Forrest for the Trees

Lexington, Texas (population: 1,178) may become famous for something other than the best BBQ in the state. Statesman environmental reporter Asher Price has a kick-ass story on water speculators scrambling to consolidate water rights near the Central Texas town.

LEXINGTON — In a scorching cow pasture silent save the lowing of cattle, Terry Gilmore picks up a stick and draws in the sand a simple map: divots in the ground for a handful of water wells, then a long scratch for a pipeline to deliver water to Austin’s eastern flank.

About 2,000 feet below him sits an underground reservoir, known as the Simsboro formation, that he and others hope will fuel development everywhere from Georgetown to San Antonio.

Gilmore, 60, the chief investor in a water development company called Sustainable Water Resources, has spent millions of dollars to try to make his lines in the sand a brick-and-mortar reality.

Besides Gilmore, a handful of competitive water speculators are banking that the water beneath the largely rural area in Lee and surrounding counties is their crystal-clear gold. As anxieties about water supplies rise among the public and politicians, private speculators see an opportunity to tie up water rights and sell their goods to cities. But they have struggled to land big buyers.

This story, of course, is not new. Cash-rich vultures have been circling Texas aquifers for decades, hoping to turn a buck on people’s need for water.

And the coda to these stories is always the same too – I know because I’ve written it myself – namely, the sellers can’t find any buyers.

Boone Pickens has been amassing an ocean of Ogallala water but he’s yet to find a city or wholesale water supplier that’s desperate enough to meet his asking price. Same thing, mas o menos, in Central Texas.

The Brazos River Authority, which serves the area north and east of Austin, says it is open to groundwater pitches but has no need for the water now: It has water supplies of about 690,000 acre-feet a year and last year provided only 258,679 acre-feet, said its manager, Phil Ford.

He said water developers grow impatient because building a new supply “takes 20 to 30 years to develop.”

For these water ranchers, though, it’s only a matter of time. And that time may be drawing near.

Brazos Valley Water Alliance, a cooperative of landowners that hopes to market groundwater — and which includes former Gov. Mark White on its board and former Texas Water Development Board chairman Bill Madden as a marketing consultant — entered an agreement of intent in December with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, which serves Kendall, Comal, Hays and Caldwell counties, among others, and San Antonio Water System to explore the sale of up to 200,000 acre-feet of water a year.

The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority is especially pinched by supply problems. Its main source, Canyon Lake, is basically all allocated, [said] general manager Bill West.

The fundamental law of Texas groundwater, the rule of capture, could not be a stronger incentive for water privatization.The rule, upheld in several instances by that august body of reason and justice the Texas Supreme Court, essentially puts the biggest pump and the most bucks in control of groundwater.

It’s a Wild West concept that left unchecked would leave the allocation of water in the hands of private interests.

The primary check on that power are groundwater conservation districts, elected regulatory bodies created by the Texas Legislature.

In the spirit of “local control,” groundwater districts have considerable leeway to regulate the pumping of groundwater in a geographical area. Other than pure economics, groundwater districts are the main obstacle to the Lexington-area water speculators.

But the water speculators have met resistance from at least one of the groundwater districts.

“The board members from Lee County don’t want to overpermit water to leave here and leave ourselves short,” said Joe Cooper, general manager of the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District.

“We’re probably going to get sued from two directions some day. Either we turn someone down for a permit, and they sue us because we’ve been too scrupulous. Or one day when a well goes dry, we get sued by the landowner because we’re too free with water.”

I’m in El Paso working on a story (no, not Asarco) so posting will be light this week. But I did want to call attention to an important development.

The EPA has told the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that Texas is out of compliance with the Clean Air Act. This has been brewing for a while – well, at least since Obama took office – but EPA made it official today by proposing to reject Texas’ air permitting rules.

One major program that will be scrapped is the Flexible Permits Program, a nifty accounting trick developed in the 90s that allows Texas polluters to bend (or “flex”) the law a bit.

Under the program, companies can exceed air quality standards at one plant so long as the average across multiple facilities is below the cap. The law, the EPA has decided, wasn’t so flexible.

