Sunday, July 16, 2000
Abilene, area look at array
of possibilities
By Samuel Segrist
Reporter-News Staff Writer
Rain falls on the slopes of the Golan Heights
and cascades into the creeks of Zachi, Yehudiya and Daliot.
The rocky streams carry their water to the
Jordan River. The river eventually drains into Lake Kinneret,
called the Sea of Galilee in the Bible. From before Christ till
this day, that bit of moisture has stirred people to violence.
Since the beginning of history, people the
world over have killed each other over water. The same is true
in Texas, though the combat has happened in courtrooms rather
than in the streets.
Abilene leaders expect they, too, will eventually
have to fight for another source. Though a planned pipeline to
O.H. Ivie Reservoir is projected to serve Abilene’s water
demands through the next 50 years or so, city residents and officials
are already looking beyond Ivie.
On Thursday, Abilene Mayor Grady Barr said
he will create a committee this year to consider Abilene’s
next water source.
The ideas for more sources are as plentiful
as raindrops in a spring shower. Hundreds of proposals have been
considered, and municipal administrators usually know of dozens
of ideas that exist somewhere on paper.
But the people who run the water supplies
must consider the politics of any plan along with its plausibility.
The Golan Heights problem, for instance,
continues to this day.
Peace talks began in June with a Syrian
demand that Israel give up all rights to the Golan. But Kinneret
is Israel’s primary water source, and the Jewish state has
long been hesitant to give up control of the lake’s watershed.
In the 1960s, Syria attempted to build a
diversion canal to collect the rain before it could drain into
the lake. The project was one of the primary reasons for the Six
Days War.
That same decade, Texas engineers published
the Texas Water Plan. They proposed building 53 new reservoirs
in the state and enlarging six existing ones.
But that idea didn’t garner nearly
as much attention as another one.
The plan also called for the construction
of an elaborate canal system that would transport water from the
Mississippi River across Texas as far west as New Mexico. The
cost was estimated at $6.3 billion.
The Brazos River Authority approved the
principle of the plan, but Texans shouldn’t expect to see
the canals anytime soon. Texas has no rights to Mark Twain’s
river, and water experts refer to the plan when they talk about
strange ideas that never came to be. No one in the state wanted
to bother with the fight.
“If you tried to get Mississippi water
today, it’d be hell on wheels,” said Dwayne Hargesheimer,
Abilene water department director.
Numbers game
Basic mathematics dictate that the city’s
water department start planning for another water source soon.
Combined, Hubbard Creek and Ivie reservoirs
can give Abilene an average of 41 million gallons of water a day.
Abilene owns the rights to an average 28
million gallons a day from Hubbard during the summer. When Ivie
comes on line in about two years, the city will be able to draw
an average of 13 million gallons daily from the Coleman County
lake.
Before drought restrictions went into effect,
water consumption in the heat of a summer day often surpassed
41 million. The record for daily use is 49.7 million gallons,
set in 1980.
Say a drought similar to the latest one
hits, and Lake Fort Phantom Hill drops again to a level that makes
the water supply unavailable. Usage restrictions could probably
keep the consumption under control, as they have so far this summer.
But, judging from the number of complaints
the Abilene water department has received since implementing restrictions,
city directors are aware that not everyone is happy about curtailing
their usage.
Besides that, the U.S. Census predicts an
additional 60,000 people will live in Taylor County by 2050. Throw
in a few industries spilling over from the crowded Interstate
35 corridor, and it adds up to a need for another major water
source.
Also, state water planning groups across
Texas are compiling the state’s next water plan. The document
will be considered by the state Legislature next year and, if
approved, will guide water supply programs for years to come.
As it has been before, a new reservoir could be the most conventional
way to produce more water.
The next reservoir
Planning, building and bringing a reservoir
on line takes decades. After the West Central Texas Municipal
Water District was created in 1955, building Hubbard Creek Reservoir
took seven years. Another 12 years passed before Abilene could
pump water from it.
