Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Water Bill Includes Historic Increase in Funding for Conservation

But House Rejects Amendment to Limit Environmental Damage from New Reservoirs

Today the Texas House of Representatives adopted HB 4, which establishes a new water infrastructure fund to provide state assistance to water providers seeking to build new reservoirs, pipelines, and other supply projects. The bill sets aside 20% of funding for conservation and re-use projects. If companion bill HB 11, which transfers $2 billion from the rainy day fund to the new water fund, also passes, at least $400 million will go toward conservation and re-use.  The fund is expected to grow over time, so ultimately billions could go toward conservation in the coming decades.

The House voted 104 – 41 against an amendment by Rep. Phil King to weaken the 20% set aside for conservation. 

Rep. Eddie Lucio III disappointingly led a successful effort to defeat an amendment by Rep. Donna Howard to require the water board to consider environmental impacts – among five others already in the bill – as a factor in choosing which projects to fund. 

Statement by Environment Texas Director Luke Metzger

In every sector of water use, new technologies and better management practices can enable us to get more out of a gallon of water. We can’t control when it rains, but we can control how we use water. State funding can help cut water waste, improve water conservation, and steer Texas toward a more sustainable water future.

We applaud the House for rejecting an effort to gut funding for water conservation. Thanks especially to Rep. Doug Miller, Jim Keffer and Lyle Larson for speaking out against the King amendment.
We are very disappointed that the House voted against directing the water board to consider environmental impacts in their funding decisions. New reservoirs, pipelines and desalination projects can cause major harm to our rivers, our forests and our bays and estuaries. It’s irresponsible not to consider these impacts when deciding which projects to back with state money. 

Environment Texas is a statewide, citizen-funded, non-profit advocate for clean air, clean water and open spaces.


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

George Cofer works to save open spaces

George Cofer  -As head of the Hill Country Conservancy, advocate has changed the conversation about the environment in Central Texa

By Michael Barnes  American-Statesman Staff

In 1961, when George Cofer and his friends from West Lake Hills entered the halls of what was then O. Henry Junior High on West 10th Street, they ran smack into an Austin version of culture shock.
Photo by Laura Skelding

“West Lake primarily was known for bootleggers, stonemasons and cedar-choppers,” Cofer, 64, drawls with amusement about the rap on his hometown, then considered on the “wrong” side of the river.

“Those were not derogatory terms at the time to us. The Tarrytown girls labeled us hicks. They’d been to cotillions and coming-out parties. We’d been out hunting and fishing.”

Although Cofer became one of the most recognizable players on Austin’s environmental scene, the head of the Hill Country Conservancy never abandoned his elemental zeal for the out of doors. He stayed active in Scouting, swam competitively and water-skied with his wide circle of friends. He fought to save Barton Springs and camped out at Edenic spots, such as Storm Ranch in Hays County, open space that the Conservancy later helped to preserve.
Photo by Laura Skelding

“George found his ‘niche’ in the fight to protect Barton Springs,” says Mary Arnold, godmother to Austin’s green movement. “We and future generations will benefit from his dedication, his energy, his way of educating others to the value of conserving the land, and his determination to find resources to accomplish the conservancy’s goals.”

Cofer has led the charge to snap up conservation easements in the Hill Country, allowing some private projects, thereby securing legal protection for other open space in perpetuity.
Soon, his group will help break ground on Phase 2 of a grand project — the 30-mile Violet Crown Trail that will link the parks and greenbelts in Austin’s urban core toward a spine of Hill Country that arcs across the Barton Springs recharge zone.

“What open space the community is able to preserve in the next 25 years is probably the only land that will be forever in a natural or green state,” he says. “As we say at the conservancy, when it’s gone, it’s gone for good. When the conservancy preserves the land, it’s here forever.”

Texan through and through

Few Central Texans come to a love of this land — and an understanding of how power works — with family credentials as sterling as Cofer’s.“We don’t talk about it,” says the sixth-generation Texan. “But we are very glad we have those deep roots.”

On his father’s side, Cofer is descended from Texas lawyers, judges and elected officials. His father, Texas land commissioner among her relatives. A school nutritionist, Chapman also served as an executive assistant for a state legislator.
Photo by Laura Skelding
Hume Cofer, served as state district judge. His mother, Carolyn FitzGerald Chapman, counts ranchers, aldermen and at least one

Cofer’s parents divorced when he was 15 and both remarried. He remains close with siblings and step-siblings. One brother, Bill Cofer, runs the ancestral ranch on the Frio River.

