Catching Up, Striking Down, and Piping it Out

OK, perhaps "Progress" was a poor choice, considering how little I've made lately - at least on this little start-up. I'd say sue me, but we've had something called 'tort reform' in Texas lo these last 4 years, so it wouldn't really be worth your trouble, and you can't squeeze blood from a rock anyways.

But things have been a-happenin', that's for sure. When you head off to the hills of northwest Arkansas in August, all manner of strange things can go down. For instance, Rick Perry went to talk to Hispanic business leaders, began making oddly excited hand gestures, and called his once-beloved border wall idea "nonsense" - then sent in the Texas Rangers to lock things down, just in case the faithful got the wrong idea. Joke's on him, since the Rangers just dropped three straight to the A's and played themselves out of playoff contention.

Meanwhile, a no-bullshit Democrat with a pulse named Hank Gilbert threw his cowboy hat in the ring for Governor and started firing some real shots at Rick and Senator Sparkle Pony. Some of you may recall Hank ran for Agriculture Commissioner back in 2006 against generic Republican Todd Staples, and managed to out-poll every other Democratic executive candidate by 4 points statewide (nearly 42%), despite being outspent 6-1 by his opponent and unsupported by his own state party.
Since then he's been leading the rural rebellion against the Trans-Texas Corridor and the toll road lobby catered to by Perry and deposed House Speaker Tom Craddick (among others). I like what Hank is putting down so far, so I gave him a few bucks - ya'll should do the same and spread the word, if for no other reason than to send a message to the Tom Schieffers of the world that we're not just gonna roll over for some non-threatening rich boys so they can go joy-riding in the Democratic brand and wrap it around a telephone pole like they did back in 2002.

As for our fair county, we finally got the gift we'd been waiting months for: RAIN. Real rain. Three solid days of it came last week, conveniently enough just after most of the hay harvest, or what their was of it. Local farmers and ranchers did not appreciate Mother Nature's cruel sense of humor. After being one of the driest counties in Texas for the last year and a half, we even got wet enough to get the burn ban lifted, and brush pile cookouts started up from Shady Grove down to Rosanky. Small comfort, since we're still well below our yearly average, and the damage has been done. Estimates of dry-land crop losses this season are running as high as 80%, and the Governor's disaster declaration should have been made months before it was. County Judge McDonald declared a local disaster and requested assistance from the state back in February. The Goodhaired Guv pled poverty and half-heartedly punted to the Feds, then finally declared a state of emergency for Bastrop (and 166 other counties) in late July. Declaring a crisis but not actually taking steps to fund recovery - how's that for leadership and looking out for your constituents? Perhaps that's why he only pulled 30% and finished behind Chris Bell in Bastrop County in 2006.



Of course September brought us football as well, and some nasty and curiously-timed lightning displays were shortening high school games, gifting the Bears (3-0) a 3-point win over San Marcos and Elgin a much-needed win over Lanier (after they coughed up a late lead against Travis - Travis! - to take an OT loss in week one). The 'Cats (1-2) couldn't make a streak of it, though, coming up 9 points short in the Barbecue Brawl with the hated Taylor Ducks in week 3. The loud and proud Tigers of Smithville (2-1) avoided being thunderstruck, and are riding high after a 53-point thrashing of Luling last Friday.

But perhaps the best case of poor timing in the last month: yet another flock (gaggle? den? coven?) of regional water speculators made their intentions known - this group operating under the chosen name of (i shit you not) Sustainable Water Resources

Besides Gilmore, a handful of competitive water speculators are banking that the water beneath the largely rural area in Lee and surrounding counties is their crystal-clear gold. As anxieties about water supplies rise among the public and politicians, private speculators see an opportunity to tie up water rights and sell their goods to cities. But they have struggled to land big buyers.

Emphasis mine. Wonder why they're struggling? Perhaps it's because they need to build a $300 million pipeline to make it work, and the likeliest candidates to finance such an undertaking are urban areas whose council members and commissioners are smart enough not to put their fingerprints on what will surely be a future boondoggle at , while also hurting local landowners who'd rather use their water rights to farm and ranch and benefit their neighbors. Go figure.

The different water speculators have different plans about who would then pay for the pipeline construction, which could add hundreds of millions of dollars to water bills.
But in the long run, Mason and other water officials said, pulling water from the Simsboro is a near-inevitability, and the speculator who lines up the most customers stands to make a mint.

You don't say? Notice no one in the article explains why the people of Texas should sign over control of our most vital resource to private investors. I guess that's just a given at this point. I mean, somebody's gotta make a stack of cash on the most basic of public infrastructure, right? Otherwise, why bother? It's just water after all.

Hmm...plundering essential resources, potential for sticking the taxpayers with the lion's share of the tab to get your rainmaker up and running? Maybe that's why this 'business' is drawing in guys like...