People who were infants when Ivie Reservoir
was first conceived in the late 1970s have reached drinking age,
and yet the first Abilene water from the lake is still not expected
to arrive before spring 2002.
Some work on a proposed next lake has been
done.
In 1980, Big Country water officials studied
possible sites for a reservoir. Engineers considered locations
primarily on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River.
The Abilene water department already has
rights to water from the basin, but only when the river floods.
Before Abilene decided to buy into the Ivie
project, the study listed seven sites for future reservoirs. The
most plausible was called Cedar Ridge. North of Phantom beyond
the point where Elm Creek pours into the Clear Fork, the proposed
reservoir could produce about 9 million gallons of water a day,
according to Hargesheimer.
But the water director said the site has
its share of problems.
The lake would hold mostly brackish water,
similar to that in Possum Kingdom Lake, that would be costly to
clean. Most prospective reservoirs along the Brazos would have
similar water quality.
Yet a 1997 law that severely restricts the
transfer of water from one river basin to another limits Abilene’s
options. Ivie, which sits in the Colorado River basin, is grandfathered
under the law. If the lake were built today, Abilene would be
unable to purchase water from it.
Another problem is simply the West Texas
climate. As the latest drought proves, the rainfall the area receives
often can’t keep the existing reservoirs at a healthy level.
David Bell, director of the West Central
Texas Municipal Water District, said his organization has considered
a site along the Clear Fork as well. The Big Country has not reached
the maximum number of possible reservoirs, but it is getting close,
he said.
“There is the potential for probably
one more,” Bell said. “It will not be an easy project
because of water rights issues.”
The biggest battle for any reservoir is
in the legal arena. Cities and water districts that consider the
Brazos River theirs and are downstream of West Texas can be tenacious
about protecting their water resources, as was shown by the protracted
fight before work on Ivie began.
Directors of the Ivie project had to wrestle
with water directors in Austin, the Texas Legislature and the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before winning permission to build
the dam. Any new lake would probably draw a similar — if
not worse — battle, Hargesheimer said.
Pipeline dreams
What the city might do instead is connect
to another existing reservoir.
“The best potential in my mind is Possum
Kingdom,” Hargesheimer said.
No cities use the cloudy water from Possum
Kingdom Lake. A new company, Possum Kingdom Water Supply Corp.,
is building a treatment plant and pipeline, but plans to supply
water only to rural homes in the area.
The lake boasts three-quarters more storage
capacity than Hubbard, which lies about 30 miles due west of Possum
Kingdom. The Brazos provides a reliable source of water for the
reservoir — the last report had the lake at 85 percent full.
Both Hubbard and Ivie have struggled to reach a 60-percent level
in the last few months.
The project might have some difficult logistics.
Its pipeline would cover a long distance
through some developed areas. Also, the water has a high content
of solid minerals, meaning the city would have to install more
equipment to treat it before passing it on to consumers.
Some other reservoirs have been mentioned
as possibilities, Hargesheimer said. The water in most of the
larger lakes nearest Abilene is spoken for.
Lubbock’s Alan Henry Reservoir, which
sits south of Post, is a new resource that doesn’t look practical
for Abilene. The lake would not be able to provide enough water
to make the cost of such a long pipeline economically viable.
Also, the city of Lubbock paid for Henry, and Abilene would have
to negotiate a deal with Lubbock City Hall.
“How you could acquire water rights
out of that, I don’t know,” Hargesheimer said.
Down under
Abilenians have long dreamed of finding
a reliable source of water underground.
But the water table on which the Key City
rests has usually served more as a nuisance for people wanting
to dig basements than as a reliable water resource. In the 1890s,
a project to drill an artesian well came up dry.
Individual wells throughout the city have
become common during the drought, but the water that percolates
comes from a table that is too salty and shallow to serve much
purpose.
Water directors are therefore looking for
aquifers outside Abilene.
