Environment & Nature
The Blue Hole, Mother Spring of the San Antonio River, Is Flowing Again
By 
Brendan Gibbons |
Brendan Gibbons / Rivard Report
The Blue Hole starts flowing again whenever the Edwards Aquifer reaches around 670 feet above sea level.
After nearly three weeks of frequent rains, the San Antonio River’s most prolific spring is flowing again.
Clear, cold water now bubbles up from depths, contained by a stone well — affectionately known as the Blue Hole. The spring is part of the Headwaters at Incarnate Word sanctuary, located next to the University of the Incarnate Word campus.
The water pours itself across a formerly dry river bed and mingles with water flowing downstream from Olmos Creek, forming the headwaters of the San Antonio River.
The spring’s return is a result of the rains that brought an end to drought earlier this month. Water that flows up to the Blue Hole comes from the Edwards Aquifer, a vast water-bearing limestone rock layer that serves as the main drinking water supply for the San Antonio region.
The Blue Hole flows when levels of the Edwards Aquifer reach about 670 feet above mean sea level, as measured by the J-17 Index Well that taps the aquifer’s pool below San Antonio.
As of Thursday, the aquifer’s level reached nearly 672 feet, the highest it’s been since June 2017, according to Edwards Aquifer Authority data.
Brendan Gibbons / Rivard Report
Water flowing up and out of the Blue Hole comes from the Edwards Aquifer, the main drinking water source for the San Antonio Region.
Also on Thursday, Edwards Aquifer Authority officials announced that the aquifer has recovered enough to lift some pumping restrictions. The aquifer is now in Stage 1 drought restrictions, which mandates a 20 percent pumping cutback for all Edwards Aquifer well owners.
The City of San Antonio has not yet lifted its own Stage 2 water restrictions that restrict sprinkler use to once per week. City ordinances stipulate when City Manager Sheryl Sculley, in consultation with San Antonio Water System President and CEO Robert Puente, can choose to lift drought restrictions, which likely will be 15 days after the 10-day average of the J-17 well’s level reaches 650 feet, SAWS spokesperson Anne Hayden said.
That should be Oct. 1, she said.
Earlier this month, water from underground also began filling the pools at San Pedro Springs, San Antonio’s other major downtown aquifer-fed springs. San Pedro Springs flow when the aquifer reaches about 665 feet.
Wow Brendan. You’re quick. Thanks for the notice.
Our springs are a treasure. Some measure of water conservation should always be in place to protect the springs. We should always be in the conservation mode. I don’t recall seeing any major vegetation die-off and we survived the watering restrictions. San Antonio will never again be small-town-city of less than a million people again.
Thanks for reporting the good news. Just one additional but important bit of information: the aboriginal inhabitants, Native Americans in the San Antonio area have, for thousands of years and generations of their history, called these springs “Yanaguana”. Everytime this Spring reawakens, it is a joy. And the value of the water in the springs has probably doubled. Aquifers all over the State of Texas are being drained by the withdrawal of billions of gallons of water used in fracking (millions for one well), mixed with chemicals and frack sand, then injected into oilfield liquid waste wells deep in the earth. Efforts to recycle this water even for fracking use, have been only minimally successful. Result: these billions being withdrawn from aquifers are being lost forever to Nature’s own purification and recycling process. The latest project are two commercial water well companies withdrawing millions of gallons per day from the El Capitan Reef Aquifer near Van Horn. That water is most likely intended to supply Apache Oil’s pending startup of production in the Davis Mountains area. This Aquifer has supplied the San Solomon Springs, heart of Balmorhea State Park, for 12,000 years. Those springs and the Park are the beloved by thousands of visitors who frequent every year in swimming season. It is also a bird watching site well known to birders. The El Capitan Reef also provides water for West Texas farmers in the area via their irrigation wells. Just saying. Unless one lives in the area, it is very easy for urban folk dwellers hundreds of miles distant from San Solomon to realize what is happening to Nature’s methods of providing our water.
Kudos to the above writers for reminding us to think of the whole water system and the irreplaceable value of drinking and farming water. A long-term outlook is always essential!
Agreed, Judy. Do we have any idea of how many thousands of people in various cities, towns and rural areas depend on the springs and aquifers in our part of Texas? That is one big network of voting citizens!
Much gratitude and respect to you, Sister E for continuing the information vigil for us all, helping us to see and understand what the powers that be would prefer remain obscured. Environmental health = Public health, and we ignore that at our peril, that of our children and all life on earth.
First Peoples, please 🙂