“We were riding horses at the ranch since we were babies,” Cofer says. “My grandmother’s preference was that we stop in San Antonio at the Menger Hotel. When she grew up going to the ranch it was a two-day trip. She never got quite used to driving straight through.”

His step-dad, deceased banker Neal Dow Chapman, was quite the fisherman, friend of famed Central Texans Conrad Fath and Russell Lee, and he served as Cofer’s Explorer troop scoutmaster.

“Our vacations were really fun camping trips to places like Mexico or Port Aransas,” Cofer fondly recalls. “We used to camp for a week at Hamilton Pool — right by the pool!”

Cofer swam freestyle sprints for the Austin Aquatic Club and later the University of Texas. His Scouting career peaked with the 1960 National Jamboree in Colorado Springs, Colo., and an enviable trip to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.

Did he inherit this propensity for the natural world?

“I’ve always been interested in how much is social and how much hard-wired,” Cofer says. “I must have some genetic affinity for the great outdoors, but I think Scouting and ranching contributed to that life.”

Winding paths to maturity

In seventh and ninth grades, at least when the legislature was in session, Cofer didn’t go to school at all. He worked instead as a Senate page or a House clerk at the Capitol.
Later, he and his brother ran a Lake Austin beer joint called the Pier.

“I’d go to UT in the morning, the Capitol in the afternoon, the Pier at night,” he says. “We were lake rats, living in a shack on the lake.”

Throughout his youth, Cofer was social and something of a ne’er-do-well. Among his high school friends were future power broker Ed Wendler Jr., Salt Lick owner Scott Roberts and golf course designer Roy Bechtol. His “running, trouble-making buddies” were Roy Duckworth, Robert Furlow and Kristy Billy.

“Yes, Billy was his last name,” Cofer says. “His dad owned several beer joints — Pink Flamingo and Bamboo Hut — we had fun in those places as well.”

Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, Cofer says he chose University of California-Santa Barbara for his pre-UT semesters because Playboy rated the No. 1 party school in America. While studying aerospace engineering — he wanted to be an astronaut — he also got in plenty of surfing.

In an almost inevitable rite of passage for the 1960s, he followed his sister up to Haight-Ashbury in San Fransisco.

Back at UT in Austin, he discovered the best parties were in the Classics Department — “they drank wine” — then moved on to seek a bachelor of arts. He took his time.“That term ‘slacker’?” he says.

“We all had Ph.D.s in Slackerism. UT cost $200 a semester. You could be at the lake in 10 minutes. We had the best music in the world, all the good honky-tonks. It was easier, freer, more open then.”

He graduated in 1971. Following the logic of the time, the lover of fine woodworking and remodeling started Hill Country Haze Construction, which lasted until 1984. His first marriage in the 1970s produced one daughter, Chesleigh Lloyd. He’s been married to Mary Elizabeth Morgan since 1987. She had one daughter from a previous marriage, Hanna Robin Morgan, whom Cofer adopted Feb. 19. “Which I think sets the record for slowness,” Cofer jokes. “Twenty-six years it took.”

The early green years

The Rollingwood resident attended his first meeting for the Save Barton Creek Association — the precursor to Save Our Springs (SOS) — in 1990.

“I had not been paying attention to the debate about land use and development or whether development in the Barton Creek watershed would affect Barton Springs,” Cofer admits. “I asked: ‘What do you mean there’s a debate?” I’d witnessed significant changes to the creek going back to the construction of Barton Creek Mall.”

Green pioneers such as Jack and Jackie Goodman, Shudde Fath, Wayne Gronquist and Bert Cromack had manned the environmental barricades for at least 15 years at this point. It was Cofer’s turn.

“George was never seeking personal recognition, but always willing to be in the background and help with whatever needed to be done,” Mary Arnold says. “And he was willing to stay involved for the long haul. And a long haul it has been!”

Grassroots fundraising was his first goal.

“Bill Bunch and I were able to get Jim Hightower to agree to have Robert Redford to do a fundraiser for Barton Springs at the Umlaufs,” Cofer says. “It was 100 bucks a person. Sold out because of Mr. Redford. Couldn’t be a nicer guy.”

Cofer was drafted to serve as programs manager — unpaid at first — of the association. He did what he continues to do well — gave outdoor tours, organized clean-ups, worked with educational and governmental groups.

“It was definitely a labor of love,” he says. “What mattered was that I was doing something I thought was important. We were fighting the good fight.”

