Conservation can help stabilize aquifer levels
Updated 10:11 am, Monday, June 25, 2012
After a rainy spring, the aquifer rose, but now it's dropping fast.
Heavy agricultural pumping is one reason for the falling level. In an average spring, agricultural producers to the west of San Antonio often pump three times as much water as we do in San Antonio. The high pumping rate continues until the corn crop is harvested, about July 4. After that, San Antonio Water System becomes the largest pumper of aquifer water.
After a record-setting drought for two-thirds of 2011, the aquifer starting point was lower than normal this winter. While San Antonio received generous rains in late 2011 and early 2012, the western part of the Edwards Aquifer Region has been much drier. Aquifer levels are affected by recharge and pumping across the entire region.
San Antonio-area residents are using large amounts of water in attempts to keep their landscapes as lush as they were in early spring.
Despite optimistic weather forecasts for a rainy summer, it looks like we will stay deep in Stage 2 restrictions and may even flirt with Stage 3 levels before the farmers stop irrigating. With little rain this month, Stage 3 could become a reality.
That would mean lawn watering with sprinklers is allowed only every other week. Your lawn will live if you irrigate every two weeks, but it will not look lush.
To keep the aquifer level above the Stage 3 trigger of 640 feet, SAWS is bringing 20 million gallons of water a day from its underground reservoir in South Bexar County, the same action that helped keep aquifer levels from slipping below the Stage 3 trigger in 2009 and 2011.
Conserving water and complying with Stage 2 restrictions currently in place also will help minimize the decline. Almost 70 percent of San Antonio residents do not irrigate their lawns. That means the rest of us who are using all of the water have a responsibility to keep our irrigation systems in good repair and comply with the rules.
In addition to complying with Stage 2 restrictions, consider improving your landscape's efficiency. The drought restrictions are designed to keep a landscape alive, and homeowners who lost part of their landscapes to the drought have an opportunity to improve their plantings if parts died.
Add more soil, use more drought-tolerant plants, use more hardscape, or consider one or more of the many strategies offered on the SAWS website, www.saws.org.
The site also describes the incentives available to SAWS customers. Rebates that pay part of the cost of converting a water-wasting landscape to a more efficient landscape; incentives that allow you to convert to a more efficient irrigation system; incentives that offer cost sharing for technological changes by industry that save water; and many more.