Texas Groundwater: A Precious Luxury Often Taken for Granted

By Joh Covington, Skyline Desk Chief

ALPINE – Clean drinking water that’s available at the turn of a tap has always seemed like a given, especially in Alpine, Texas, where every other property has a well and the others have access to water that’s been treated by the city.

Some Alpine residents have had there well water tested by independent companies. The results were impressive, in that the water quality was rated among the highest in Texas.

In an interview with the Skyline, Kevin Urbanczyk, a Sul Ross State University geology professor and a director of the Brewster County Groundwater Conservation District, spoke of the importance of considering the quality of Alpine’s groundwater in individual usage and county decision making.

In the classroom, Urbanczyk often uses the image of many plastic straws poked into the same source of water, the straws being wells scattered across the landscape and the common source being the groundwater under our feet, as an example for his students.

Throughout Texas history, water rights have been a vehemently sought after commodity, and the general rule has been “my land, my well, my right,” but when you take from the groundwater, it diminishes your neighbor’s groundwater supply.

This is rarely a problem, unless you’re dealing with a very low water table or a neighbor that is pushing the limits of water consumption beyond what the groundwater supply can recharge.

Texas has nine major aquifers and about 20 smaller ones. This groundwater supplies about 60% of the water for the state’s needs.

Major legislation in 1997, 2001 and 2005 substantially increased the power of groundwater districts. As recently as 2011, legislation affirmed commitment to the basic principles of the rule of capture, setting up more court cases that will continue to shape Texas’s response to balancing property rights with community needs.

While this is the ‘law of the land,’ funding is still provided for these water districts to oversee the use, spacing, and installation of wells. “It’s a gradual shift away from that private property ‘right’,” Urbanczyk said, referring to when these water districts were developed.

“Prior to that is was right of capture, and landowner whatever-you-wanted,” Urbanczyk said, “Now it doesn’t exactly include the water. Because when you take some, it comes from your neighbor.”

“We’re Texans, and especially in Brewster County/South Brewster County, there’s definitely a lot of people who don’t want us telling them anything. So, we have a lot of challenges, because we don’t get a lot of cooperation from people using it for commercial reasons,” Urbanczyk said.

According to the Brewster County Groundwater Conservation District, their mission is to “Manage, protect, and conserve the groundwater resources, while protecting the property rights and promoting constructive and sustainable development in Brewster County.”

The board handles domestic well permit applications, occasionally, commercial well permit applications, and requests from existing commercial permit holders for revisions on pre-existing permits as well.

Water permit usage is currently based on a percentage per acre.

Citizens should take some time to understand the inner workings of their local water systems, especially to make sure that they are being managed properly, not only by the city, but also, by the boards tasked with ensuring their longevity.

Some of these county board’s futures are in question even though they are volunteers and don’t receive a paycheck. The services that they provide are necessary in the regulation of groundwater.

Recently, this doubt has come forward in Presidio County, one of the most active districts in water monitoring. This June there will be a vote on whether or not to keep their GCD.

These districts oversee water use and try to prevent the abuse of a resource that is replenished over lifetimes.

One of the goals of the Brewster County district is to catalogue data and the current metrics of the county's water, much like Presidio County is doing currently, and will continue to do if it survives the June vote.

In an article written by Martina Igini for Earth.Org, she outlines many of the issues that have recently attacked the security of Texas water.

“A series of extreme climate events have exposed huge flaws in Texas’ existing water system, leading to water shortages and droughts that have affected hundreds of thousands of residents,” Igini said.

Events like the 2021 freeze that caused water shortages, power outages and many frozen and broken pipes. On the Sul Ross campus, this freeze caused flooding in some of the dorms, driving resident students into the campus Gallego Center to sleep on cots.

Igini writes that Texas is consistently ranked among the top 10 states that are affected the most by extreme weather events, such as drought, extreme heat and wildfires.

Despite recent acts and millions of dollars dedicated to funding water projects, the concern remains in place for management and depletion.

Igini furthers that these projects need to be “coupled with conservation, protection initiatives, and long-term planning, which will be crucial to managing groundwater resources locally and in a much more sustainable way in the future.”