B and B

Hill Country Planning Association, aka "Hill Country Militia," rises up against developers' land-trashing

For a little story on the animosity that real estate developers are engendering in our neck of the woods due to the way they manage to transform bucolic hill country vistas into moonscapes of destruction, see this recent article in the San Antonio Current by Greg Harmon of harmon on earth (emphasis added):

[In early 2007] Reports that the San Antonio Water System was seeking to expand its authority across the city’s entire 5-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction, and that a new high-density development straddling Medina and Bandera counties was seeking SAWS sewer and water service, had rattled a broader geography of turf warriors. Many of them were already members of the non-profit Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, whose mission is specifically focused on protecting the Edwards Aquifer.

In a galleon of a ranch house outside Helotes modeled on Yellowstone National Park’s guest quarters, they debated just what they could do to stop the quickening pace of sprawling development. While SAWS officials argued that extending their pipes would better protect area water supplies by limiting the creation of smaller, less-professional water-company operations or, worse, the explosion of septic-tank communities, the consensus in the meeting was that the lines would only ensure the continued rush of concrete, sheet rock, and tarpaper.

The mix of political persuasions was bridged by a collective, dawning environmental consciousness, perhaps best illustrated by the retired neurosurgeon from Quihi, busy battling plans for a quarry in his hamlet.

“I never considered myself an environmentalist. I really didn’t,” said Robert Fitzgerald. “But once you start looking at what people are doing down there, if you have any feeling at all, you become an environmentalist.”

A member of the Edwards Aquifer Authority publicly confessed the agency hadn’t been willing to act on many issues out of fear. “It’s fear of what the legislature will do. Really, it’s fear of what the developers will get the lege to do to us,” he said. “Some think it’s time we called their bluff.”

Then Bebe [Fenstermaker] shot off from the front of the room. “We’re losing Texas. I don’t know if you know that,” she said. “I can’t stand to drive anywhere anymore … We look like New Jersey.”

A woman at the opposite end of the stone and timber expanse shook her jaw. “New Jersey looks better.”

Some attendees compared the motivation behind the night’s meeting to the survival ethic of the early Texians. “We’re kind of like the pioneers 200 years ago,” said one. “When there was a fight, they all left their homes and came together.”

No surprise that in such a charged environment when prospective names for the group were floated the combativeness of the moment seeped out. “How about militia?” offered one. “Hill Country Militia?”

It took time, but eventually the more mundane Hill County Planning Association was adopted.

Early versions of the group’s Master Plan struck one prominent participant as a rewrite of the Communist Manifesto, though it read more like an early American Revolutionary screed. A trace of those rhetorical flourishes remains, particularly the opening “We the People.”

After lengthy defining of place and purpose, the group’s Master Plan comes to a solitary demand: “An immediate moratorium is called on all development in The Hill Country to assure compliance with all local, State, and Federal laws and until a comprehensive cumulative environmental impact study is completed.”

...

Group members were still working out the final language of the Master Plan when developers at Sonoma Verde were blasting and excavating their way to the perfect limestone tabula rasa, a blank slate devoid of any living thing, atop that cherished Edwards recharge zone.

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Today the [Fenstermaker] sisters watch as Post Oak Development blasts a hill flat on the backside of Crownridge Canyon Natural Area off Kyle Seal Parkway. It’s like nothing they’ve ever seen before.

“This is like West Virginia coal mining,” Mary Fenstermaker says.

“We’ve seen land raped, but we’ve never seen that,” Bebe says. “I’ve never seen Texas treated like that.”

For much more, read the entire article.

Mayor Hardberger and SAWS take a stand against rampant development over the Edwards Aquifer

San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger and the board of the San Antonio Water System took a stand against the rampant development of the Hill Country landscape earlier this week.  This is a decision that deserves wider recognition.

From the Express-News, Dec 5:

Taking a rare stand against a developer to protect a pristine watershed that drains into the Edwards Aquifer, trustees of the San Antonio Water System unanimously rejected an agreement Tuesday to provide water to a planned subdivision in the remote hills northwest of the city.

Baruch Properties wanted water for the Hills of Castle Rock, a 1,766-acre property near Texas 16 and Park Road 37 in Medina County. The nearest SAWS water main is 7.5 miles away.

