San Antonio City Council members are facing a low-to-no win situation with Guajalote Ranch. Lennar's proposed 2,900-home development on the edge of Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone in Northwest Bexar County threatens to contribute to ongoing contamination of the primary drinking water source of more than a million area residents. SAWS officials say they've brokered a deal with the developer that eliminates that threat for the city's water supply, but maybe not for water wells closer to the project site. Ron Green, a retired Southwest Research Institute researcher and author of two recent books about the Edwards Aquifer, blasted that assessment in a 22-page technical letter.
Deceleration will drill into that debate in the near future. But it's important to highlight now how Green challenges SAWS CEO Robert Puente on fundamental interpretations of the data. This includes statements he attributed to Puente about how any bacteria discharged in the permitted million gallons per day allowed by TCEQ permit would "naturally attenuate" before reaching city-operated water wells.
"At a groundwater velocity of one mile per day, effluent discharged at Guajolote Ranch could reach the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone in less than a week and the Tippecanoe SAWS well in two weeks," Green writes. "This is insufficient time for pathogens to attenuate to sufficiently low concentrations to be benign."
Council's options are limited. And none will make the project—or its threats to local water—go away. Just a few days ago the nonprofit Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance filed a lawsuit to force the TCEQ to reconsider their permit for the project's proposed wastewater treatment plant.
SAWS Board of Trustees struck a deal to supply water to Guajolote Ranch in 2022. Speaking with Deceleration last week, former SAWS trustee Amy Hardberger, today a water law professor and director of the Center for Water Law and Policy at Texas Tech University, said the board made the best deal they could at the time.
This tracks with the assessment of former San Antonio Mayor and fellow former SAWS board member Ron Nirenberg, who said at the time of the vote, “I think for a lot of reasons, of all the nonattractive options that we have been working on with the developer to achieve this, it’s been good work."
To help us prepare our first Water & Power newsletter where we hope to track major struggles the in energy and water sectors, Deceleration reached out to Hardberger to discuss Guajolote. But we also wanted to get her assessment of larger failures at play threatening the water future in Texas. One stark message she shares here is about the ramifications of the political decisions made to curtail the ability of rural governments to control growth.
Texas cities have powers that allow them to guide growth, outside city boundaries those powers over land use decisions largely evaporate, even for county governments. That's life in a "low regulation" state.
Hardberger said that decision is coming back to bite rural residents who may have supported those limits in the past but are increasingly shocked by water- and power-hungry data centers, for example, showing up on their doorsteps—and the limited powers they have with which to resist.
As she told us:
"What we're learning is somebody minding the ship, having an overall plan, even if that plan is guided by local communities, is important. Otherwise you're very, very vulnerable."
This is a limited discussion edited for length and clarity. We look forward to a more robust dialogue in the future.
Q&A with Amy Hardberger
Greg Harman: I've written a lot about power, but I haven't written as much about water. Over the last year or so I have been writing more about the Guajolote Ranch fight. But as I start this new effort, I’m seeking to better understand the state of water in the state of Texas. I hear the horror stories, but also I continue to seek context, to understand how some of these decisions are allowed to continue. I’m hoping to get a better grasp of our regulatory environment, elected leadership, public involvement, all these factors—these really root issues—and their result. So I have been looking forward to speaking with you about Guajolote Ranch.
Amy Hardberger: There's an interesting side issue of environmental justice. It’s like: These things happen all the time. They just don't always happen with people that have enough money and education and time. [to fight them] But when you get out into these kind of suburban retirement communities that have a certain socioeconomic [status] all of a sudden you see a different response. In many ways, it gives us an opportunity to talk about the larger issues. Because whenever people talk about Guajolote I'm like, ‘You think that's only happening there?’ This is a symptom of a much bigger problem that we are not addressing. Is the [issue] only effluent? Or is it really that they don't want however many thousand people living there? That has its own environmental impact.
I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make, or even in our law, the way it's structured, is that we look at these things independent [of one another]. Really this is about unchecked growth, lack of authority, who has approval power for these things.
In each of these giant developments there are environmental impacts. It just happens that in this one it's effluent. Which, of course, I am concerned about. But just because there isn't effluent going into the creek doesn't mean that these other developments out [Highway] 151 down south aren't really going to put San Antonio ratepayers at risk. They will, just in a different way.
Growth is the issue. And the risks manifest in different ways in different locations. Guajolote obviously gets a lot of attention by having a former mayor of the city saying our water's at risk. That's a legitimated grievance.
I would say it way predates that. I was on the SAWS board when [Guajolote Ranch] first came through. And if you read the minutes from those meetings, we are very concerned about this development. We just didn't have any real choice because it was within the CCN [Certificate of Convenience and Necessity]. I don't know of anybody on that board that was excited about the idea of Guajolote. I've heard a city council person say “SAWS said, yes, we'll give you the water,” and I go, “Whoa, time out.” We did say that, but, like, we made them come back multiple times, we got downside protection. Like, this has been an uphill battle for [Lennar] from the jump.
