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Living on the edge of a desert

Water has always been an important factor in San Angelos history. The site for Fort Concho was chosen partly because of the junction of 3 rivers giving the fort a steady supply of water. San Angelo grew up depending on water from the rivers. San Angelo became the county seat as the result of a flood. Some of our local damns were built to help prevent floods, a rare problem of too much water.

Water is still important to San Angelo, although not because of any excess. We have grown tremendously since the days of Miss Hatty. People, agriculture, and industry all use water, and we are on the edge of a desert in the middle of a long drought. The water supply that supported a few hundred people in the late 1800s just can't keep up with the demands of about 100,000 people plus pets plus lawns plus manufacturing etc.. The water situation in San Angelo has to be dealt with for the city to continue thriving and growing. This is a problem the local governments should be dealing with, and they have been.

The local lakes are all being used for reservoirs. Twin Buttes might even be useful now that the leaks have been fixed (we hope). The city has been active in securing additional water sources, such as lake Ivey. They have been buying water rights as well. Some of these projects have problems, such as the pipeline to lake Spence. It is now unusable because of lack of basic, routine maintenance. Of course the water from lake Spence is also too salty to use right now. The money for that effort was largely wasted because of lack of maintenance planning. The cost of most of these efforts can be seen every month in your water bill. It is not cheap bringing us the water we need. Because of its importance, water is frequently at the center of politics.

If you remember back to the last sales tax election, water, in the form of a $2.50 per meter surcharge on your water rate was used to blackmail the voters into passing the present sales tax. They repealed the $2.50 surcharge when the tax passed, but slowly they have added it back in. First it was a $.50 meter surcharge. Then little by little other increases. Then in 2001 they raised the water rates enough to collect $156.5 million over 25 years, a large chunk of money but the city council did have some plans for it.

The water mains under the streets and the gates on the damns needed repair so $34.5 million was allocated to that project (which ended up being about 20 million usable after a bond was let). $10.4 million went to upgrades to the water treatment plant (again, less after the bond was let). The rest, $116 million, was targeted to develop a pipeline to McCulloch county.

This is an interesting project. First off, we don't have rights to much water there. Secondly, the water there would need expensive processing to remove contaminants such as radium and radon that are well above EPA levels. Lastly, other users of that water source have already told us they will fight us in court to prevent us from taking water from this already fragile source. It is unlikely that the project can even be started in the next 25 (or 50) years, and it will end up being very expensive for the limited amount of water available as a result. Still, we have $116 million set aside from our water rates to develop new water sources.

So now they want us to fund another $20 million as part of the sales tax for some unspecified water project that has not even made it into the planning stage yet. Why not take the money we already have from the water rate increase and use it for any upcoming water projects that make sense. Why not keep the price we pay for water tied to the cost of actually getting that water instead of subsidizing cheap water through the sales tax. Why should your sales tax dollars make it cheaper for industrial water users to do business. Use the water rate increase to actually find good, reasonable water sources.