Jeff's Blog: Drought Heats Water Debate

It's hot -- scorched hot.

This 10-day or so streak of 100+ temps is sure to turn up the heat on water policy. It should. We?re now arguably in one of the two or three worst droughts since records started being kept around here about the time of the Civil War.

The lack of rain would be bad enough in a normal summer. With a string of record-setting highs this June the effect is magnified.

Just a few weeks ago, late spring showers greened pastures enough that my brother, visiting home from Santa Fe, wondered aloud at how good things looked. But those rains were light and superficial, topsoil deep, window dressing on a drought that dates back to the summer and fall of 2007.

The scorching heat wave of the last week is a brutal, browning reminder that we remain in the grip of an exceptional weather pattern straining our wits and our resources. It will take sustained, heavy rains to break this drought. Unfortunately, the U.S. Drought Monitor indicates current conditions will persist -- or intensify -- at least into August.

We may find ourselves in the precarious predicament of praying for a hurricane. In the meantime, the wisdom (or folly) of our public policy will make things marginally better or worse.

Drought and flood seem to be the twin cycles of our existence here, especially of late.
As recently as June, 2007, we were amazed by record rainfall. Marble Falls flooded that month under 19 inches in a more-or-less single downpour. Austin set a record for rain in the first six months of the year. All that rain ended what had been the drought of 06-07.

Since then, nothing.

Oh, not absolutely nothing, not really. But not nearly enough.

The year 2007 will stand as a testament to how misleading averages can be. Way too dry over the winter, then way too much rain at once in the late spring and summer, then hardly any in the second half of the year. The result was an annual total that will look okay on the ?average rainfall? charts. In reality, though, it was a year of extremes and devastation.

The drought of late '07 only worsened in 2008. San Antonio received a mere 13.8 inches, just 42 percent of normal. Austin got just 16 inches for the year.

This year the heavy thunderstorms that often replenish our creeks, lakes and aquifers passed by Central Texas, leading to widespread comparisons to the epic drought of the mid-1950s.

That drought has been evoked in books and movies. It seared a generation of Texans, including my grandparents and parents.

Both sets of grandparents were farmers or ranchers; one grandfather worked for a time as a soil conservation specialist. I live today on the remnants of a seventh-generation family farm inherited from him. That drought, like the winter of 1930, was a subject of family lore, a tale to scare and impress the young, a monster sure to come again but always hoped against.

Now here it is.

Or worse. Mark Rose, a TV weatherman and a climatologist at LCRA, has begun comparing conditions in Central Texas to the drought of 1917-18, a drought I've heard no stories of but which the records indicate was worse than the 1950s.

We are a different place, of course, a different state and a different county since then. We rely much less on agriculture. We have electric fans and air conditioning, deeper wells, better water systems.

We also have vastly more throats to quench.

The most recent census in those days was that of 1910. It showed no Texas city with even a hundred thousand souls. Largest was San Antonio with 96,614. Austin had less than 50,000 people. Our county was about 15,000 total -- and not growing much.

Hays County today is considerably larger than Austin and San Antonio combined in 1910. We are in the middle of a region of some four million people.

That's a lot of showers on a humid, 100-degree day, a lot of ice cubes. My dad, who is 79, says this is the worst he's seen the Blanco River. I grew up swimming in the San Marcos. I've seen it crazy high and awfully low; I don't remember seeing it worse.

To keep wells flowing, to keep our rivers alive, will take some measure of luck, I suppose. But then I also believe that luck is one of those things that is at least partially man-made.

All of us have a part to play in reducing consumption -- controlling leaks, planting native, paying attention to pools and water heaters, even how we shave and bathe.

It's also a good time to redouble on-going efforts to diversify our water resources. Some water co-ops and cities in Hays County have already shifted the bulk of their water use away from local ground water to alternate sources, piping in water from lakes, engineering plans for water delivery from aquifers outside the county, aquifers with an excess of supply.

At the county, we're doing a good bit and need to do more. We have rules in place that promote rainwater harvesting, but the incentives aren't strong enough in my opinion. I can say that, since I helped put the first incentives in place more than a decade ago. Our rules then were a model for the region and the state. Today, we know more; we can do more; we have (a few) more tools given to us by the Legislature. Commissioner Karen Ford and a group of staff are working to develop more inviting incentives for the use of rainwater.

