Bastrop, Tx–Despite the presence of a generally hostile crowd March 18, the board of the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District adopted a committee recommendation on what groundwater levels in Bastrop and Lee County should look like in 2060. Two board members voted against the proposal.
One of them, Ann Mesrobian, said she favored further talks with environmental groups, including The Sierra Club and Environmental Defense, before a vote.
Groundwater district staff and consultants defended the committee proposal, saying any defects can be remedied in the future, especially as better data and models for estimating the effects of permitted pumping become available. The planning and goal setting for future groundwater conditions must occur every five years, said consultant Katie Kaighin.
Steve Box of Bastrop-based Environmental Stewardship argued that current tools exist to evaluate the likely impact of current and proposed groundwater withdrawal on the Colorado River and its tributaries, a contention rejected by the board’s hydrology consultant Dr. Robert Kier. Current planning tools are largely worthless for estimating the contribution of groundwater to the flow of rivers and tributaries, he said.
In previous statements Box has charged that the current board proposal could result in irreparable hardmto the Colorado River in groundwater flows into the stream subside because of future pumping.
Kier said Texas laws regulating the use of groundwater are utterly different, and based on different principles, from laws governing the use of surface water in lakes, rivers and other streams.
Once the board has completed its recommended future conditions, the report will be forwarded to a local groundwater management area group, which includes a number of local conservation districts. The area group, in turn, will make a separate recommendation to the Texas Water Development Board which is charged with reconciling differences and conflicts among the recommendations from the state’s 16 groundwater management areas, said joe Cooper, general manager of the Lost Pines district.
The same process must be completed every five years, allowing for future adjustments as conditions change, said Cooper.