By Kayleen Holder
It was inaccurately stated to us that most cities had agreed at least verbally to join the Medina County Regional Water Alliance in previous weeks. We wanted to note that the City of Devine, Lytle, LaCoste, nor Natalia had joined as of last week. Devine and LaCoste was set to discuss it again at their next meeting. Natalia has no plans to join at this time.
City of Devine Administrator David Jordan has attended several meetings so far in order to bring as much information as possible back to council.
“The idea is there’s strength in numbers, but there are still a whole lot of unknowns,” Administrator Jordan said. “We want to get a better understanding of it before making a commitment. We don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We need to know what we are committing to financially as well. We have been told that the City of Devine would be responsible for something like 6.9% of whatever the total cost is, but they haven’t been able to give me a number.”
Scooter Mangold from Yancey Water was set to come to the Devine City Council meeting tonight Tuesday, July 16 (which was press night for us) to answer questions council has.
Other cities are discussing the matter as well.
If you recall, utility companies including East Medina Water, Yancey Water, and Atascosa Rural Water Supply Corp. have joined together forming the Medina County Regional Water Alliance, and hope to join forces with local cities as well.
Medina County is growing by leaps and bounds, and water security is a concern.
In a previous interview, East Medina Special Utility District Superintendent Bruce Alexander who is helping spearhead the Alliance, talked about Medina County’s pressing need for water rights. In fact, local water districts like East Medina have already found themselves needing to acquire more water rights.
“The district leased an additional 300 acre-feet of unrestricted water rights in 2023 to meet system demands. In 2024, we estimate the need to lease up to 600 acre-feet of water rights to meet the increased system demands,” Alexander said in an interview this July.
The Medina County Commissioner’s Court agreed to kick in $92,000 to support the alliance’s initial budget at a meeting July 16.
“Often times the larger utilities have the advantage as smaller systems lack the financial resources to act fast when water rights become available for purchase,” Alexander said.
The projected benefits of the MCRWA will not appear overnight, he adds. Alexander estimates it could take several years to fully fund and construct the infrastructure needed to get the proposed ASR system up and running.
“In hindsight, we probably should have started this years ago,” Alexander said.
He plans to go after state funding available to alliances like the newly created one in Medina County.
Action was taken during the last legislative session to seek voter approval to set aside $1 billion to fund water projects with $250 million, specifically for new water resources like an ASR he explained.
“The current funding opportunity through the Texas Water Development Board combined with our increased growth rates has pushed this issue to the front of the line for East Medina County SUD and Yancey WSC as we work to secure an alternative water source for the current and future residents of Medina County.”
“Each member of the MCRWA would continue to manage the ownership of their individual water rights,” Alexander said. “One vision for the MCRWA is for it to be in a position to gather together any surplus water rights from member systems for storage and future use and to collectively purchase additional water rights that can then be leased to member systems as needed to meet their system demands during critical period reductions of withdrawals from the Edwards Aquifer.
“Twenty years ago I stressed the need for each water system to own or have direct access to a minimum of 25% more water rights than your anticipated annual demand to be able to meet critical period reductions. Today my recommendation is to have up to 40% more than is needed to ensure that all public water system demands are met during increased critical period reductions based on the level of the aquifer and increasing system demands as a result of development and commercial growth in Medina County,” Alexander adds.
East Medina has already taken some measures to protect the water supply from the surge of incoming developments.
“The district requires all subdivisions and commercial developments subject to our rules for service to provide transferable Edwards Aquifer unrestricted water rights to the district to meet the demands of the development. Our rules currently require the developer to provide ½ acre feet of water rights for each lot or additional water rights based on their estimated water demands for commercial accounts. In 2023 the district modified this policy to require transferable water rights for any development of four (4) or more lots as a condition of getting water service from the district. Rural water systems are not required to provide service to a development that does not meet the requirements for service as long as the system publishes a notice using specific language and informs developers of the their rules for service,” Alexander said.
Several systems have had this requirement in place for many years.