...Austin developer Gary Bradley, who has lobbied officials including the Lower Colorado River Authority and the San Antonio Water System to get together to build a pipeline to tap into the Simsboro, which is part of the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer.

Yes, this is exactly what we should do. Open our aquifers to conglomerates of middlemen like Bradley so they can fleece taxpayers and make a killing exploiting our most precious resource of all. I'm sure these guys and their T. Boone dreams are all on the up-and-up, like they've always been...

So what does a neutral scientific observer say? Approach with caution here:

Allan Jones, who stepped down in January as director of the Texas Water Resources Institute at Texas A&M University, said it's hard to determine the volume of the Simsboro and how quickly it will replenish itself.

"We probably don't know enough at this point about some of those aquifers, because there's not that much use," he said.

Hmm. No help there. Sounds like we need a study. Fair enough...

A study paid for by Sustainable Water Resources [emphasis mine]and conducted by the Thornhill Group, an Austin hydrogeology firm, found that although the company could take out 40 million gallons of water a day for decades with little impact on the aquifer, regulatory issues would be an obstacle.

Them pesky regulators. Looking out for the communities they're sworn to serve. Don't they know some businessmen have real money to recoup?
Now, I have no reason to impugn the integrity of the gentlemen at the Thornhill Group; I don't know their staff or their track record so I'll gladly assume they're sound professionals who do quality research. But as a former student of hydrogeology, I'd love to take a look at the study and see their methods and what levels of uncertainty they were working with. Often the difficulty & expense associated with sampling and data collection from a deep water-bearing formation can yield degrees of uncertainty large enough to make the 40 million gallons/ day figure quoted above a cherry-picked gnat on the ass of an elephant of variables. Conclusions like the above can have an awfully wide margin of error, which our young journalist of course fails to note. Spoonful of salt until I can get a look at some hard data.
Another note for you cubs wrasslin' with science: be consistent with your units. For those of you trying to keep track, 40 million gallons equals roughly 123 acre-feet of water. That's per day; multiply it by 365 and you're talking close to 45,000 acre-feet a year. That's what Thornhill's hydrogeologists say could be sustainable over "decades".
Now, an "estimate" cited in the article (but unsourced) is that approximately 2.8 million acre-feet of water sits in the Simmsboro beneath Lee County alone. So, no worries, right?

Clearly, then, the thing to do is....get pumping!

Limmer said his group is seeking permission to pump 56,000 acre-feet a year from beneath Lee and Bastrop counties. He said his group, which includes about 20 investors ranging from oil-and-gas men to developers, has spent several million dollars developing their project since it began in 2007.

By the by, at 56,000 acre-feet a year x 50 years = 2.8 million acre-feet. That's from ONE group. Let's remember that the recharge rate of this aquifer is also an uncertainty (like our yearly rainfall), and add in 40-50,000 acre-feet/year proposed pumping by SWR, and the 70,000/year already permitted to Cumming's Blue Water. Now we're up to about four times what Thornhill says is sustainable - assuming we're talking about the same water, and the study citation is accurate, none of which is really clear from the article. You can see where this might be headed if we're not careful.
But woe is they. Oil men and developers, riding to the poorhouse in their philanthropic quest to save us all from future water problems. I bet you can guess who they'll cite as their biggest obstacle to their proposed shifting of resources:

"Nothing is more politicized than water," said Brent Covert, president of Sustainable Water Resources. "Politicians are scared to death constituents are going to call them without water.

Crazy, all that. Elected officials worrying about their constituents' basic needs when no one is really sure how fast an essential resource can replenish. The horror.
Covert is most likely referring to those dadgum regulators agin - groundwater districts like Lost Pines GCD, who lack the capital muscle of speculators, but who may end up having something to say about how much water these guys can siphon off from us. We should endeavor to pay attention to their proceedings over the coming months and years, neighbors.

But here's the money shot:

Some landowners who stand to gain if water is pumped out from the leased land are bullish on the deal. It could be an economic boon to rural Lee County, where the biggest private employer is the Alcoa mine, which provides coal to power the company's aluminum smelters; the high school has its own rodeo ring; the chief restaurant on the Lexington square goes in and out of business; and garbage trucks and truck cabs sit in people's driveways.

...and they've got a hometown state legislator in Tim Kleinschmidt (R-Lexington), who would almost certainly love to get some credit for a deal that brings a short-term windfall to his locals - and makes him a little extra scratch in the bargain off of his own water lease to wholesalers - before he high-tails it out of the House for a swankier political gig of some sort and leaves the disaster to whoever inherits it. Indeed, Tim spoke before the Lost Pines GCD back on August 19, no doubt the first of many visits. I'll be interested to see how cuddly he tries to get with area GCDs, and what legislation results - assuming he gets re-elected next year, which isn't a given in this swing district. Keep an eye on this "conservative voice for rural Texas".

Back from shopping with Rick Green, TK smiles at legal immigrants while keeping one eye trained on a suspicious-looking solar panel.