San Antonio’s business-as-usual is putting our water future at risk. Last week Brooks City Base sought rush-rush rezoning approval to allow Niagara Bottling to put San Antonio’s water in plastic bottles to sell nationwide. This, while San Antonio Water System (SAWS) wants us to spend $3.4 billion on the Vista Ridge pipeline to bring incredibly expensive additional water to San Antonio. City Council fortunately paused the zoning deal, but it did not kill it. It should; it is a bad deal for our community.
The first problem is the very idea of having a bottling company in San Antonio. Despite recent rains, we are not a water-rich region. No water bottling company is sustainable here, no matter how much water we pipe in from other areas. Niagara is trying to get out of the Los Angeles region precisely because of California’s water crisis. Why should San Antonio allow Niagara to come here to hasten our own?
If we are to be prepared for the impacts of climate change and the very real likelihood of severe droughts, San Antonio must protect our water supply vigilantly. We live in a semi-arid region that is going to experience, in the foreseeable future, what researchers call “unprecedented drought conditions.” New data, reported this March in the New York Times, suggest the strong probability of a 35-year-long drought before the end of this century. How can we withstand such a drought? Not by increasing consumption of water. Not by exempting existing commercial, industrial, and institutional SAWS customers from having to take appropriate measures to increase their water-efficiency. And certainly not by allowing water to new businesses whose profits come only from selling our water elsewhere.
SAWS’ “solution” to our regularly dry circumstances is the costly Vista Ridge pipeline, which would bring supposedly “excess” water from Burleson County at a much higher price than water we already have. SAWS expects current residential rate-payers to pay for that pipeline, while giving new businesses like Niagara cut-rate access to the water that is already here.
SAWS calls Vista Ridge water “drought-proof.” That is a gross misrepresentation. Water from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer is already being overcommitted and might not be there for us if drought conditions persist. Rather than encouraging increased conservation and water efficiency – especially from San Antonio businesses – SAWS and the Chamber of Commerce are promoting San Antonio as a place of “abundant” water. That is a recipe for water disaster.
Picture San Antonio in 2035 with another 800,000 residents, mainly living in sprawling suburban developments with lush mega-lawns and water-gulping landscaping. Imagine many new businesses – resort hotels with golf courses and luxurious spas, refineries, and bottling companies – all attracted by this so-called “abundant water,” subsidized by city residents.
Then severe drought hits. The city can’t get any of those profitable water-guzzling businesses to cut back their water usage significantly. Residents who have never learned how to live with drought are furious about watering restrictions. The city finds itself using more water than projected from the Edwards Aquifer, just when the amount of water coming from Vista Ridge is reduced by 50% or more, because the Carrizo-Wilcox is overdrawn.
We must not wait until we are 10 years into a mega-drought to start preparing for living with drought as our “new normal,” thanks to climate change. To deny the possibility – indeed probability – of serious, prolonged drought is to set our city up for a water crisis more disastrous than that facing Los Angeles right now. Such a drought in our community would not be a “natural disaster,” but rather a humanly caused one.
The Vista Ridge deal was a bad decision in the first place, because it puts San Antonio at serious financial risk. But more serious is the fact that the mirage of “abundant” Vista Ridge water is preventing our community from investing its effort and money in local measures that could truly prepare us for the future. I describe some of those measures in “Re-Framing San Antonio’s Water Future,” which is available online here.
Brooks City Base must not be allowed to offer Niagara Bottling access to San Antonio’s water. If Niagara is allowed to build its bottling plant, we will be stuck with a water-guzzling company that refuses to cut its production when San Antonio is in another drought. San Antonio should allow only sustainable growth. Niagara and similar businesses are certainly not sustainable.
Those of us who have studied water issues appreciate the Council’s postponement of the zoning decision about Niagara, which the Brooks staff tried to sneak through without notice. And we agree with Councilmember Ron Nirenberg (D8)’s assertion, as quoted by the Rivard Report, that “the implications for our water supply need to be discussed in full public view.” That’s a good start, but not enough.
Council must take ample time to consider the policy issue of whether to allow new so-called “development” that would gobble up our community’s precious water. Vista Ridge must be reconsidered in light of a better vision for our community’s water future.
Council must also listen to the people about this policy matter. In the past, time and time-again, our community has defended our water. We want to be part of protecting our water future.
*Featured/top image: Niagara bottled water. Courtesy photo.
Related Stories:
Zoning Change for Water Bottling Plant Paused for a Second Look
Bottled Water Company Eyes San Antonio
Committee Approves New SAWS Rate Structure
Council Approves Two Year SAWS Rate Increase
San Antonio’s Water Security Tied to Health of its Neighbors
We barely have enough water for fracking…. Now this?
I agree we cannot give our water away like this
How soon we forget. Has the memory of several years drought been erased by one rainy May? Water is the future of this community and it must not be sold away.
This shouldn’t even be an issue. No way. Bottled water is wasteful enough as it is.
Ms. McGuire… Thank you for these wise words and your efforts! There is absolutely no benefit to those of us who live and work here to sell off our water this way. Plastic bottled water shouldn’t even be encouraged as is; abut all of the above reasons add up even further to point to a terrible idea. We need to say NO. Loud and clear. Not the direction SA needs to go.
Agreed! Why I voted against it on zoning!
So your premise is that Niagara Bottling caused California’s drought. Recent college graduates might fall for this false logic. LOL.
Thomas Beck, that is not at all what Dr. McGuire is saying.
As I understand it:
The drought exists, is worsening. Bottling water during a drought is madness.
There is plenty of water. It’s just another way for the government to hold back on facts. And if we do decide to bring them to San Antonio. And if we run low on water. We can always get the religious puritanicals to pray for some. i am still flabbergasted about the running out of gas during the Carter administration. All made up.