Environmentalists and neighbors argued that SAWS water service would allow high-density development that otherwise is not likely to occur because of a lack of available water supplies.

High-density development, they said, would bring polluted runoff and downstream flooding to San Geronimo Creek and an on-site wastewater treatment plant whose effluent would be added to the creek that drains into the aquifer a few miles downstream.

“Density development in a sensitive zone simply is not a good thing for the citizens of San Antonio, for our city, for our neighbors or for our water,” said Mayor Phil Hardberger in explaining his motion to deny the request.

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Hardberger said he recognized that to get a SAWS water main to the site, the developer made concessions such as scaling back from 3,500 homes to 2,700, but he said the city's policy should not be to diminish the harm but to do good.

He said the city's “irreversible mistakes” in planning over the aquifer's sensitive areas are on display by driving out Loop 1604 North and U.S. 281.

Later in the article, the developer suggests they can simply go the state agency (TCEQ) and leave San Antonio and SAWS out of the process entirely.  Given how the state government works, they would be likely to get their way via that route, so I am unsure how this battle is going to work out.

But I am happy to see that the city government of San Antonio is in no mood to encourage  destructive development of the Hill Country and the Edwards Aquifer.

Helotes much fire now history, but its impact remains

Three months after it began, back on Christmas day last year, the Great Helotes Mulch Fire has finally entered the history books.  The several inches of rain we've had in the last few days probably didn't hurt.  I believe March has been the rainiest month in south Texas since November 2004.  Mother Nature decided to end the debate about whether to use water on the mulch fire once and for all.

Now comes the cleanup:

Helotes Mayor Jon Allan, whose repeated squawking about the smoky blaze led the state to act, said the air is clearer but the situation is not resolved.

"The smoke and ash are gone and the air quality has gone way up, but let's face it, it still smells bad in some areas because it's like a wet ashtray," Allan said. "It's not that it's a health hazard. It just smells bad. We need to get the rest of the stuff moved off there so we don't have a problem again."

Steve Clouse, vice president of production and treatment operations for the San Antonio Water System, also said he's relieved the fire is out but that the project's not over until the site is cleaned up.

After seven aquifer wells were contaminated with firefighting runoff, Clouse is concerned about the continuing potential for pollution of the region's primary water source.

"The fire may be out, but until they remediate the site the threat to the wells in that area remains," Clouse said.

Meanwhile, Roddy Stinson of the Express-News lets us know about smaller, but still large, mulch piles--"Sons of Mulchie"--scattered throughout the area.  Fortunately, he reports, none appear to be directly in the Edwards aquifer recharge zone.

TCEQ's latest actions on Helotes mulch fire risk major water pollution

This can't be good:

HELOTES — State environmental officials late Saturday ordered the debris fire near here doused with water to stanch air pollution from the smoldering months-old headache, saying the emergency conditions of befouled air no longer were binding them to an agreement with local officials not to use water.

This came even as a massive crane arrived and was being employed at the site with last-ditch and, for the moment, dashed hopes it would remove the need for putting water on the fire.

...

Water from the site has been leaching into the groundwater and alarming San Antonio Water System officials, who see it as a major water pollution danger.

Top officials from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said in interviews Saturday that their move to vacate the agreement with SAWS to avoid spraying the fire came amid a 25-day period in which air pollution levels exceeded safety levels for children and the elderly on 23 of those days.

"The air is not improving, and we have people in the Helotes area that are suffering," said John Steib, a top TCEQ enforcement official who was at the scene Saturday. Therefore, "We are not operating under terms of the agreement."

Given the contamination of nearby wells even with the limited amounts of water used so far, if the Edwards aquifer emerges from this intact, it will just be a matter of luck.  Of course, the air pollution around Helotes is also a travesty.  But we should not compound one big problem with another, even bigger one.

Then again, Helotes mayor Jon Allen, now a strong advocate for dousing the fire with water, may have the consummate, if debatable, words on how this will be resolved:

“You have a choice whether to drink the water in the aquifer. You don't have a choice to breathe the air.”

Helotes mulch fire still burning, giving nearby water a "fishy odor"

Here's the latest on the Helotes mulch fire from the Express-News, as of yesterday:

As fire-related contamination was found in more Edwards Aquifer wells around the Helotes debris pile Monday, a state official said firefighters have extinguished about 90 percent of the fire, but it could be slower going on the part that remains because much of it is below the surface.