One of the closest lies just a few miles
north of Lake Fort Phantom Hill. The Seymour Aquifer northeast
of Taylor County is actually several pockets of gravel that aren’t
joined. It isn’t a vast underground water storage tank stretching
hundreds of miles, like the Ogallala Aquifer in the Panhandle
and central United States.
The Seymour Aquifer’s closest pocket
doesn’t have much water in it, said Knox County Judge David
Perdue.
That suits some water planners just fine.
El Paso and San Antonio are practicing underground
storage, in which treated effluent or extra water is pumped into
an aquifer for later use. Some water administrators like the idea
because the biggest problem with lake storage — evaporation
— is eliminated.
The idea’s cost effectiveness is being
investigated for the upcoming state water plan.
“My instinct is we should not ignore
any significant source of any water supply,” Bell said.
But some water administrators remain hesitant
about the idea.
The state does not govern how much water
people can pump from underground. Once the liquid is pumped into
an aquifer, anyone can tap into it and take as much as they want.
Although Perdue said the empty aquifer in
Jones County is under an area that isn’t extensively irrigated,
meaning Abilene water customers wouldn’t have a lot of private
wells to compete with, landowners could sell their water rights
to a third party. Entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens has bought water
rights in the Panhandle with plans to sell and pipe the water
elsewhere.
The future tide
For water supplies, some engineers in Texas
have looked beyond the U.S. border. And it isn’t the southern
one.
Hargesheimer said he’s seen a proposal
to ship Canadian water to Texas and other states through a pipeline
built along present-day railroad tracks.
To make it cost-effective, the line would
carry a mixture of coal for power plants and water. As coal is
a natural filter, water departments would have pure water at their
disposal once the liquid and fuel were separated.
The cost is somewhere in the multibillions.
Engineers would also have to acquire rights of way from railroad
companies, the same companies that would be losing their coal
shipping revenue to the pipeline.
“That’s one of the more far-fetched
ones,” Hargesheimer said of the idea.
Later this century, the sources of water
could become more diverse as advancing technology and increasing
demand push engineers and politicians to come up with new ideas.
And occasionally, entrepreneurs like Pickens
will surprise people with a new proposal.
Other technologies will continue to play
a more important role.
Corpus Christi, on the Gulf of Mexico, announced
in June that the city is considering building a desalinization
plant. The treatment center would be built to recover water released
from a nearby power plant’s cooling towers to offset the
cost.
But even with the price of desalinization
coming down, the dollars are high. The Corpus plant’s construction
costs are estimated at $220 million as opposed to the $20 million
Abilene expects to spend on a treatment plant for water from Ivie
Reservoir.
Corpus also faces environmental problems.
Water planners in Tampa, Fla., had to fight
charges from environmentalists before building a desalinization
plant. People complained that the saline dumped back into the
ocean was too concentrated and would hurt the sea life.
Corpus is considering building the plant
within the next 30 years. The plant will not supply the rest of
the state, even though water directors won’t rule out ocean
water someday supplying most of Texas.
A new way of thinking
Hargesheimer said the philosophy cities
have regarding their water supplies isn’t complicated, though
it causes a lot of complications.
“Basically, everybody’s out on
their own trying to do their thing and beat the other guy,”
he said.
This year, Abilene renegotiated its contract
with the West Central Texas Municipal Water District. The final
deal added to the amount Abilene can take from Hubbard Creek Reservoir,
but only after the Key City agreed to some new restrictions.
Three of the four city managers who signed
the new contract referred to it as “acceptable.” Bell
said the new contract will work, even though not everybody got
what they wanted.
It’s part of an overall process. Cities
must work within their own water districts, water districts work
within their own water planning regions. And everyone must work
and occasionally fight with the state.
Hargesheimer said infighting is the not
the right foundation on which to build a waterway between states,
and especially between nations.
“There are people who say eventually
that’s going to happen,” he said. “The mentality
of the people will certainly have to be different. It might be
different 200 years from now.”
Contact staff writer Samuel Segrist at
676-6744 or segrists@abinews.com.
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