WIMBERLEY, Texas (KXAN) — At a joint meeting Friday, conservation agencies shared their plan to act against water utility company Aqua Texas for allegedly failing to comply with local conservation guidelines.
The Watershed Association and Trinity Edwards Springs Protection Association held a community meeting to present data they say proves that Aqua Texas excessively pumped groundwater from local sources including Jacob’s Well in recent years.
“They agreed to those curtailments but then they they ignored them and violated those rules,” David Baker, executive director of the Watershed Association said.
Baker said Aqua Texas originally agreed to guidelines, especially those detailing what to do during times of drought, laid out by the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District.
Aqua Texas has filed a lawsuit against the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District for violation notices issued in 2022, requiring the company to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Conservation advocates prepare to go to state utility leaders
At the meeting President of TESPA Jim Blackburn said his agency is preparing to file a complaint with the Public Utility Council of Texas about Aqua Texas’s alleged overpumping.
He said the agency, with help from environmental lawyers, plan to call the company’s Certificate of Convenience and Necessity (CCN) into question.
According to the PUCT’s website, a CCN grants “the exclusive right to provide retail water or sewer utility service to an identified geographic area.”
Blackburn said this complaint has the potential to usher in precedent-setting rules in Texas. He, and lawyers that presented at Friday’s meeting, called on state leaders to give local water districts the authority to regulate companies like Aqua Texas.
Aqua Texas responds to conservationist’s concerns
We reached out to Aqua Texas for a comment about Friday night’s meeting. They issued a statement detailing its goals to improve the local water infrastructure and claiming it was being treated unfairly by the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District.
“Aqua Texas is pouring nearly $30 million into improving our Wimberley Valley water infrastructure – an investment that will bring a new era of water conservation and reuse in the Hill Country and meet the growing challenges of a changing climate and frequent droughts in the area. The upgrades include construction of a new $25 million water treatment and reuse plant, the replacement of 25,000 feet of aging water mains, and the establishment of new groundwater wells that will reduce pumping in the Jacob’s Well Groundwater Management Zone.
Our customers represent 13% of the population that lives within the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District and water is only pumped in response to their consumption needs. We aggressively enforce any drought restrictions put in place by the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District by installing flow restrictors on the water meters of homes that do not comply. As a result, on average, our customers in the Wimberley Valley use less than half as much water per month as compared to homes in other parts of Texas.
Unfortunately, our efforts to pump farther away from Jacob’s Well have been purposefully blocked by the same local regulators publicly expressing concern about the natural spring’s water levels. Additionally, some of the mechanisms needed to pay for these upgrades face opposition from the same groups blaming our operations for perennial drought conditions seen at Jacob’s Well.
Aqua Texas faces illegal fines from the district. The fines both exceed their statutory limit and fail to treat Aqua Texas equally with the other pumping violators whose fines were forgiven. We are therefore challenging the district’s actions in federal court. While we have every reason to believe the U.S. District Court will rule in our favor, we have agreed with the district to pause our lawsuit for a short period to try to resolve these disputes and avoid the costs of a protracted legal battle on both sides.
Statement from Aqua Texas