Bastrop, Tx–Bastrop County cattle raiser Patti Jacobs will challenge Giddings lawyer Tim Kleinschmidt for re-election this year to the District 17 seat in the Texas House of Representatives.
KIeinschmidt, a Republican, was first elected to the House in 2008. He has no GOP primary opponent this year as he seeks a second term Jacobs put her name on the Democratic primary ballot Jan. 4. She does not have a Democratic opponent in the March 2 party primary.
District 17 includes Bastrop, Lee, Burleson, Fayette and Colorado County.
Jacobs heads Bastrop Cattle Co. which raises and markets organic beef. She was also a lead organizer of the 1832 Farmers Market in Bastrop. She has prior experience in politics and public affairs. She challenged Ronnie McDonald for re-election as Bastrop County Judge but subsequently helped guide one of his priority projects to completion, the Opportunity Bastrop County master plan for economic and community development.
In an interview this week, Jacobs said her campaign themes will include education and job creation, agriculture as “a 21st century industry,” and groundwater conservation for local development needs. Local residents “should be in control of our own future,” she said.
Kleinschmidt has already sold or leased water production rights to his own property in Lee County to water marketing interests looking to export groundwater to growing urban areas, said Jacobs. “We should keep our own water and kids” rather than exporting them to urban centers, she said.
Nice to see SOMEONE taking on the establishment. Wish Ms Jacobs would have given the County Judge a shot. If KIeinschmidt thinks shipping water out of this area to another is a good idea, maybe he should go. Of course him being booted out of office won’t change that. This water deal is resembling our national trade. As a nation much of our day to day commodadies are being made in China. We shipped our manufacturing to the Communists (yes China is a Communist nation) and no we have no jobs here. Ship the water out and we will dry up and blow away.
It is extremely important that we frame this issue of water exports in the right way. If we talk about a total prohibition upon landowners selling water for export, we will lose the battle over water exports, we will lose elections, and we may lose any meaningful control over local groundwater management.
Prohibiting a landowner from selling any amount of groundwater for out-of-county use has about as much chance as prohibiting a landowner from selling oil or gas from her land for out-of-county use. Or from selling lignite resources. Or sand and gravel.
Groundwater has a market value because the market out there wants it. Landowners who sell the water from the aquifers beneath their lands can get paid nicely for that resource. If a politician running for office proposes to deny landowners that source of income, totally, that politician is going to lose whatever elected position he or she is seeking.
Stated broadly, what we need is a regulatory system which assures the people of Bastrop, Lee and other counties in this area that there will be ample, sufficient groundwater available for local use. This is, of course, much too broad a formulation upon which to regulate groundwater production and sales. It is lacking in the specificity necessary to assure that groundwater will be available for those uses which we consider most important. There is enough slack in this formulation for much mischief.
Do we, for example, want the area to become industrialized? Do we really want to see this area become something like a Ruhr Valley, burning lignite and using vast quantities of water to produce consumer goods? That could happen, and it could happen in the context of a regulatory system which favors local use.
Same for urban development. Do we want Bastrop and Lee Counties to become fancy suburbs of Austin, and Burleson, Fayette and Colorado Counties to become fancy suburbs of Houston? The water which will be necessary to support that kind of development will come close to the amount required to support industrialization.
Or do we want something else, like agriculture, hunting, wildlife and open space areas? Bastrop and Lee Counties could well become the primary garden produce, grain and meat production, and wildlife-oriented recreational areas for Austin. Groundwater in sufficient, steady, reliable and sustainable amounts will be necessary to achieve this vision.
Let me point out something for those who want Bastrop and Lee Counties NOT to become urbanized or industrialized: The easiest way — but assurdely not the best way — to achieve that goal is to encourge the export of groundwater to the absolute maximum amount in the aquifers. Ship it all out. Let Austin, San Antonio, Houston or wherever take the water and use it somewhere else to support sprawling suburbs and ugly industrial areas. With that water gone, development of all types in this area will be drastically truncated.
Our ability to locally regulate groundwater, to achieve the vision we want for Bastrop and Lee Counties, is totally in the hands of the Texas Legislature. We have a groundwater conservation district in place to regulate groundwater for this area, but it can be abolished, or its powers drastically curtailed by the Legislature.
This means we need a representative in the Texas Legislature who will give us more than knee-jerk reactions to the issues involved, who understands the complexity of the issues, who is willing to serve all the interests in this area (and not just the development interests), and who is not burdened intellectually by anything even close to resembling a laissez faire attitude.
It will also be refreshing if candidates for the office refrain from trying to bamboozle us with transparent political spin.