Educating folks on how the underground aquifer directly affected water quality was not easy at first.
Photo by Laura Skelding
Nevertheless, Austin passed a series of water protection ordinances collectively known as “SOS.” The Texas Legislature and some local politicians maneuvered to get around SOS.
Eventually, though, Cofer also changed his tactics.

Working on a retail project proposed for the MoPac Boulevard extension near the Barton Springs recharge zone in Southwest Austin, he broke with the all-or-nothing, line-in-the-sand strategies of some fellow activists.

“Instead of proposing to develop 15 percent of the land, it was more like 45 percent,” Cofer recalls of the developers’ daring plan. “In return, though, landowners gave up 300 acres and a very significant cave. And built a huge runoff pond. It made more sense.”

The Save Our Springs advocacy group — he served on the board at the time — vehemently opposed it. So Cofer resigned.

From that point on, Cofer, who remains friendly with SOS leaders such as Bill Bunch, became associated with alternative strategies for preserving open spaces. He embraced notions such as encouraging quality density in the urban core as an antidote to limitless sprawl.

“People can love or hate SOS,” Cofer says. “But I do credit it with starting a serious conversation about environmental protection and water quality. Now it has evolved into a discussion of water quantity as well.”

The conservancy model

“George is a leader,” says innovative developer Terry Mitchell. “He does not speak to be heard, but to accomplish his mission. George is respected by the environmental community, the real estate community and civic leaders throughout the Austin area.”

The legal notion of private entities buying up development rights and investing in physical improvements goes back at least 100 years. The enormous, nationwide Nature Conservancy was founded in 1951 and the Texas Land Conservancy got going in 1982.

The Hill Country Conservancy, which Cofer founded in 1999, focuses on land near recharge zones southwest of Austin’s core. The group also works to influence development codes and regional planning.
This land trust project grew out of peace talks between green leaders and the developers. Cofer introduced the idea of easements.

“I knew about conservation easements from the landowners side,” he says, referring to the family ranch on the Frio. “It made sense to me. In a document recorded at courthouse, the terms are perpetual and set out the rights that the family reserves and the rights that are extinguished.”

One rhetorical sidestep helped to win over landowners, some of whom had joined the land rights movement in the 1990s.

“The Hill Country Conservancy is not for or against growth,” he says. “But when families want to preserve their land for a ranch, or a nature preserve, or a bed and breakfast, or a vineyard, or a hunting lease, it’s incumbent on all land trusts to make sure in the agreement that the family reserves enough rights to be economically successful.”

Critics accuse the conservancy of preserving the views of owners already rich in land, but to Cofer, open space is open space.

One of the biggest “gets” was Storm Ranch between Drippings Springs and Wimberley. Cofer had grown up with the children of late oilman and rancher Lynn Storm, who treasured his 5,700-acre ranch.
At one point during a ranch tour, Cofer recalls, a documentary film crew member posed a question to the ranch owner.

“Mr. Storm, this is an extraordinarily beautiful place and obviously worth a lot of money, have you ever thought about selling it,” Cofer retells. “He said: ‘I would sooner go to hell.’ It got very quiet in the truck.”

The agreement allows the Storm descendants to continue traditional agriculture, hunting and horseback riding, but protects the water and land as a single ranch.

At the Dahlstrom Ranch, right outside Buda, the relatives of Gay Ruby Dahlstrom had held 2,300 acres for three generations. It now supports an exotic game ranch, operated by fun-loving Jack Dahlstrom, her son, and small gravel quarry. Yet the ranch hid another extraordinary value.

“Jack pointed out cave entrances,” Cofer recalls of his first visit. “Some were covered with dirt, looked like low spots in the pastures. We got together with cave and aquifer experts and cleaned them out. They are still finding caves on that place. When it rains, water pours directly into the aquifer. What goes in, comes out at Barton Springs.”

Protecting caves like these makes economic sense as well.

“The water that comes off our yards, streets and parking lots has to be cleaned up,” Cofer points out. “It is exponentially more cost-effective to keep the water clean at its source. That’s the key link between land conservation and the water.”

Luckily, Gay Ruby Dahlstrom understood, as Cofer learned during negotiations.

