News
SAWS offers its customers discounted rain barrels
Many of us have watched the rain pouring from our rooftops and wished we could save it for a drier day. Now you can! SAWS is offering coupons towards the purchase of a rain barrel for residential water customers. Distribution Event Order by Oct. 20 -...
Oct. 16 last day to comment to keep Texas billboards from doubling to 85 feet
Imagine driving across Texas and seeing billboards suddenly stretching twice as high, marring your view of the landscape. A scenic advocacy group fears this could be the result of proposed new rules from the Texas Department of Transportation. For decades, the maximum...
Boerne still charms but growth beckons
Natalie Sales had never laid eyes on this small town, nestled in the Hill Country 30 miles northwest of downtown San Antonio, when her husband suggested moving here four years ago, seeking a better quality of life. The couple were raising their two daughters in the...
Water Myths Debunked
Myth: Our water supply is infinite. If only that were true. Remember the water cycle? Evaporation and transpiration, condensation, precipitation. Repeat. Unfortunately, we are limited to the water that is available to us now—the same water that our ancestors drank and...
Conserving land in Austin as the skyline grows
One look, one visit, one experience is all it takes to hook people on Austin and the Hill Country. Hundreds of people move here every day, but there's a price for all of this progress. “People move to the Hill Country because it is such a unique and special place,"...
2017 Hill Country Alliance Leadership Summit Draws Crowd with Message of Inclusion and Storytelling
On September 21st, conservation leaders from across the Texas Hill Country met at Camp Lucy in Dripping Springs for the Hill Country Alliance’s Annual Leadership Summit. The event theme, From Local to Regional: The Shared Story of the Texas Hill Country, brought...
Questions arise on Blanco River bridge funds
A lack of information on a proposed $30 million bridge that could span the Blanco River in Kyle led officials to question placing the project on the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (CAMPO) 2040 plan. However, Kyle Mayor Todd Webster said the project,...
Water evaporation could provide vast amounts of renewable energy, find scientists
A new source of vast amounts of renewable energy – the evaporation of water – has been discovered by scientists. Writing in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at Columbia University estimated that lakes in the US could generate 325 gigawatts of power,...
2018 Texas Hill Country Calendar features winners of annual Hill Country Alliance Photo Contest
The Hill Country Alliance (HCA) recently released their 11th Texas Hill Country Calendar. Once again, the HCA calendar pairs stunning imagery of incredible Hill Country scenes with important messages about why we must actively work to protect and preserve all that we...
The Cities Of The 21st Century Will Be Defined By Water
"Now as cities wrestle with the reality of more intense storms, more flooding, and more water to manage, low-impact development is earning renewed recognition as an essential mechanism to help them become more resilient. It’s emblematic of a broader philosophical...
Does the Colorado River Have Rights? A Lawsuit Seeks to Declare It a Person
Does a river — or a plant, or a forest — have rights? This is the essential question in what attorneys are calling a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit, in which a Denver lawyer and a far-left environmental group are asking a judge to recognize the Colorado River as a...
Texas is a surprising national leader in water conservation
In her 2013 book, Big, Hot Cheap and Right, journalist Erica Greider observes that Texas is an idiosyncratic place that regularly surprises. The state is famous as the capital of the U.S. oil industry and for a pugnacious hostility to regulation and environmental...
Five large cities invest in upstream conservation to improve water quality for their residents
Since 2007, urban areas have been home to more than half the global population—a proportion that is expected to rise. Growing cities are putting pressure on the lakes and rivers on which they depend for water. But the needs of nature don't have to be in conflict with...
Ruben Becerra ‘seriously considering’ running for Hays County judge seat
A former mayoral candidate and active citizen in San Marcos said he is “seriously considering” running for Hays County Judge Bert Cobb’s seat as a Democrat in 2018. “After speaking with leaders from the Democratic Party countywide and prominent Republicans in our...
After dog dies, officials investigating water near Canyon Lake Dam
A warning for anyone planning to spend time at the Guadalupe River near Canyon Lake: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says that the water south of the Canyon Lake Dam could be hazardous to your health. A warning sign is up asking people to not swim or let animals...
