Austin-San Antonio mega-metro tries to avoid water crisis

It doesn’t take a natural scientist to understand that in Texas — and in particular, in the corridor between Austin and San Antonio — water is a major issue. Look at the sky and feel no drops. Read the stories about Jacob’s Well or look at an image of Lake Travis. It’s pretty bleak.

Unfortunately, as the region expands, water, or the lack thereo, is only going to become more of a concern. About 5 million people live in the region. That number is supposed to balloon to 6-7 million by 2030, according to The Greater Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council. Over the course of the next 50 years or so, water usage will continue to rise, droughts will persist, and, perhaps most dire of all and for a variety of reasons, we will have less water available to us.

The state and the cities need to figure this all out, lest the San Antonio-Austin mega-metro become Mad Max: Fury Road. Here’s what they’re doing.

If you look up at the Central Texas sky longingly, aching for a single meager drop of water to fall from the sky that isn’t from a rogue window unit, you are not alone. The U.S. Drought Monitor’s map makes the counties between Austin and San Antonio look like a bad bruise. 

But it’s nothing compared to The Big One, at least not yet. 

The so-called “drought of record” in Texas lasted from 1950-57 and is the reason that Texas has a statewide water plan. Causing an estimated $36 billion in agricultural losses, it’s a phrase on the tip of every water expert’s tongue.

The same year the drought ended, the Texas Water Development Board was established by the Texas Legislature to plan for the future. Since 1997, the state has planned for water on a regional basis, with Texas being broken into 16 regions, labeled A-P. 

Austin, Pflugerville, and Fredericksburg are in Region K — also called the Lower Colorado Regional Water Planning Area — which also includes portions of Hays and all of Bastrop, Llano, Burnet, Blanco, and other surrounding counties. Region L, the South-Central Texas Regional Water Planning Area, spans from the Gulf to portions of the Hill Country, and includes San Antonio, San Marcos, and New Braunfels.

The planning takes into consideration environmental factors like the climate, drought, and floods, plus projected population growth and increased water usage.

“On a systematic basis, Texas has as thorough a process as anyone in the U.S., if not better than almost anywhere,” says David Eaton, a professor of natural resource policy in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. “I don’t know of a better statewide planning process that considers all of these factors and identifies the priority investments to provide water supply.”

That’s good news, right? As is the notion that the larger cities like Austin have a 100-year plan for water, with extra water purchased from the Lower Colorado River Authority that it doesn’t even use … just in case. San Antonio has its water needs planned through 2070.

But a close reading of the TWDB’s most recent State Water Plan, from 2022, paints a scarier picture for the state as a whole, particularly in the mega-metro. Not only is water usage projected to increase, but existing water supply is projected to decrease by about 18% by 2070. 

So, the region needs more water. The TWDB’s plan outlines a few ways in which the state can increase its water supply, including reduction via conservation or adding to the current supply with new reservoirs, wells, water reuse, and constructing seawater and groundwater desalination plants.

Planning groups came up with thousands of water management strategies across the state in 2022, and, if put into action, would more than make up the projected water deficit that Texas faces by 2070. But that’s a tall order.

In reality, only two of the 16 regions were able to fully provide plans that met the needs of their regions and the state, and — spoiler alert — both fall outside the San Antonio-Austin mega-metro.

The implications are vast. Aside from the 90% of Texans who would face at least a 10% water shortage both on a city and residential level in 2070, 25% of all municipal water users in the state would be at a 50% shortage. The Texas economy would suffer to the tune of $153 billion, with job losses approaching 1.4 million.

TWDB makes note that these estimates are on the conservative side.

The Texas Legislature addressed these concerns in May, adding $1 billion in surplus money for water supply and infrastructure, with two new funds — the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and the Texas Water Fund — created to allocate the money. 

But, you know, Texas politics. The New Water Supply for Texas Fund becomes a reality on September 1, of this year if Gov. Greg Abbott approves it. Still, it’ll only be funded if voters approve the ballot measure for the Texas Water Fund — a constitutional amendment — this November. And, even if it goes through, it may not be nearly enough to address mounting water concerns.

Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs for the Texas Water Conservation Association Sarah Kirkle spoke on the proposed bill after it passed in the Texas House this May. 

“No matter where it lands,” she said, “all of it is just a drop in the bucket compared to what the state’s need is.”

Sure, Texas is planning for the future, and it is (at least trying to) allocate resources that look to the back half of the century. But it does not manage water regionally, nor are there any plans to Voltron together the various water utilities, which could help with water infrastructure and delivery in the region. 

Take the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, which services parts of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Created by congressional mandate, the ICPRB looks at water management on a watershed basis through cooperation between jurisdictions. In creating a single reservoir instead of many separate storage facilities, the area has a high level of reliability in sharing risk.

“Anytime you have a larger scale, you have increased fiscal capacity,” Eaton says. “So you would expect that the infrastructure would be more effective if you have a larger regional system.”

Eaton points out that the mega-metro is larger than some states, which could make regional water management arduous. And then, of course, there’s the Texan-ness of it all.

“This is a matter of whether it works politically,” he says.

Therein lies the rub, particularly for the smaller towns in the Texas Hill Country and alongside I-35 between San Antonio and Austin.

“Natural resources are always going to be a challenge here,” says Jeff Jewell, director of economic and community development for New Braunfels. “Water is a very big concern for this region.”

The Edwards Aquifer provides 18% of New Braunfels’ water, down from 100% in the years preceding 1991. Since then, as the city has grown, it has diversified its water portfolio. Cities like New Braunfels have done this because it allows them greater flexibility as they expand, particularly in times of drought.

That’s because the region that New Braunfels falls in is under statewide regulations that cap water usage as part of the Edwards Aquifer Authority Act of 1993. There’s no growing off the Edwards Aquifer. It is what it is.

“The question for the city planners, for the water planners within the region is: What are you going to do to identify additional water resources above and beyond what you have with the Edwards?” says Roland Ruiz, general manager of the Edwards Aquifer Authority.

In San Marcos, they’re doing just that. The city jointly owns a water treatment plant with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority. It also gets water from the Edwards Aquifer, but they plan conservatively, basing everything on Stage 5 restrictions, which means 44% reduction from that source.

So, the city is a 35% shareholder in the Alliance Regional Water Authority, a joint effort between the city and Kyle, Buda, and the Canyon Regional Water Authority, a $120 million dollar project. Their share of water comes online in January 2024.

“The other thing that we did is we purchased into to the Hays-Caldwell Treatment Plant and we move some surface water rights to that plant to also diversify our water supply,” says San Marcos’ Assistant Director of the Water and Wastewater Utility Paul Kite.

That water supply comes online in 2025. Kite says he feels confident that San Marcos will have enough water until at least 2050, but this is an evolving, ongoing process to plan for the rest of the century and beyond. San Marcos has some wholesale agreements with nearby cities and utilities and is working on more. 

On paper, the mega-metro should be able to have enough water, but of course, it’s never that easy. A new drought of record or an unexpected population boom could destroy best-laid plans. Eaton agrees that Texas’ planning is top notch, but 2070 is almost impossible to imagine, even if it’s the job of water planners to do just that.

“It’s difficult,” he says, “to have very firm, unambiguous statements about water availability.”