A war over how much water to pump from underground in the Houston region has been playing out in courtrooms and obscure meetings. It’s escalating now as new regional goals are being proposed that allow for more water to be pumped from Montgomery County — and for land in areas such as The Woodlands to sink in coming decades by more than a foot.
About every five years, a group known as Groundwater Management Area 14 sets goals for how much water should remain in aquifers that stretch beneath the area. The group is drafting its latest set of goals, which it expects to release early this week, starting an at least 90-day period for public feedback.
There is distress on both sides: Residents of The Woodlands and around Lake Houston want to see less ground sinking, or none. But the group that manages Montgomery County’s underground water prefers an alternative that could lead to even a little more sinking. That group isn’t currently using the last set of regional goals, either.
The terms and calculations are complex, but the decision matters. Water pulled from aquifers is cheaper than water pulled from lakes, which must be more heavily treated. But if too much water is pumped from underground, the ground can sink, which can worsen flooding. The regional group exists because aquifers are shared by many counties, and what happens in Montgomery County could affect Harris County, or vice versa.
“Probably the bedrock principle of this is that it’s a regional resource,” said Larry French, the Texas Water Development Board’s groundwater division director.
The water war begins
Harris and Galveston counties for years suffered from sinking ground, known as subsidence; it got so severe that one subdivision famously sank into the bay. The Legislature formed the Harris-Galveston Subsidence District to address the issue, and it continues to transition the area toward using more water from lakes.
Until recently, the group in Montgomery County was taking a similar approach. It’s not a subsidence district, but instead a groundwater conservation district, known as Lone Star.
Previous Lone Star leaders wanted the county to use only as much water as was naturally replenished. So they required large utilities to replace 30 percent of what they pulled from underground with water from another source. The San Jacinto River Authority in 2015 built a $480 million treatment plant on Lake Conroe to meet the need.
Some 80 utilities signed contracts with the river authority, promising to pay for that plant. Some would later argue the utilities had no choice. Water bills went up. The water war began.
The city of Conroe and seven utilities sued Lone Star, arguing the district could not make them reduce what they were pumping. Then a new law changed the Lone Star board from an appointed to an elected one. The president of a utility company that sued, Quadvest, backed a slate of candidates who won. The new board settled with Conroe and the utilities, tossing the reduction requirement.
Without that mandate, the river authority now runs its plant at the lowest capacity. The large utilities do not meet the 30 percent conversion once envisioned, said the river authority’s general manager, Jace Houston. Some are short-paying or not paying their portion of the cost for building the plant as litigation continues, he said.
A map shows how much the ground could sink in coming decades based on the current proposal by the regional group that manages aquifer use.
Setting new goals
Change didn’t stop there. The regional planning group, Groundwater Management Area 14, last set goals in 2016 for what the shared aquifers should look like in the future. The cities of Conroe and Magnolia and Quadvest challenged these.
The 2016 goals through a settlement process were found “no longer reasonable,” and Lone Star is not currently managing according to any goals. That puts pressure on the current process. The district said in an emailed response to questions that because goals are long-term, and a new round is underway, there was no reason to use the even earlier 2010 goals “as a practical matter.”
The regional planning group — of which Lone Star is one of five voting members — devised three possible options for its new goals. Earlier this month, it voted unanimously for the middle of the three, which requires more than half of all wells in each county to have water levels that haven’t decreased by more than 30 percent in 2080, compared to 2009, and average subsidence in each county of no more than one foot. The member districts were working out the wording for the proposal before it was released for public review.
After the public comment period, the five groundwater conservation districts will go over the feedback that each received and may vote in October to make these goals official, or change them. Lone Star said it does not want these to be the final goals but wanted to move forward. Among the district’s concerns, Lone Star said it didn’t have monitoring sites to assess subsidence accurately, though it is “especially mindful and vigilant of potential subsidence issues.”
Input had meanwhile poured in. A member of the steering committee for TownshipFuture, a political action committee that aims to inform residents of The Woodlands, member Robert Leilich said it preferred a plan to eliminate subsidence. His home was spared from flooding during Hurricane Harvey by only a foot. Partnership Lake Houston, which promotes economic development, preferred the more conservative of the three options.
But residents in Conroe sent form emails complaining of water bills that more than doubled. They argued that Montgomery County should be allowed to pump as much as Harris County, which is not bound to the regional goals because it has the subsidence district. An attorney for Quadvest, Marvin Jones, wrote in a letter that “attempting to throttle groundwater production in Montgomery County to prevent subsidence in The Woodlands is misguided at best.”
And if the group didn’t end up voting their way? Jones said Quadvest would be forced to appeal, and, if that fails, likely to sue.
emily.foxhall@chron.com
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