News
Listen: Climate And Water: Planning For A Changing Resource
The state’s expanding population, coupled with more extreme flooding events and drought cycles, is creating short-term management challenges and long-term planning uncertainty. We rely on prevailing climate patterns to plan for development, agriculture, and ranching,...
Zebra Mussels Spreading at Lakes Georgetown, Livingston
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologists have classified Lake Georgetown as infested with an established, reproducing population of invasive zebra mussels and have also changed the status of Lake Livingston to fully infested. Lake Georgetown is a 1,297-acre...
Land conservation seminar explores options
Will Wright | The Herald-Zeitung | Comal County’s open spaces are quickly disappearing, and about 100 regional residents seeking to preserve them attended a seminar that outlined available options for public and private land conservation on Wednesday at McKenna Events...
Lessons From Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Struggle Is America’s Tale
The mayhem that Hurricane Harvey unleashed on Houston didn’t only come from the sky. On the ground, it came sweeping in from the Katy Prairie some 30 miles west of downtown. Water drains naturally in this stretch of Texas, or at least it used to. At more than 600...
San Marcos City Council Votes To Enter Lease-Purchase Agreement
The San Marcos City Council voted on Wednesday to enter a lease-purchase agreement with the Trust for Public Land to purchase 102 acres of undeveloped land. The property is located near Country Estates and is currently owned by Texas State University. The...
Land office turns to private sector to develop water as new revenue stream
Revenues from the crude and natural gas found in the Delaware Basin are flowing into state coffers, benefiting the state’s general fund, transportation funding and the state’s public schools and universities, among others. Now, water is about to be added to the...
Hundreds of dams in Texas could fail in worst-case flood
The earthen dam on the outskirts of this Williamson County city certainly does not look flimsy. At 35 feet high and nearly a third of a mile long, it has done a reliable job of holding back floodwaters on Chandler Branch, a normally placid tributary of Brushy Creek,...
Experiencing the Dark Skies of Texas
The stars. I think I share a common experience with many people who grew up in an urban or suburban environment. You manage to learn about Orion and his belt, the Big Dipper and its little companion, and of course the North Star. You have a chance to see them on...
National Parks Struggle With a Mounting Crisis: Too Many Visitors
The rocky shorelines, shifting deserts and winding canyons of the country’s 59 national parks have been hallmarks of American vacations for generations. But the number of park visitors has reached an unprecedented level, leaving many tourists frustrated and many...
Bandera Electric Cooperative helps customers choose dark sky friendly lighting
By Patti Berkstresser | Bandera Electric Cooperative and The Real County Night Skies team, part of Keep It Real-ly Beautiful, have taken a major step in the reduction of light pollution in our community. BEC has installed three Dark Sky Compliant outdoor lighting...
Nirenberg: City Reviewing ‘Pandora’s Box’ of Impervious Cover Policies
The convergence of dialogue, data, and disaster have sparked a more serious look at regulations that impact water management and development in San Antonio, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Monday. Revisions to the City’s impervious cover policies will likely add to the...
Ahead of the curve
Hill Country stakeholders proactively create Upper Llano River Watershed Protection Plan. Composed of the North and South Llano rivers, the Upper Llano River is known as a Hill Country treasure. Its near-pristine flows provide a healthy ecosystem supporting a variety...
Reforestation Experts Help Restore a Wild Blanco River
Each week, Ina Alexatos drives throughout Wimberley in a Subaru Forester with the words Trees for the Blanco printed across the side. She visits riverside landowners one by one to consult them on letting their banks go wild. She then stakes orange flags to mark where...
Flood Models Show Olmos Dam Would Overflow in Harvey-like Storm
A direct hit by a hurricane of Harvey’s magnitude would cause catastrophic flooding that would flow over the Olmos Dam and emergency spillway by four feet and inundate portions of U.S. Highway 281 for approximately 12 days, according to models released by the San...
McDonald Observatory works with energy companies to stop light pollution
The McDonald Observatory, often called the “Crown Jewel of the University of Texas,” monitors the night sky in the Davis Mountains. On a clear night, the entire Milky Way is visible from the observatory’s telescopes and the naked eye. However, the stars at night have...
