Author Topic: Bill would force Houston to sell water rights in planned reservoir  (Read 403 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Houston Chronicle by  Mike Morris May 2, 2019

Houston would be forced to sell its water rights in a proposed reservoir west of Simonton to the Brazos River Authority under a bill Mayor Sylvester Turner said is an attempt by Gulf Coast petrochemical giants to secure cheaper water at the expense of the city’s ability to accommodate growth.

The measure, which sailed through the Texas House last month, would require Houston to sell its rights in the proposed Allens Creek Reservoir by the end of this year for up to $23 million, a move experts said would set a troubling precedent.

Turner said that amount simply would repay what Houston has spent on the project, not compensate the city for the loss of 15 percent of its surface water rights.

“You just don’t say, ‘We’re going to take it because politically we can,’” Turner said. “If you can do it here, then every water right in the state of Texas is at risk. We have never sold our water rights, and I could not explain to the people in the city of Houston why we would sell our water rights when this is a growing community in a growing region.”

Brazos River Authority officials and the bill’s author, House Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, say Houston has developed its water rights in the Trinity and San Jacinto river basins so thoroughly that it has no urgent need for the Allens Creek Reservoir, whereas water needs outstrip the supply in the Brazos basin, hampering economic growth there.

“If I’m in their shoes, I’m looking at a project that’s projected to cost upwards of $500 million for water that every relevant planning document that exists shows I don’t need — I wouldn’t want to do it,” Brazos River Authority Government Affairs Manager Matt Phillips said of Houston leaders. “There are, particularly, major industrial interests but also some municipal interests in the lower Brazos basin that have a need for this project and have a need for it to be built sooner rather than later.”

The Brazos River Authority supported the city’s 2011 request to delay the start of construction from 2018 to 2025, Phillips said, but only because the agency feared the project would die if it opposed it. The roughly 100,000-acre-foot reservoir project is not listed in Houston’s five-year capital projects plan, though Turner stressed that he committed in writing to begin the project after Larson filed his bill.

Turner acknowledged Houston has a robust water supply: The city owns 70% of the water in Lake Livingston and Lake Conroe and all of Lake Houston. As recently as 2016, the city projected those sources alone would meet the typical needs of its retailer customers — homes, apartments and businesses, mostly — through 2060, without the need for the additional water Houston leases from the Trinity River Authority or gets from aquifers.

Houston, however, provides treated or untreated water across the region via 275 contracts with water authorities and other entities. Including these wholesale figures, city projections show the water in Allens Creek Reservoir must be available before 2060. The data also show that spending a year at peak demand, with all customers maxing out their water contracts, would exhaust the city’s available supplies today. That scenario is unlikely, said Houston Public Works director Carol Haddock, but she noted that periods of peak demand — driven by heat, irrigation needs and other factors — have more than doubled since the 1980s, to about 4 months.

“This proposed action by the Legislature undermines and discourages prudent water planning statewide,” she said. “It sends a message that no water rights investments are safe when the legislature can not only take away those rights, but also specify the payment amount with no regard for fair market value.”

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Bill-would-force-Houston-to-sell-water-rights-in-13815027.php