News
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....
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...