Festival Brings Together Good Things to Know and Fun Things to Do
The Hill Country Alliance brings its eighth annual Rainwater Revival + Hill Country Living Festival to the Dripping Springs Ranch Park on Saturday, November 4. The Festival is a combination of fun things to do, like live music, wine tasting, food trailers, tiny...
Cindy Luongo Cassidy honored with International Dark-Sky award
The International Dark-Sky Association has recently recognized U.S. and international dark sky heroes for their contributions to combating light pollution. The 2017 award winners include the pioneer of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development...
America’s Next Great Metropolis Is Taking Shape In Texas
This is a post from last that is still very relevant today. If you drive south from Dallas, or west from Houston, a subtle shift takes place. The monotonous, flat prairie that dominates much of Texas gives way to a landscape that rises and ebbs. The...
Meadows Center Gets New Chief Water Policy Officer
Robert Mace, a senior scientist and deputy executive administrator of the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB), will join The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. With more than 20 years of experience at the highest levels of state...
Backed by private capital, company plans heavy pumping in Trinity Aquifer
A local company’s plan to pump more water from the sensitive Trinity Aquifer to supply fast-growing northern Bexar and southern Comal counties is raising concerns after a New York private equity firm announced its financial support. Brightstar Capital Partners...
Community Unites Against Rock Crusher Site – Deadline for comments Oct. 31
The mayors of Cottonwood Shores and Marble Falls have jumped into the fray against plans for a rock crushing facility just off the southwest corner of the intersection of U.S. 281 and Texas 71 in Burnet County. Cottonwood Shores recently joined several other cities,...
Director’s Notes – October 2017
If you’re a river lover like me, then you likely celebrated #WorldRiversDay last month on September 27. Rivers are an integral part of our communities. In fact, did you know there are 13 rivers that begin right here in the Texas Hill Country? More than just a place...
Festival Will Celebrate the Joy and Beauty of Hill Country Living
The Rainwater Revival + Hill Country Living Festival, an annual event of the Hill Country Alliance, returns to the Dripping Spring Ranch Park on Saturday, November 4, from 10am to 5pm. The festival is free, family friendly, and promises plenty to do and see for all...
How about rethinking a cultural icon? The front lawn.
According to NASA, there are 40 million acres of turf grass in the United States — lawn, in a sense, is our largest crop. Individually we spend, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70 hours a year mowing our lawns; and as a nation, according to the...
Private equity firm invests in business that sells water in the Texas Hill Country
Money is flowing into a local water business to make more drinking water available and plug projected shortages as the Texas Hill Country's population swells. A new company launched by a prominent rural Texas land broker in San Antonio, Harold Trip DuPerier III,...
Hays County Commissioner Will Conley steps down to run for judge
Hays County Commissioner Will Conley is stepping down from his post to seek the Republican nomination for county judge, he announced Tuesday night at a press conference. County Judge Bert Cobb has been on leave since August as he battles cancer. Cobb is not seeking...
One family’s venture in private land conservation: generation to generation
Ninety-seven percent of the land in Texas is privately owned. It is regularly acknowledged that increasing fragmentation of private lands is one of the greatest threats to the sound management of our natural resources, including ground and surface water, wildlife...
Texas Water Symposium will discuss climate, water, and the future of Central Texas
Celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Texas Water Symposium and the opening of the 2017-2018 season with a conversation about climate change and the future of water in Central Texas at 7pm on Thursday, November 9th. The program, titled Climate and Water in Central...
Pumping impacts to Devils River
Video: A geoscience team from Southwest Research Institute recently completed a study on the long-term effects of groundwater pumping near Devils River, one of the state’s last pristine rivers. They found that the river relies heavily on natural springs from the...
Commissioner Wolff: High-Speed Rail Transportation ‘Closer Than Ever’ for SA
High-speed passenger rail connecting Texas cities, a promise that seemed to have died after decades of discussion, is back in the conversation as San Antonio squares off against growth and congestion with talk of light rail as a solution that needs only voter support....