And for good reasons, it sounds like you agree. So in relation to these other developments maybe the risks are more acute the closer you are to the development. It’s definitely not going to be good for Helotes Creek or the species that live there, right? If you start with the fish, you know, and the turtles and everything else. More broadly, though, How would you rate the health of our rivers and creeks across the state?
I don't do a lot of water quality research, so I'm not the best person to ask in terms of like, how are we on the Clean Water Act, fishable-swimmable categorization. I would say we're not in the most terrible place for that. I think they're generally quote-unquote clean. It's not the East Coast, for example, where there are some of those rivers you wouldn't want to touch. I think where I come at it, and a water quality expert may have much more nuance to that answer, is asking are they healthy ecosystems? These are natural systems that, without us taking out so much water, they behave quite differently.
When you look at these drought conditions and … this growth, you're setting up conflict between the entities that get lawyers and say “I want to pump” and the users of these ecosystems, which, by the way, we also rely on, right? We rely on these healthy ecosystems, but we never have done a good job of valuing them.
It's not so much should we be worried about the water quality of these rivers. It's about what should we be thinking about for the health of those systems into the future as we pump more effluent. It’s not without its risks. So we're even talking about that in these areas where they want to use produced water effluent [from oil and gas production] and discharge it into the Pecos River. Even if you can get the water quality to what you're comfortable with, you are significantly changing the geomorphology and chemistry of a system when you dump a bunch of water in there.
They could promise that that water is “crystal clean,” it's still not natural. It's not naturally there. So you may have everything from increased erosion, which could change property boundaries, and also change the water quality, the dissolved oxygen, all that kind of stuff. So temperature, water flow: some fish require a lot of water to be flowing; some need it to be stagnant. We're changing that whole system when we do things like this.
It's a bigger conversation about where are we growing, sounds like.
Most of our growth right now is in the counties. They have no regulatory authority. So then when they want to stop these things, they get all upset. You know, ironically, a lot of times people move out there because there's no regulation and then they suddenly want regulation. And what we're learning is somebody minding the ship, having an overall plan, even if that plan is guided by local communities, is important. Otherwise you're very, very vulnerable.
It seems like we don't have those kind of regulations at a county level by design. That interests such as home builders, automobile dealerships, and all those have an interest in keeping it that way.
I think it's more complex than that. I think a lot of the people who are complaining liked it that way until they didn’t. You can go back and look at the legislative history. There have been county authority bills that have not prevailed. It's not just big business. A lot of times the locals are like, ‘No, we don't want more regulation.’ Well, that's fine—if nobody comes into your area.
But what we're finding with data centers is it's unlimited where they'll go. There was a lot of conversation five, seven years ago about could we add county authority just in the counties that border these exploding cities like San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, right? Like, poor New Braunfels, you know, they're doing everything they can, but they're a small area. We changed the rules on annexation. So they now are getting pummeled by people that are right outside their jurisdiction.
But the rural counties were like, “Under no circumstances do we want county authority.” With data centers, they're realizing they have no power to say no. Or very, very limited power. So be careful what you wish for.
That's actually the other story I'm researching right now. I was in San Marcos at this last planning and zoning re-hearing for one of the proposed data centers up there. Is that something that you're tracking or advising on?
I'm trying to do my own research and understand what I think best practices are. I've got my eyes on Abilene. I've kind of got my eyes on Amarillo. There's one south of Marfa in this very pristine area. It's whack-a-mole for sure. And what we're seeing is now these people that generally would be very anti-regulation saying, “We think we should ban data centers.” So that's very antithetical to what that group of people generally are advocating for. And I think it's going to lead to a really interesting [legislative] session because it can't be written off as “those environmentalists.” What we're seeing is wealthy property owners not wanting it too. And so now you get this weird, kind of strange bedfellows thing, which is always my favorite when that happens.
I look forward to those conversations for sure. And those alliances are really helpful, especially if they can move into other spaces. Like, if you start with data centers and then you move into controlled growth.
Data centers is just the latest thing. It's the latest symptom to the same disease we've been experiencing. So can we have a broader conversation about letting local communities make decisions about who comes there and who doesn't? And under what circumstances? It's not data center versus no data center. It might be [yes to the] data center, but we're not going to give you any of our water, fresh water. Or if there's brackish water available, you have to use that.
So do you agree there are some spaces where we need to have higher standards or just no development? I mean, we spent a lot of money west of San Antonio [on conservation agreements for aquifer protection].
Yes. I would love to see more standards over development. Under what we had, I think SAWS did the very best that it could [on Guajolote] and did more than it would have done on a similar project 10 or 15 years ago. I think the question that needs to be asked is why is a municipal water authority essentially the gatekeeper for development? Is that really the way we want this to go? Because what ends up happening is oftentimes, [developers] come to SAWS first because they're not going to have any city council approval.
SAWS is not a city planner. And that is the position that they are in time and time again. And then people get mad at staff and [staff] don't have the authority to say no. They have the authority to say, are you within our CCN? What can we maybe negotiate to make it easier or better? And we can only do that in certain circumstances.
It is time for San Antonio City Council to start thinking about more stringent land use ordinances. And then county authority is the next piece. It's not the water utilities or power utilities’ job to manage this. You will never get it right if you let them do it.