Contamination was found in two more wells, bringing to five the number showing fire-related residues, Steve Clouse, vice president of production and treatment operations for the San Antonio Water System, said Monday.

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The latest spate of contaminations began showing up Sunday — three days after water was last used on the pile because of high winds, Clouse said.

"This water smells different than what we had before," he said. "It's a little browner in color. It's clearly impacted by the fire, but it's got more of a fishy odor."

"Browner in color," and "more of a fishy odor"?  I hate to think what our aquifer water would look like if the original, high water usage, fire-fighting plan had been allowed to proceed.

End within sight for the Helotes mulch fire?

As the end of the Great Helotes Mulch Fire finally appears within sight, with the latest, low water, fire-fighting efforts apparently on track to extinguishing the two-month old blaze in the next few weeks, the giant smoking brush pile has gone national—making the Washington Post, page A02:

HELOTES, Tex. -- The smoke comes and goes with the breeze, but some days it blankets Deanna Rodriguez's neighborhood, covering cars in grimy ash and seeping inside homes. Some days, when the wind blows from the south, her house becomes almost uninhabitable.

"We can get the rugs cleaned, the furniture cleaned. My main concern is the kids," she said of her three children. "They're breathing that in."

Rodriguez's neighborhood sits only a few hundred yards from a giant mulch fire that has burned, day and night, in a pasture in this small town west of San Antonio since just after Christmas.

No one knows what caused the fire at the H.L. Zumwalt Tree Disposal's recycling facility eight weeks ago. But, the result is a smoldering pile of ash eight stories tall and hundreds of feet long that gives healthy adults and children headaches, irritated eyes, sore throats and other allergy-like symptoms, and threatens the frail even more.

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Officials predict it will take at least three more weeks to extinguish the fire. Progress has been slow because the environmental officials in charge of putting out the fire have had to balance air-quality concerns in Helotes with protecting the sole water source for 1.8 million people in the region.

The Dallas Morning-News also has a column on it, with a concise quote from Helotes Mayor Jon Allen:

"You know, this isn't just an isolated incident. It's a symptom. We're just not doing a very good job protecting the environment in Texas."

As columnist Jacquilynn Floyd wrote, "the only really good solution would have been to keep it from happening in the first place, and that horse left the barn a long time ago."

Finally, for any who may have missed it, last Thursday the San Antonio Express-News posted a spectacular photo essay on the Helotes mulch fire. Go to this link, scroll down, and click on the "E-N slide show: The Helotes fire" link. I heartily recommend it.

Mulch fire water standoff resolved

After nearly coming to blows over how to extinguish the Helotes much fire, local officials finally appear to have convinced the state environmental agency, TCEQ, that they need to be extraordinarily careful with their use of water.

From Friday's Express-News:

A compromise was reached Friday on fighting the Helotes mulch fire that allows state contractors to use San Antonio Water System water on the pile on a test basis, with state officials agreeing to abandon that approach if contamination shows up during extensive monitoring of surrounding wells.

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The SAWS [San Antonio Water System] board voted 6-0 to rescind its earlier decision to deny water to the site. Earlier firefighting efforts had contaminated wells more than a half-mile away in the Edwards Aquifer, the water source for 1.7 million people in the region.

"We want to reiterate that our position on this issue is to preserve the quality of our water supply and the protection of our aquifer," said SAWS board Chairman Alex Briseño. "The assurances agreed to by the executive director of TCEQ show that they have received our message loud and clear. TCEQ underestimated this community's love and commitment for the Edwards Aquifer."

The revised plan, which could be put in place as soon as both Shankle and Briseño sign a contract, calls for several million gallons of water to be put into the clay-lined quenching pit that's been constructed next to the huge burning pile.

If it hasn't leaked after 24 hours, then SAWS will provide up to 300,000 gallons a day for three days for firefighting efforts on the debris pile to cool equipment and its operators and to keep down smoke and ash. They'll move burning debris into the quenching pit.

After the third day, operations will cease for two days while the state agency and the Edwards Aquifer Authority continue sampling up to 31 wells around the pile twice a day, watching for evidence of contamination. If none is found, firefighting operations can resume.

