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Carrizo Aquifer - Gonzalez Leases On August 20, 2002 the Board of the San Antonio Water System approved the lease of 4,635 acres in central Gonzales county over a productive part of the Carrizo Aquifer. The utility planned to bring the water source online in 2007 if an initial drilling program determined the project was feasible. Two more leases were planned totaling another 10,400 acres, and total production from the three leases could total about 20,000 acre-feet per year. Landowners will be paid $62.50 per acre-foot. The total project cost was estimated to be about $102 million, including the land and water leases, construction of a wellfield, treatment facilities, and a 58 mile long pipeline to bring the water to San Antonio. Unlike Edwards water, Carrizo water is high in iron and manganese and requires treatment to be compatible with Edwards supplies.
The cities of Seguin and Schertz also leased land in Gonzales county to extract a similar volume of water, and the Bexar Metropolitan Water District leased land and water rights on the border of Gonzales and Guadalupe counties for water production. In 2003, some area residents began to become concerned about the project when different groundwater models predicted very different impacts. The Texas Water Development Board prepared separate models of the southern and central Carrizo, but they overlapped in Gonzales county, and one model predicted there was about four times as much water available as the other. The Gonzales County Groundwater District adopted the more conservative model, but SAWS said its own modeling and field tests showed there is plenty of water available. Since SAWS needs permits from the District, how the agencies resolved the disagreement had potential to impact the future of the project. By late 2005, with SAWS preparing to drill wells and start pipeline construction, there were rising concerns among area citizens about the impact the project will have on their own wells. SAWS stressed that it has a strong commitment to mitigation of any impacts, while District general manager Barry Miller said the permits that SAWS requires "do not fit the district's certified management plan." In April of 2006 SAWS scaled back the project, eliminating plans to take groundwater from eastern Gonzales county. In October of 2008 the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority announced the filing of permit applications for a new water project involving the Carrizo. The project would provide up to 30,000 acre-feet of water per year to Caldwell and Hays counties. The plans include drawing water from the Guadalupe River near Gonzales, along with a Carrizo Aquifer wellfield and an off-channel storage reservoir on a tributary of the Guadalupe River. The permit application requests that during wet years, GBRA be allowed to divert all 30,000 acre-feet from the Guadalupe. During dry years, the Carrizo wellfield and/or the off-channel reservoir would supplement available Guadalupe supplies. GBRA General Manager Bill West said he hoped the project could be online in five to seven years. In July of 2010, the board of the Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation District voted 3-2 to approve SAWS’ permit application to pump 11,687 acre-feet per year from the Carrizo. The permit is for 30 years but has to be renewed every five. SAWS then completed negotiations to rent pipeline capacity from the Schertz-Seguin Local Government Corporation (SSLGC), which built a pipeline from the Carrizo to supply water to those two towns. In February of 2011, SAWS and the SSLGC signed a contract. In addition to the 11,687 acre-feet for which SAWS received a permit, the contract provides SAWS an option to purchase up to 5,000 acre-feet per year of surplus water not used by the cities of Schertz and Seguin. On Nov. 13, 2013, San Antonio received its first delivery of Carrizo water from the SSLGC, a flow of about 4.5 million gallons. Water is integrated into the SAWS system on the northeast side of town. Construction of new wells on SAWS' leased properties was well under way, as well as a major expansion of SSLGC's treatment facility.
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Materials used to prepare this section: "SAWS eyes Gonzales leases" San Antonio Express-News, August 20,
2002.
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