Soon we will also adopt new land use and subdivision regulations for the county. Our new rules have been crafted with water in mind.

Over the next few weeks there will be continued debated over what the precise matrix of rules should look like -- where to use a carrot, where to use a stick, exactly what lot sizes should be allowed in 'rural' areas dependent on wells and septic tanks. Those details are important, crucially important in fact, but we shouldn't let a healthy debate on the details obscure this larger truth: no matter how they're fine-tuned in the coming days our rules are almost sure to be of a landmark nature, pushing the limits of what counties can do in Texas, trying hard to prepare us for the growth that is to come.

It's a fine line to walk. First, because the Texas Legislature still has not given Texas counties the same tools enjoyed by many other urban states. We have no zoning controls, even in densely packed neighborhoods.

But crafting the right solution is also difficult because the details of what makes good land use regulation, or bad, is often nuanced and even conflicting, especially when using an outdated patchwork of authority. For instance, some people believe the best thing we could do is raise the minimum lot size in the county to a very high level -- to nine, or 15, or even 20-plus acres. Larger lots, they reason, would mean more spacing between houses, fewer people, less water demand.

The advice is well intended, I'm sure of that, but I believe large lot requirements alone are a blunt instrument doing more harm than good. Demographers tell us we have tens of thousands of newcomers headed our way from other parts of the country.

A simple requirement for large lots, without considering a host of other equations, promotes suburban sprawl. Large manicured lawns use more water. It's difficult-to-impossible to make collective sewer and water systems work economically with large lots, increasing dependence on wells; that in turn makes it harder to import reliable sources of water from outside the county. Commuter rail and even bus service are hardly feasible with endless miles of large-lot sprawl. The prairie and the Hill Country are chopped. And home prices skyrocket, changing who can choose to live in Hays County.

We need a sustainable way to grow. For me, that means finding balance.

I've looked deeply at the science and I'm convinced that in parts of the county we do need to change the lot size equation. But we must talk about AVERAGE lot sizes, encouraging -- at least allowing -- developers to cluster homes together in ways that make better sense for both the environment and the construction (as well as the long term maintenance) of infrastructure.

We need rules that put incentives in the right place, opening markets for creative solutions and helping reward developers who do right by our community, encouraging open space and park land, native plantings, and engineering that goes beyond what the law can require to preserve our water and our natural heritage.

For the most part, our new rules are a step in the right direction. Here and there I have fought to limit well-intended but poorly-considered sections that I think likely to provoke unintended consequences. I'm worried about how lengthy and complex the proposal has become.

But overall, these rules are appropriate for what we're becoming: a big, complex county. We're likely to increase average lot size requirements over the Trinity Aquifer system, where we have serious supply and water availability concerns. We're likely to keep and even improve tough standards to protect water quality over the highly sensitive Edwards recharge areas and other environmental jewels.

We'll allow smaller lot sizes -- though usually not all-that-small by city standards -- in areas where there are no imminent threats to water supply or other critical environmental features. We're tightening septic standards and erosion controls. I'm pushing for us to foster 'context sensitive design' to encourage roads and land use that will be bike and pedestrian friendly, where that makes sense, or allow more rustic roads where lots are planned as ranchettes. And we're doing what we can to make sure that development pays for itself as we grow, so that current taxpayers aren't stuck with the bill.

The trick, in my mind, is to realize that no one solution will fit every circumstance. We need clusters of density, affordable housing, economic engines. At the same time, there are parts of the county I hope will remain relatively untouched.

To make it all work in the midst of so much change, in the middle of a drought, in a time of record temperatures, will require that we sweat the small stuff, sweat the details. But just as important for we five on the Commissioners Court, as we sweat the details, as we cook up solutions and compromise, we will have to find a way to feel the heat and the urgency while keeping our political cool.

Meanwhile, though my grandfather is long since gone now, if he comes to me in a dream, I'll ask him to put in a word for rain.

[A link to the proposed rules is located here: http://www.co.hays.tx.us/LinkClick.aspx'fileticket=QlfAa5Xv0s4%3d&tabid=154&mid=579]