Says the Sierra club. The group that for ever destroyed San Antonio water supply.
Come up to British Columbia where our provincial government just sold 265 million litres of water for bottling to Nestle for $596.25. Yes less than $600 dollars.
Vote with your wallet
Not a good idea to sell our water !!!
I remember the catfish farm that got shut down.
Juan!
Charge a substantial water renewal fee and use that money to purchase more land under the aquifer.
Hi Meredith – you (and other Rivard Report readers) might also keep an eye on the annual Water Loss Audit submitted by SAWS to the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) each year by May 1st and available to the public by request to the TWDB. I haven’t seen public reporting about the submitted 2014 SAWS Water Loss Audit but it appears that SAWS continues to report a double-digit percentage loss (combining various categories including breaks, infrastructure leaks and metering inaccuracies as well as unavoidable losses) or over 10 billion gallons lost each year since at least 2010. There also appears to be a drop in data validity score in SAWS water loss reporting from year-to-year.
Ten billion gallons of water apparently equates to roughly one billion five-minute showers or 250 million loads of laundry annually (in a service area of well under two million customers currently).
New water development in San Antonio – from new freshwater sourcing via rural pipeline and residential fee structures to supporting bottled water sales – might be easier to swallow if it seemed SAWS was moving more effectively towards reducing avoidable system-wide water loss.
Resources:
10 billion gallons of water equates to:
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/asset.html/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2015/04/07/10-billion-gallons-of-water-equates.jpg.html
TWDB Water Loss Audit Resources
http://www.twdb.texas.gov/conservation/resources/waterloss-resources.asp
Express-news coverage of the 2013 SAWS water loss audit – ‘water loses creep up to 17.6%’
http://www.expressnews.com/news/environment/article/SAWS-water-losses-creep-up-to-17-6-percent-5430940.php
Express-news coverage of the 2012 SAWS water loss audit – ‘lost water means plenty of dollars down the drain’
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/environment/article/Lost-water-means-plenty-of-dollars-down-the-drain-4454919.php
(Some SAWS water loss audits are available online currently by searching the http://www.saws.org site)
2012 SAWS water loss audit data:
http://www.saws.org/business_center/contractsol/RFQ%5C889%5C2012_SAWS_WaterLossAudit-Data%202.pdf
2011 SAWS water loss audit data:
http://www.saws.org/business_center/ContractSol/RFQ%5C889%5C2011_SAWS_WaterLossAudit-Data%203.pdf
2010 SAWS water loss audit data:
http://www.saws.org/business_center/ContractSol/RFQ%5C889%5C2010_SAWS_WaterLossAudit-Data%201.pdf
Check the level of the Edwards Aquifer. We’re still on Stage 2 or 3 water rationing (depending on where you live). Comal Springs are still flowing at just 2/3 of the historical median.
Whaaaat?
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/14/nestle_is_bottling_water_straight_from_the_heart_of_californias_drought/
Zoning may be the best tool at hand to deal with this issue at the moment, but it is not the right tool. Had the company found land that was already zoned correctly, there would have been no way to challenge the project on the grounds of zoning, so maybe no way to challenge the project.
Seems the problem is that water is not priced correctly to discourage this type of activity or discourage other large water consumers. Water prices are graduated, but perhaps those prices are not graduated enough. Impact fees are in place, but there is little disincentive to extend water infrastructure to new sites.
It’s one thing to say these activities should not be allowed, it’s another to implement the policies that ensure these activities aren’t attractive and therefore do not look to move into San Antonio.
Just tell Niagra Bottling our precious water is not for sale! Why recruit businesses whose product depletes our resources? Less water for SA and more plastic bottles in our environment – Really?
Thank you, Rivard Report and Meredith McGuire, for bringing this to light — from those of us who live over the aquifer that San Antonio developers want to mine with the 142-mile Vista Ridge $3.4 billion water pipeline (Burleson, Milam, Lee and Bastrop counties).
It is so very important to all of us — including citizens between our counties — that San Antonians understand that SAWS can still walk away from Vista Ridge.
The legislature is also starting the get the point. In this session they:
1. Stopped a last minute maneuver by SAWS for Vista Ridge by eliminating the legally required support from affected county commissioners courts. (This was within hours of the end of the session!), and
2. The defeat of Rep. Lyle Larson’s “gridzilla” study to mine aquifers and flood critical farm and timber to serve developers in more arid areas in SA, Austin and DFW where developers are determined to build out.
Hmmm…sounds like what they did just 50 years ago in another state starting with the letter “C”. Hmm…same state Niagara wants to move from!
This is about conserving — water and our wallets — and uniting Texans to protect our land and water from hogs at the public trough who cannot control themselves.
Linda Curtis, League of Independent Voters of Texas
Bastrop resident
Consumption of bottled water should be discouraged on general principle. It takes more than one gallon of water just to rinse a 1-gallon container manufacturerd for bottled water, and that’s even before the water to be sold is put in it!
Bottled water is environmentally unsound. Besides wasting water, the plastic bottles create a solid waste and litter problem if they are not recycled.
The City should be attracting “green” industries, not ones like Niagra. A policy and incentives for green industries would help to make San Antonio known for its desirable industries. This would be a good way to stimulate our economy, and would help the future of sustainability here as well.
We will all have an opportunity to provide input to the City’s Sustainability Plan on June 23 from 5-8 pm in the Grotto of the Henry B Gonzalez Convention Center. May all of its residents who are concerned about our city’s future show up and be voices of reason.
Why would a water guzzling business want to source its raw material from a semi-arid region in the first place? Where is the sound business sense in this? Surely there are places in this country that have an abundant, renewable water source that would be a better location for Niagra.
Hey Niagra, about considering a location near your namesake?
This is really strange