"If any degradation to a water well is detected, all use of water in the site will cease immediately and they will actively pursue a new plan that does not include use of water directly on the pile," Steve Clouse, SAWS vice president of production and treatment operations, told the board.

It's quite amazing that it took so long for TCEQ to agree to a cautious approach such as this, especially given the well contamination discovered a few weeks ago after the initial fire-fighting efforts.  Late last week, Dig Deeper Texas pointed to an Express-News editorial that may partially explain this, as TCEQ officials reportedly were unaware that there are no treatment plants for Edwards aquifer water.  That such  plants are not necessary is one reason why the aquifer is so valuable.  Even with its chronic lack of funding, TCEQ has no excuse not to know such basic facts about their state.

Helotes mulch fire update

Google has my earlier post on the Helotes mulch fire coming up on top for searches for "Helotes mulch fire," which has driven up my blog's normally slow traffic by a sizeable fraction. Given this reponsibility, I feel I should provide an update.  (For a full rundown of this six-week old story, see the collection of news links compiled by Dig Deeper Texas.)

I actually saw the scene first-hand last weekend while driving down to Government Canyon State Park for an afternoon hike. White smoke poured out of the expansive pile to the extent that, from a distance, I wondered if the pile had been encased in a light-colored tarp. A portable road sign flashed notice of a town hall meeting for last Monday.  The pile itself looked significantly smaller than I remembered—perhaps due to the aborted fire-fighting work last month.

The fire continues to smolder while officials debate: unhealthy air pollution for a relatively small area for a few months versus water pollution for a large area for an indefinite period.

The San Antonio Water System weighed those choices and decided in favor of the air pollution, as the Express-News reported yesterday:

On Tuesday, citing environmental concerns, the San Antonio Water System said it would not allow its water to be used to fight the fire. They're concerned runoff will pollute the Edwards Aquifer.

Today, the Express-News reports that SAWS will even go to court to prevent anyone else from supplying water to fight the fire.

Officials with SAWS, as well as the Edwards Aquifer Authority, are trying to get the state agency [TCEQ, Texas Council on Environmental Quaility] to consider methods to extinguish the fire that wouldn't involve putting large amounts of water on the pile, which sits atop the aquifer's recharge zone.

As usual, Carlos Guerra has the best round-up. From yesterday's column:

The danger warnings came early. Dumping 4.1 million gallons on the mound over four days [in January] was enough to foul two wells more than a half-mile away with smoky residue — and firefighting efforts halted.

A new strategy — to haul burning wood into clay lined ponds for dousing — was adopted. But it also required hosing down the equipment taking material from the burning pile with about 300,000 gallons of water a day. And some of it would flow into the aquifer.

The choice was clear, said SAWS chairman Alex Briseño: "We know for a fact that contamination is happening; it doesn't make sense to continue putting water there. We can't afford to have this contaminated water go into our facilities. To fix that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars."

SAWS has no drinking water treatment plants or a centralized water-distribution system.

Instead, it has several systems that draw Edwards water that until now has exceeded federal drinking water standards.

Of six SAWS wells eight miles downstream from the fire, one pumping station produces 117 million gallons of water a day. If they are compromised, said Steve Clouse of SAWS, the consequences would be drastic.

"If our largest system in that area, the Wurzbach pumping station, were affected, the impacts are very significant, to include the city of Helotes and the Medical Center."

Guerra concludes with a quote from the Edwards Aquifer Authority's Robert Potts: "The only way to win in this type of situation is with good planning and by avoiding these things before they happen. I am hopeful that the silver lining in this dark cloud will be that people realize that what happens over the recharge zone will directly and immediately impact our drinking water."

Will our state legislature wake up and finally give counties and the TCEQ the power to regulate land use before something like this happens somewhere else in the state?

Root causes of the "Great Helotes Mulch Fire"

Express-News columnist Carlos Guerra has another compelling column out -- this one on the fiasco surrounding the now infamous mulch fire near Helotes, a small town on the outskirts of San Antonio's sprawl. 

For those who haven't heard, around Christmas, a humongous pile of mulch, three stories high and hundreds of feet long, mysteriously caught fire.  With enough fuel to keep burning for a year, it smoldered for a couple weeks before any serious action was taken against it.  Then, complaints about the deteriorating air quality broke through to the press and local governments.  Now, a professional outfit is trying to douse the smoke.

