizabeth Hodges speak about the drought plan at the fort association meeting. Start at 3:09:30.

FCSA regular meeting June 26:

Video by Adam Olson for the Las Moras Springs Conservation Association

‘If the MAG were pumped, the spring is gone’

Hutchison knows. He addressed the “fundamental disconnect” between the MAG and the springflow at KCGCD’s September 2023 special meeting.

He said that in 2010, the district provided numbers to the TWDB, or Texas Water Development Board, on which the district’s MAG is based. Trouble is, those numbers were the permitted amounts, not actual pumping volumes. This is why, he said, that the MAG is so high.

“If the MAG were pumped, the spring is gone,” he said.

Take a listen: Advance to 1:24:00.

KCGCD special meeting Sept. 28, 2023:

Video by Adam Olson for the Las Moras Springs Conservation Association

Increasing the data

Hutchison added that in 2013, the district recognized that it needed to improve the model.

Since then, the district has massively expanded its aquifer monitoring system (that would be under engineer Jim Burton) with well- and rain gauges, and pumping meters. The district possesses far more information than people realize - and all that, one day, is promised to appear on the district’s website.

Still unable to restrict pumping

But the district still lacks a drought plan. After four years of witnessing a dying spring, the very spring it uses to gauge the health of our aquifers.

And with a president who doesn’t think it’s a priority, it’s that much harder to form one, even though the district claims in its management plan that it indeed has a drought plan.

The 2023 management plan declares that it can limit pumping if “Production Limit Triggers established by the District’s Drought Contingency Plan are reached.”

Makes no difference that that sentence has to do with permits for selling water. The district claims to have a drought contingency plan when it has none. I don’t know why Gregg Ellis, the district’s legal protection, hasn’t fixed that.

That’s a priority.