Posted: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:48 AM - 9,803 Readers
By: Sean Batura
As severe drought conditions grip the region, and water flows slower from the San Marcos Springs, National Weather Service (NWS) officials say they don’t when this dry period will end, so a repeat of the 1950s drought cannot be ruled out.
According to NWS, the area including San Marcos has received less rain than usual by about 8.47 inches since Jan. 1.
The San Marcos Springs may slow to a trickle if there is a multi-year drought similar to what occurred in the 1950s, said San Marcos River Foundation (SMRF) Executive Director Dianne Wassenich.
“The fact that we had the ‘08 and ‘09 drought, then a very unusual wet year in ‘10, and now we are having a dry year again, does worry me,” Wassenich said. “I hope this is not a pattern of drought, of which we might just be seeing the beginning three years. That one wet year between has really saved us, otherwise the river would be much, much lower in this current drought.”
As of Sunday, the San Marcos Springs were flowing at 111 cubic feet per second (cfs), which is 78 cfs less than the historical monthly average for June. The San Marcos Springs flowed as slow as 84 cfs in 2009 and 76 cfs in 1996. Spring flow reached 59 cfs in 1956, which ties with 1918 as the worst drought years in recorded history. The Comal Springs ceased flowing in the 1950s drought. The San Marcos Springs have never dried up in recorded history.
San Marcos Springs, a major economic and aesthetic asset to the city, is fed by the Edwards Aquifer, from which the City of San Marcos gets 25 percent of its water. The city is poised to enact further water use restrictions in response to low water levels in the aquifer. The water level in the aquifer decreased by about 29.7 feet in the last 165 days, which is comparable so far to the drought of 1996, according to the Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA).
Wassenich said San Antonio Water System (SAWS) staff informed her that high cotton prices this year mean irrigation in the farming counties will probably continue through July 4, which is usually when farmers harvest the corn crop and decrease irrigation.
“But that is not happening this year, and that is especially worrisome, since the (agriculture) irrigation is a very large part of the pumping from the aquifer, and it is taking place intensely during the summer,” Wassenich said. “So much in coming months depends on whether people really will cut their water use and follow the stages of water conservation all over the region. And whether we get a tropical storm.”
Early last fall, NWS predicted a drought would occur this year. NWS was able to predict the end of at least the last three droughts.
“There is a lot of chaos that goes into how these (droughts) end,” said NWS Meteorologist Robert Blaha. “I don’t want to speculate on how this (current drought) might end.”
Blaha said the region from Austin to San Antonio had a brief period of rain from Dec. 24 to Feb. 9. Blaha said a line of showers came across the region from the west on Feb. 24, and there was light rain with a cold front on May 1 and May 2. There was rain from May 16 to 20 in the region, said Blaha.
“So some of those types of patterns — we look to see how they will evolve this fall and winter,” Blaha said. “They will evolve in some way, but the magnitude of how they will evolve is unknown. Eventually you know trends, you can put a puzzle together and say, ‘Yes, it is going to start raining.’… Eventually, there’ll be a trend, eventually there’ll be something that’s honest to work with (and) that’s not speculative.”
EAA Spokesperson Roland Ruiz said his organization will likely declare Stage 3 water restrictions sometime between Monday and Wednesday. Stage 3 means that EAA permit holders such as the City of San Marcos must reduce their permitted groundwater use by 35 percent.
The EAA does not dictate how the city should reduce its pumping. The city, by ordinance, has determined what water restrictions apply at Stage 3. City of San Marcos Conservation Coordinator Jan Klein said the last time Stage 3 was implemented was in the mid-1990s.
“We always, year round, advocate people trying to use water conservatively,” Klein said. “It’s definitely a whole lot more important in times of drought. It’s a whole lot more tempting to go out and water the lawn a lot because it’s dry and it probably looks awful. But it’s a whole lot more important to be careful and conserve water right now.”
A state-mandated stakeholder group is working on ways to ensure that a repeat of the 1950s drought would not harm endangered species reliant on the aquifer.
The federal government and the state list eight species as endangered or threatened that live in the San Marcos region of the Edwards Aquifer, Spring Lake and the upper four miles of the San Marcos River.
In 2007, the Texas Legislature authorized the Edwards Aquifer Recovery Implementation Program (EARIP), which is intended to preserve federally-listed species while balancing the needs of the two million people who use the Aquifer as a water source.
Wassenich, a member of the EARIP Steering Committee, said EARIP stakeholders have made “good progress” and have developed projects that can maintain adequate spring flow at the San Marcos Springs and the Comal Springs. Wassenich said the EARIP group still needs to figure out how to fund the projects. Some projects include paying farmers not to irrigate and storing extra water during high flow times in the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer for use during periods of low spring flow at the Comal Springs and the San Marcos Springs.
“We do not have all the funding questions worked out, but we are well on the way,” Wassenich said of the EARIP process. “We will continue to work on the 1/8 cent sales tax idea for the region, for the next legislative session, but until that happens, we’ve cobbled together suggestions for funding that will include higher pumping fees for EAA permitees. We have to get our report written in the next couple of months. There is a draft (Habitat Conservation Plan) report on the EARIP website.”
Stakeholders participating in the EARIP include cities (San Marcos among them), water utilities, environmental groups, cities, river authorities, agricultural and industrial users, downstream and coastal interests, and state and federal agencies.