But even now, how and when this story will end is far from clear.  This overly huge pile of compost, apparently a fire waiting to happen despite earlier assurances from a fire inspector, lies right on top of the recharge zone for the Edwards aquifer.  Now, attempts to suppress the acrid smoke are immensely complicated over concern about contaminating the primary water supply for the entire city of San Antonio. 

Guerra writes:

"I don't think this is an isolated case," [Helotes Mayor Jon] Allan says. "It's just a very big one. And it's a symptom of what is wrong with how the state regulates and enforces its environmental protections."

He has a point. It isn't as if no one foresaw that the brush pile now ablaze had been growing since 1981, or that it might turn into the environmental disaster it is today — and may continue to be for months.

Helotes officials, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Bexar County fire marshal received complaints about the pile regularly.

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"Legislators need to look a little more carefully at how Texans are being protected," Allan said, because environmental disasters of this magnitude are possible in many other places.

"We're not going to let that thing burn for a year; that's not acceptable," Allan added. "But we need to work very hard now to bring in the brightest people to figure out what will work here."

Annalisa Peace is executive director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, a coalition of local 30 groups that wants stronger aquifer protections. Inadequate environmental protections in Texas, she says, are no accident.

"In Texas, the ability of local governments — cities, counties and groundwater districts — to enact and enforce effective regulations and protections is severely curtailed," Peace says. "Why? Because those who stand to benefit financially from the lack of regulation have way too much influence at the state level."

Gosh, maybe our lawmakers should be made aware of this.

The giant mulch pile, even before it burst into flames, has to be seen to be believed.  It is near the road we use to drive down to Government Canyon State Natural Area, so I've been driving by it for years, wondering what in the world such a towering pile of debris was doing there. 

Mayor Allen, you may remember, was first elected during the Wal-Mart fight in Helotes in 2005 as the leader of the opposition drive.  Now, he has a new battle on his hands.

Texas water war? The renewed fight over the Edwards aquifer

A water fight is brewing over the Edwards Aquifer. More accurately, this fight has been brewing for many years, but is set to flare up in this legislative session. The San Antonio Express News' Carlos Guerra has written a series of excellent columns on this over the last couple weeks.

January 4: Latest aquifer pumping skirmish could lead to a major water war

January 5: Worrying about water shortage while threatening source is absurd

January 10: Would setting higher pumping cap on Edwards hurt conservation?

This series is inspired by a proposal by GOP state Senator Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio to officially raise the cap on the amount of water that can be pumped out of the Edwards aquifer by "a whopping" 22%, making it consistent with the amount of pumping permits that the Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA) was required to issue based on historical use. The EAA accounted for the difference between the cap and the actual amount of pumping permitted by declaring some of the permits "junior" to the others and requiring those pumping rights to be suspended during times of shortage. Apparently, an Attorney General's opinion earlier this week may invalidate this two-tiered system of permits.

The cap is set where it is for a good reason -- because pumping more water lowers the level of the Edwards below the point where several prodigious springs in central Texas, such as San Marcos springs, flow significantly. This results in a shortage of water downstream. So while we hear a lot about how drying up the springs will hurt certain endangered species and harm ecosystems along the rivers, what this really boils down to is a fight with San Antonio Water System (SAWS) and Hill Country real estate developers on one side and downstream users on the other side.

Guerra quotes Dianne Wassenich of the San Marcos River Foundation in the January 5 article:

Yes, this water is very important to us in Central Texas who use it as groundwater. But it is also very important to cities that have springs and rivers that flow through them, and to communities and ranchers all the way down to the coast. And at the coast, you have wildlife, ecotourism and the fishing industry.

Guerra also notes that the massive development boom on the land which feeds the Edwards aquifer is threatening the quality of this water in dispute.

"It's crazy," Wassenich says. "Here we are, destroying the very recharge zone through which water of good quality, in good quantity, is flowing into the aquifer. "We're destroying that very capability while we're worrying about not having enough water. It just doesn't make any sense."

For more background, see my 2005 post on Edwards aquifer politics and Gregg Eckhardt's comprehensive edwardsaquifer.net website. Also, for more on Texas water development issues in general, see Texas Water Matters.