Clean air advocates have been saying the program is illegal for years. Matthew Tejada, the director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP) for example told Next American City magazine last year:

“At its root, the Texas air permitting program is broken. The state has been letting a number of industries get away with things through their permits that are in direct contradiction with federal law.”

TCEQ is now defending itself by referring to clean air “successes” under the existing program.

The following is a a guest post by Ann Raber, an Observer friend, KPFT contributor, and rock-climbing aficionado. Raber runs SendAustin, a popular Central Texas rock-climbing blog.

There’s nothing hyperbolic about calling Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site a North American bouldering mecca.

For this particular kind of rock climber, who shirks ropes and heights in favor of portable foam crash pads and difficult moves made low to the ground, there is nowhere better. Okay there’s maybe one place, but it’s in France and it’s not exactly better, just comparable.

And there is a potentially better one in South Africa, but that is just so far away. Hueco’s unique formations are mimicked in plywood and plastic at climbing gyms around the world, and the difficulty scale for these low-ball, physically powerful climbs (V0 to V15) was developed there in the 1980s.

But the fragile ecology and archaeological significance of the park have restricted climber access to guided tours unheard of in other popular climbing areas. Add to that the issue of funding for state parks that has threatened a management transfer of Hueco Tanks, and our days with Hueco could be numbered. 

Climbing season in Texas will start in November. Climbers who have purchased land on the road to the park will be rolling out their trailers in the fall, and by Thanksgiving they’ll dominate the 860-acre park, mainly on guided tours according to the rules established in the 1998 Public Use Plan.The PUP was an effort to control vandalism and environmental damage when far-flung climbers started making the trip for world class winter bouldering. It restricted access to 2/3rds of the park to guided tours of limited size and mobility, was a response to a sudden increase in visitors.

John Sherman, whose name beget the V-scale (“V” for “Vermin,” rhymes with “Sherman,” it was a nickname, long story), explored Hueco Tanks in the 1980s, and penned the first climbing guidebook to the area. 

He offered a point by point refutation of the plan, which is still in effect in essentially the same form. Sherman argued that the bulk of the ecological and archaeological damage done to the site was not cause by climbers, yet they bore the brunt of the restrictions.

Many of the newly proposed restrictions are designed to restrict and discourage climbing at HTSP. I feel this is a shame. Climbers are people too, just like rangers, bird watchers, and archaeologists. Discriminating against them is unfair. Furthermore, they generate more revenue for HTSP that any other user group…. I believe climbers can be one of the strongest allies HTSP can have.

 

Since then, even as climbers have adhered mightily to the rules, access to climbing at Hueco has continued to erode. In 2007 Hueco made the list of historic sights to be transfered from TPWD to the Texas Historical Commission.

Climbers have worked hard to get into the margins of the good graces of park officials, and there is not much hope that the THC would be as accommodating.

According to the Access Fund, which offers professional support and funding to “open and conserve the climbing environment”, climbers have reason fear the THC taking over Hueco. They cite the commissions “museum approach” to site management could change our access to those stout boulders.

“When the budget for Texas climbing parks suffers your climbing future is at risk.” But it isn’t just the Lege or the historical commission that threaten climber access. It happens every season or two with small sections of the park being axed.

Sections of the park are closed to climbing and/or foot traffic, including some beloved hunks of stone. In December, 2007 the Mushroom boulder, in the self-guided area of the park, was closed to rock climbing due to archeological damage. The department said that they didn’t intend to “place blame on climbers.”

Still, the department said that the damage “was found in the area where foot traffic and crash pad placement were concentrated, due to the overhang’s popularity as a bouldering area.” The climbing community took the loss pretty hard. Steve Crye, who runs a quirky Hueco Tanks news site, said at the time:

I’ve been so disgusted with the idiotic closure of the north side of Mushroom boulder that I could not even motivate myself to update the huectanks.com website, much less go and shoot photos of the moronic “Closed to all recreational activity” signs. Sometime in the next month I’ll grit my teeth and drive out there, perhaps for the last time.