“She had not mentioned any partitioning or rights to build homes,” Cofers remembers. “I said ‘Mrs. Dahlstrom that’s a beautiful vision, but wouldn’t you like to reserve the right to partition a small piece of the ranch and sell part of it, or give it to your children?’ She stopped me and said: ‘Mr. Cofer, what part of this conversation do you not understand?’ ”

A vision of green networks

Cofer foresees the Violet Crown Trail becoming the “trunk line” of 200-mile system that links up with the Butler Trail around Lady Bird Lake as well as the northern and eastern trails, including those along Shoal and Waller creeks.

The section between Zilker Park and Sunset Valley, including four miles along the Barton Creek Greenbelt, is done. Phase 2, to cost $6 million, will take two years to construct and extend the network to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the Circle C Veloway.

“Connectivity is the big goal in these neighborhoods,” Cofer says. “But the Violet Crown Trail will not go all the way to Onion Creek because we don’t want it trashed like Twin Falls and Sculpture Falls get trashed every weekend on Barton Creek.”

The trail also showcases land that the Conservancy has saved since the 1990s.

“This may well be a game changer in how Central Texans can experience the beautiful Texas Hill Country,” Mitchell says. “I am hopeful that George’s leadership will provide a road map for many of us to take steps to preserve our unique environment. A lot of people talk about helping the environment, but no one in this city has done as much as George to improve and preserve it.”

 Michael Barnes writes about Austin’s people, places, culture and history.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Judge rules in favor of WVWA

Peschel agrees that HTGCD violated its rules 

SEGUIN — Dwight Peschel, Senior Judge of the 25th Judicial District, has released a letter indicating he is ruling in favor of the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association (WVWA) in its lawsuit against the Hays-Trinity Groundwater Conservation District (HTGCD) and Wimberley Springs Partners (WSP).

HTGCD and WSP had asked for a summary judgment, which was denied, but the judge indicated his ruling would go much further. Jacob's Well from above

“I find that the board’s action [the HTGCD] in finding that Plantiffs’ requests for a contested hearing were untimely filed was arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion,” Peschel wrote.

It is exactly what the WVWA had alleged against the HTGCD and WSP after conservation district issued a permit on Feb. 21 of 2011 without publishing the district’s recommendations or deadlines. The permit would allow golf course and greenbelt irrigation, according to Malcolm Harris, who in addition to serving on the WVWA board, is also acting as an attorney in the case.

“His ruling went further than to just deny the ruling by saying it was arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion,” Harris said. “His declaration said that in denying us a contested hearing was telling. If that is included in the final judgment, and his letter indicates that it will be, it means we have prevailed across the board in the lawsuit at the district level.”

Harris said that if that is the case, neither of the defendants would be able to appeal the case.

The WSP permit would allow 163,000,000 gallons of water per year to be drawn from the aquifer. 

“Hydrologic data indicates that this additional amount of groundwater pumping above Jacob’s Well will cause aquifer levels to drop and cause the spring to stop flowing in the future,” the WVWA said in a press release. “It is difficult to assess the full impact of the additional draw down without performing an aquifer test on the wells being considered for use.”

The subdivision in question is located off FM 2325 on Valley Springs Road.

According to the WVWA, hydrologic data indicated the intense amount of groundwater that would be pumped above Jacob’s Well would cause aquifer levels to drop and cause the spring to stop flowing in the future.

The permit by HTGCD was granted on a split 3-2 vote.  WVWA said “Rule 11”  had been violated, which states “each applicant for a new well operating permit shall perform an aquifer test and submit a report as part of the operating permit application.”

Harris has said from the start the lawsuit could have been avoided had HTGCD allowed the citizens who protested the golf course and the permit conditions as written by the developer had been allowed to testify to the district before permitting.

“The HTGCD board had never acted on this,” Harris said. “Then suddenly they did. A large contingent of the public showed up, alarmed, seeking to protest the permit.”

Harris said no one expected the HTGCD to vote on the matter.

“It was the understanding over everyone there — including former HTGCD board members like Jack Hollon — that the deadline for the deadline for formally requesting a contested hearing where testimony was taken would be 10 days after,” Harris said.

The judge agreed, saying the HTGCD ruling “provides that a formal protest against the proposed action prior to the application hearing” should have been conducted.

“Plaintiffs were told by a representative of the HTGCD that filing a request for a contested case hearing within 10 days would be ‘timely’,” Peschel wrote. “There being no rule for when an individual under Rule 5.5 must file a request for a contested hearing, Plaintiffs’ relying on what was told them by HTGCD was reasonable.”

The ruling likely means that HTGCD will have to hold the contested hearing that was denied in 2011, which could potentially overturn the WSP permit.