San Marcos City Council votes to apply for $4.4 million loan for preservation of Edwards Aquifer land
San Marcos City Council on Tuesday voted to apply for a $4.4 million loan from the Texas Water Development Board to preserve an undeveloped stretch of land over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. Mayor John Thomaides was the only dissenting vote, arguing that he did...
Despite all that undeveloped habitat, Canadian wildlife is in sharp decline
It’s with great sympathy and zero schadenfreude that I call attention this morning to Canadian research suggesting that half of that country’s wildlife species have gone into decline since 1970, with population losses averaging an astonishing 83 percent. How that...
School grant opportunities for green infrastructure projects
Nature Works Everywhere and the Nature Conservancy are awarding grants to support projects that implement green infrastructure to address local environmental challenges. These include: access to healthy food, air quality, heat island effect, climate change, and storm...
Directors Notes – September 2017
For those of us who work to protect quality of life, it was especially heartbreaking to see the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey in the Gulf Coast Region last month. We almost certainly have not seen the end of the impacts of this storm, as stories of water...
Rainwater Revival Calls for Grant Applications from Hill Country Schools – Deadline Extended
For the seventh consecutive year, the Hill Country Alliance’s Rainwater Revival offers funds to help students learn about rainwater catchment and water conservation. As Texas Hill Country residents and businesses look for ways to conserve water, the Hill Country...
It’s Time for Texas’ Second Annual Pollinator BioBlitz
In support of Texas’ second statewide Pollinator BioBlitz, organizations and sites around the state will soon be hosting a variety of events to get people outdoors to observe pollinators of all types in yards, natural areas, gardens, parks and community centers. Of...
Over 200 drinking water systems affected by Harvey still shut or impaired -U.S.regulators
More than 200 drinking water systems out of 2,238 affected by Tropical Storm Harvey are still shut or have notices for customers to boil water, state and federal regulators said on Saturday. An additional 101 systems are still being contacted to “gather updated...
In post-Harvey Houston, extent of water contamination largely unknown
When Houston-based epidemiologist Winifred Hamilton spent a few days in the field last week collecting samples of the abundant floodwater Tropical Storm Harvey had left in its wake, she was able to practice the health safety advice she had urged her fellow Houstonians...
Flooded Texas ranchers struggle to safeguard stranded herds
A group of cattle ranchers from an hour south of Houston weathered record-breaking rainfall from Hurricane Harvey only to have their animals go missing. Fearing the worst, the ranchers found the lost but resilient cattle, and now must work constantly to make sure they...
Plastic fibres found in tap water around the world, study reveals
Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health. Scores of tap water samples from more than a dozen nations were analysed by scientists for...
Study links groundwater with surface water in Devils River
A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) study provides detailed models linking groundwater in a Texas aquifer to the surface flows in one of the state's most pristine rivers. The study shows how karstic pathways of the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer follow the same channels as...
Twelve steps Houston can take to address our flooding problem
The Houston region has a major flooding problem. Denying this fact does a disservice to us all, because flooding will only get worse in the future as the intensity and frequency of severe rain events increases. If we do not admit that we have a problem, we will never...
A Texas Farmer on Harvey, Bad Planning and Runaway Growth
"A century’s worth of unchecked growth...has brought prosperity to many. But it also has altered the landscape in ways that have made both the droughts and the floods more destructive and made that prosperity fleeting. Much of the region sits atop the overtaxed Gulf...
Travis County $185 million bond Nov. election to address roads, safety
Travis County commissioners called a $185 million bond election for Nov. 7 that focuses on road safety and park projects. On. Aug 15, Precinct 1 Commissioner Jeff Travillion said the bond aims to fund “safe roads to school, evacuation roads, low water crossings—places...
Photographer turns lens on our ‘complex, disconnected’ relationship with water
Mustafah Abdulaziz is a former Wall Street Journal photographer who left the media world to pursue a global, 15-year project exploring our "complex" relationship with water. He has visited 11 countries — including Brazil, China, Nigeria, India and Pakistan — to...