 

The 81st legislative session was silent on the issue of transferring, and there were no painful closures in 2008/2009 season, so it’s with optimism and reservations made far in advance that boulderers will carry on this winter, getting it while we can. (pic by chris tsay)

The old saying that “the fish rots from the head” seems almost tailor-made for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

In Gov. Perry’s almost nine years in office, he has achieved close to a 100% success rate in appointing TCEQ commissioners who go out of their way to side with “customers” – as TCEQ refers to the polluting industries they regulate – over citizens and the environment.

Name the high-profile issue – cement kilns, coal-fired power plants, radioactive waste dumps, big city air quality concerns, lead-spewing smelters, etc, etc – the Perry-appointed commissioners almost always favor the monied interests.

The pro-industry orientation is not just limited to the commissioners. The TCEQ is a vast environmental agency, the second-largest in the world by some measures, and is constantly faced with complex policy, scientific and legal questions.

Yet, Perry’s commissioners have tended to fill top management positions with individuals who have minimal scientific background or are flat-out political cronies.

The last executive director, Glenn Shankle, had no formal training in environmental policy or science-based regulation (in fact, he didn’t have a college degree) but frequently saw fit to overrule administrative law judges and his own technical staff.

In one highly controversial instance, he overruled a team of TCEQ geologists and engineers who, after years of studying the issue, told Shankle that a radioactive waste dump could not and should not be sited in West Texas.

Shankle overruled his staff anyway, ordering them to write a license for the company.

Months later, Shankle left the agency and went to work as a lobbyist for that company, Waste Control Specialists, which is owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons and major donor to Rick Perry’s campaign and other Republicans.

This is a long way of introducing the latest high-profile hire to TCEQ management. Meet Zak Covar.

The Statesman‘s Asher Price has the goods:

Now Perry’s former environmental policy adviser, Zak Covar, has the job of deputy executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Covar’s promotion, made by the executive director of the agency, is another stage in his meteoric rise. It also raises questions about the interplay of politics, policy and personnel at the state agency.

[...]

Covar began his career clerking for the House Environmental Regulation Committee and then advised Perry from 2005 to 2007, defending, among other things, the governor’s stance that scientists were still debating global warming.

The chairman of the House Environmental Regulation Committee at that time was Rep. Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), who earned the nickname of “Dennis the Menace” for his meanspirited attacks on any environmental legislation.

Price correctly, if too gently, calls Covar’s career path “meteoric.” The guy earned a bachelor’s in poultry science from Texas A&M; worked for a few years for politicians hostile to science and environmental concerns, and then suddenly was made second-in-command at the nation’s second biggest environmental agency.

I’m not questioning Covar’s intelligence or skills but I’m not sure that resume qualifies him for the job. Unless it’s loyalty that’s the main, if only, job requirement.

He then went to work at the Texas environmental agency as the executive assistant to Commissioner Bryan W. Shaw and in June 2008 made the jump over to the agency’s staff side, as assistant deputy executive director.

Perry recently elevated Shaw, yet another global warming denialist, to chairman of the TCEQ. Shaw’s confirmation almost went down in flames during the Lege session as Democrats accused him of being a lapdog for polluters.

Covar’s “legislative insight and knowledge of environmental issues were great assets,” said Shaw, who was named as chairman of the commission last week as part of the shake-up at the top of the agency.

“While Zak served in the governor’s office he did an outstanding job of advising the governor on natural resources issues,” said Perry’s spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger.

But Covar’s rise to the second-in-command job, where he will be chief operating officer at the 2,900-employee regulatory agency, puts a focus on one of the issues that the agency has grappled with: How to balance environmental regulation and economic development.

Covar, who has worked for policymakers who tend to be more sympathetic to economic development, said it’s possible to achieve a balance.

“It all comes down to climate change,” [California] Lt. Gov. John Garamendi noted in a recent interview with the Guardian. “Everything we know about water in California is going to dramatically change.”

I know we Texans are gloating over the demise of California, but can you imagine David Dewhurst, or Perry, or Straus, or the TCEQ commissioners, or any Texas Republican acknowledging the threat that climate change poses to Texas’ water resources?

Neither can I.