Courtesy of Wimberley View 

wview.editor@gmail.com

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

WVWA and Landowners Win Favorable Ruling in Golf Course Suit

WVWA and the individual Plaintiffs have won a favorable ruling from the Court in the case of Wimberley Valley Watershed Association, Johanna L. Smith, H.K. Acord, Janet Acord, James R. McMeans and David Glenn vs. Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, Defendant and Wimberley Springs Partners (WSP) Intervenor. 

Plaintiffs filed suit seeking to require the District to grant us a contested case hearing on the application of WSP to pump 997 acre feet of water per year from five wells in the vicinity of Jacob’s Well for a golf course development. 

Both the District and WSP filed Motions for Summary Judgment seeking to have our suit thrown out.  The matter was heard by Senior District Judge Dwight E. Peschel on February 26, 2013.  The Court has ruled in our favor denying the motions.   

The Court further found that the HTGCD action in denying our requests for contested case hearing “…was arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion.”  We anticipate that the case will proceed to a final judgment consistent with the above.  There is no indication at this point as to whether or not the opposing parties will seek to further challenge or appeal the Court’s ruling. 

 

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Texas Told Not to Issue Water Permits That Hurt Cranes

Texas Told Not to Issue Water Permits That Hurt Cranes


Texas was ordered to temporarily stop issuing new water permits for a river system that supplies dozens of Central Texas cities, power generators and petrochemical plants to ensure enough water reaches the last migratory flock of endangered whooping cranes.

U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack in Corpus Christi, Texas, yesterday blocked state regulators from approving new permits for the Guadalupe, San Antonio or Blanco rivers “until the state of Texas provides reasonable assurances to the court that such permits will not take whooping cranes in violation of the Endangered Species Act.”
Jack said in her ruling that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, which grants water permits in the state, violated federal wildlife protections by failing to monitor how much water cities and industrial users took from the rivers during droughts.

According to evidence at a 2011 trial, so much water was siphoned from the rivers during the 2009 drought that 23 birds, or 8.5 percent of the Texas whooping crane flock, died because insufficient freshwater flowed into the coastal marsh where the birds spend winter.
The five-foot-tall whooping crane was believed to be extinct until a flock of 15 survivors was found on an isolated stretch of Texas coastal marsh in the 1940s. There are about 500 whooping cranes alive today, according to trial evidence, with a flock of about 250 birds that migrates between Texas and Canada. That flock is the only self-sustaining wild population.

Emergency Powers

While regulators’ claimed that “their hands were tied” by the 1913 Texas Water Code that grants water rights on a first- come, first-served basis, the evidence, “most of it from TCEQ officials” demonstrated that regulators could have used emergency powers to protect the flock, Jack said.
“Indeed, the TCEQ has emergency authority to do anything that is necessary or appropriate to carry out duties and responsibilities, and this could extend to the protection of bays and wildlife,” Jack said in her 124-page ruling.
Jim Blackburn, the lead attorney for the group suing to protect the cranes, and Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for the Texas Attorney General’s office, didn’t immediately respond to requests after regular business hours seeking comment on the ruling.
“The opinion is wrong on the facts and the law, and we intend to appeal,” Bill West, general manager of the Guadalupe- Blanco River Authority, said in an e-mail. The authority sells water rights along much of the river channel.

Wildlife Refuge

Environmentalists and coastal tourism and business interests sued state water regulators in 2010 after studies found that reduced river flow into the marsh depleted drinking water supplies and stocks of blue crabs and wolfberries that the cranes feed on at the Aransas Wildlife Refuge about 175 miles southwest of Houston.

The cranes share that coastline with the world’s largest concentration of refineries and petrochemical plants, which stretches from the refuge eastward to the Louisiana border. Dow Chemical Co. (DOW)’s Seadrift plant, one of the largest water users on the river system, sits across the bay from the refuge.

Further inland, the same river system supplies drinking water and hydroelectric power to cities including San Antonio. The Texas Chemical Council, which represents more than 60 plants -– all of them dependent on river water -- joined the lawsuit to protect the rights of industrial water users.
Water regulators said during the trial that a win by environmentalists could cut the water supply for industrial and municipal users by 50 percent in the watershed. They warned that such a ruling could be used to upend water rights on other Texas river systems.

The case is The Aransas Project v Bryan Shaw, 2:10-cv-0075, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Corpus Christi).

To contact the reporter on the story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net