PRINT THIS PAGE | E-MAIL THIS PAGE

Monday, June 30, 1997

Water from flooding, rains refill Edwards Aquifer

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Recent rains raised the level of the Edwards Aquifer by 10 feet in four days and should continue to refill the natural underground reservoir for two more months, officials say.

The recharge leaves the San Antonio's sole source of drinking water at its highest level since May 1994. The rains, which produced severe flooding in the Texas Hill Country, also are allowing farmers cultivating tens of thousands of acres west of San Antonio to reduce their reliance on the aquifer.

"There have been a lot of irrigators who have turned their pumps off and probably won't turn them on for the rest of the year," said Steve Walthour, hydrologist with the Edwards Aquifer Authority. "These are the guys who generally irrigate up until around the Fourth of July.

"This is about the time of year that we start getting into heavy lawn watering, and we don't have that now."

Officials say the aquifer level at the Bexar County index well jumped from 666.3 feet above sea level June 20 to 676.9 feet Friday. That compares with the June historical average of 662.7 and a six-year low of 627.5 feet in the midst of a drought a year ago.

The aquifer's all-time high of 703.3 feet was recorded in June 1992, and its low was 612.5 feet in 1956.

Also showing an improvement are aquifer-fed springs.

Flows from the Comal Springs in New Braunfels rose from 273 cubic feet per second (cfs) on June 20 to 320 cfs on Wednesday, just above the June average of 288 cfs.

There won't be any estimate of the amount of water flowing into the aquifer until after officials conduct extensive calculations at year's end.

But the rain couldn't have come at a better time after four straight years of below-average aquifer recharge and a drought in 1996.

"Obviously, we've seen the Bexar County index well recover nicely so we can assume that there has been a large amount of recharge," George Ozuna, chief of the San Antonio office of the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Resources Division, told the San Antonio Express-News. Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
Send the URL (Address) of This Story to A Friend: