 Good afternoon everyone. I'm a Rogelio Science. I'm the Dean of the College of Public Policy here at UTSA and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this evening's event. We are very pleased to be hosting this forum as it is very much part of the work that we do in the College of Public Policy. In the College what we're trying to do is to serve as a primary venue for the discussion of important policy issues affecting our community, our state, and beyond. In doing so we bring community leaders, policy makers, and experts in the field alongside the public to discuss important policy issues. Undoubtedly water merits great importance as a policy issue. It is a major issue that affects us all from the average community resident to major institutions including the business sector. The current drought serves as a reminder about the pressing need to identify future water sources to sustain our community. SAWS has a proposal on the table, the Vista Ridge Pipeline Project, which its board approved this morning. The proposal has generated a lot of interest and discussion from the broad spectrum of stakeholders, some favoring the proposal, others having concerns. This evening we will have an opportunity to hear our distinguished panel talk about the SAWS proposal and for the audience to pose questions. There are a number of key stakeholders as well as elected officials in the audience that we would like to recognize. We have some of the SAWS Board of Trustees, Berto Guerra, we have Ernesto Ariano Jr. Reed Williams, also another board, the trustee of the board. Mayor Ivy Taylor, okay there she is. And we have a former Mayor Howard Peake, District 9 City Councilman Joe Crier. And then we have Richard Perez, also from the Chamber of Commerce. And I'd also like to thank Nowcast that is recording this program live and will also be replaying it. And now I'd like to introduce our moderator for this event, Robert Rivard. Robert Rivard is the founder and director of the Rivard Report, a fast growing and independently owned website focused on urban life and work in San Antonio. Rivard is also principal with the Arsenal Group, a strategic communications consulting firm. Bob Rivard is an alum graduating with his undergraduate degree in political science from UTSA. Thank you Bob for agreeing to moderate this event. Thank you very much doctor. Thank you and welcome. Welcome everyone, Mayor Taylor, thank you for bringing your class with us. We're honored to have you here, Councilman Crier, former Mayor Peake, some of the others that are in the audience today. Chairman Guerra, thank you for coming and Reed Williams, we have a lot of the players and stakeholders in this conversation. But I am hoping most of all that those of you that are current students at UTSA came prepared to join this conversation. We are actually going to go a little bit longer than we originally planned because we're hoping to devote more time to questions and answers and making sure that we don't end the program with people feeling like they didn't get an opportunity to ask a question. And I underline ask a question, not make a speech, so give some thought to what you'd like to say a little bit later on when we open it up. Well, let me before I just sort of set the stage, introduce our panelists. To my immediate left is Robert Puente, the President and CEO of SAWS. That's a position he's held since 2008. Robert and Water go back a long ways. He was elected to the House of Representatives, the Texas House in 1991. He joined the National Resources Committee which does water policy and legislation immediately and actually rose to become chairman of that. We're going to talk a little bit about water in San Antonio on a 20-year window. Robert was part of creating the legislation in 1993 that created the Edwards Aquaphor Authority, which at that time was where we got all of our water in San Antonio. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute, but Robert, welcome to the panel. We're glad you're here and we want to hear what you have to say about the events this morning and the events coming up. District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg, he's been on the San Antonio City Council since 2013 when he was elected to that position. I first knew Ron as the general manager of Trinity University's professional public radio station, KRTU FM, where he was general manager. Others of you may know him from that era. You may not know that before that, before Ron came to San Antonio, he was a program director at the Annenberg School of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which is quite an operation. So Ron, we're glad to have you on the panel. You've made water a special focus in your short-term time on the Council, and actually we're the catalyst for Mayor Taylor and others deciding to embark on a comprehensive water plan as part of our long-term planning in San Antonio. And she recently named you the Chairman of the Comprehensive Planning Initiative that was just launched a couple of weeks ago. So thank you for being here. And Joanne Browning, we know you the least. You're the relatively new Dean of the College of Engineering. You came here in May from Lawrence, Kansas, the University of Kansas, a great school in a great city. You were the Associate Dean of Administration there and a Professor of Engineering. We're very glad to have you here. There was not a College of Engineering when I attended UTSA, but you have 2,300 students at that college today and they're doing great things. We're happy to have you here too as well. Amy Hardberger, you might have heard her on public radio today on The Source. Dr. Hardberger is a law professor at St. Mary's, former staffer of the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin and I think still works with them. She's an energy and water expert and in fact her undergraduate degrees in geology is something that she doesn't tout but that I happen to know. And she's been very active in water issues in our community and actually Amy and I have been on water panels with Robert before so it's good to have you again. Well since we are at a university, I'd like to just step back from the immediate Vista Ridge deal a little bit if I could and share the perspective of a long time newspaper editor and still journalist and talk about San Antonio 20 years ago compared to San Antonio today. Not so long after I and my family arrived here in 1989, San Antonio was a city that still had a ways to go to reach a million people. All of our water came from the Edwards Aquifer. I think we were the 38th number of metro market in the country and we were the 11th largest city. We passed a million people I think in the early 1990s which as I said was when the Edwards Aquifer authority was created and not incidentally 1992 was when SAWS was created, the San Antonio water system. The modern water utility that we're talking about and take for granted now didn't exist before 1992. We won't go into the prehistory of SAWS but it too came about in a very newsy time in the early 1990s. That is also when the Sierra Club sued in the federal court to protect endangered species in the springs and that created the legislation that controls who can pump how much water out of the Edwards Aquifer and that completely changed the dynamic for the city of San Antonio which from 1990 to 2000 was the fastest growing city in the United States and from 2000 to 2010 was the second fastest growing city in the United States. So you have two things that are happening in sequence here in the last 20 years. One of the fastest growing urban metro areas in the country population now is 1.4 million just for the city. The greater metro area where 24th or 25th in the country now is 2.2 million. We're considered the 7th largest city when you go by the US Census data on cities and at the same time we had to diversify our water. We've gone to great lengths over that 20 years to diversify our water supply and Robert can talk about that a little bit more. We have the largest recycling distribution network of water in the United States. You've all seen those purple pipes, an awful lot of industrial San Antonio, commercial San Antonio, the river walk. Amy I was out at Hardburger Park with my son a couple of weeks ago all the pipes out there are purple. That designates that the water they're getting is not being pumped directly out of the aquifer coming from any other source. It's coming from water that's been processed at the DOS Rio's plant and is being recirculated in the city. We also have embarked on a deal where we're already piping in water that's being mixed into the potable water supply from Gonzales County from the Cariso, which Robert you can talk a little bit so the Vista Ridge will not be the first pipeline deal for the city which I think surprises most people. Gonzales County is obviously much closer than Burleson County and the pipelines infrastructure by a large already existed but that's there. We are currently in Southern Bear County constructing a desalination plant. Not to desalinate water from the Gulf Coast but to desalinate water from the shallow aquifers where the water was until recently considered unusable but there's a tremendous supply in South Texas of water with a heavy salination content that we will be desalinating and producing by 2016. Although that plant will not come fully online until 2026. That will serve almost 30,000 households. The deal we're talking about today will serve more like 175,000 households, I believe 170,000 households just to put those in perspective. And finally we voted in the early 1990s not once but twice not to build shallow reservoir lakes in San Antonio as a way to store water that we didn't need to use at the time. What we've created since then in effect are underground lakes. There are the ASRs, the aquifer storage and recovery well systems in Southern Bear County right where the desalination plant is being constructed. SAWS takes unneeded water in good times that we're pumping out of the Edwards Aquifer by permit by permission and the water we're not using we're putting down into those underground storage wells and then we're pumping it back out in times of drought and using it to bridge the water that we're getting from the Edwards when our permitted pumping is restricted. So that's kind of in a nutshell a really quick look at water and where it's coming from and how we're diversifying. But what we're about to talk about today is far and away the most ambitious diversification project that's ever been contemplated in San Antonio. If the City Council follows the SAWS Board of Trustees and approves the deal as they consider it over the next month or so we will add roughly 20% to the current water supply or to the future water supply of the city. In other words enough to fuel one in five households and more in the city. It'll come at a considerable cost if you compare the cost of water today to water tomorrow or water over the next 30 years. We've had very inexpensive water in San Antonio and we've had very little costs associated with moving or purifying that water. It's right under our feet we put a straw on the ground we pump it out. Now we're talking about bringing water in 142 miles away by pipeline treating it and moving it around into a network to mix it with the current water supply. So it's a much more ambitious thing. The price that SAWS is using is $3.4 billion over 30 years. That's $110 million a year if you want to break it down by year. That comes out to $2,200 an acre foot if you want to break it down to that level. We're probably paying closer to $500 an acre foot for Edwards Water now. The water from the desal plant will certainly cost substantially more than that. I don't know how much that will cost. Robert you might be able to tell us but that is the situation in brief. So Robert I'll open up the panel to you and I'm going to try to do a lot less talking now that I've done the graduate seminar introduction. And ask you what happened this morning. Give us a brief overview of it and tell us where we go from here. Well first of all thank UTSA for the opportunity to speak and to discuss and debate this particular project that we have. This morning I believe our trustees took a historic vote and that was a vote to approve the contract that's bringing in 50,000 acre feet of water to this community. Historic in the sense that we have had the opportunity to do that before buying or developing a big project and just hasn't happened. This is on the cusp of it happening was there's one last opportunity for a public debate and that's this month of October. But at the end of October I believe our city council will have this issue in front of them and they will have an opportunity to approve this contract also. So it was a historic process that we went through our board and our staff stuck through the tenants that they give us at the very beginning when we were developing this project. And that was three things. One was to make sure that we stuck with our conservation ethic. That there was no way we were going to pull back on what we've been doing with water conservation. We are the nation's leader in water conservation. Water conservation has given us a license to actually go out into the community and to go out into other communities to get water into this area. Because invariably you are asked well what are you doing in your own backyard. Have you taken care of your needs through water conservation and we have. The second one is that this is not a free for all for development over the recharge. Just because you have more water coming in and you're going to have growth doesn't mean it's a bad growth. And so we are committed to protect the aquifer especially the recharge area over the aquifer. And the third one is just this is going to be an expensive project. Water is expensive no matter what project we eventually choose it was going to be expensive. So our commitment our third commitment was that we were going to make this as least of an impact on those individuals that could least afford it. So we're in the process of developing programs but not only the low income user but the low volume user. So our our board our staff stuff to those three tenants and voted in that manner this morning. I'm off. There we go. Let's talk a little bit more later about the pricing possibilities that you just discussed but I want to move to Councilman Nuremberg. You chose very early on to make water a subject of your of your focus. People are worried that oppose the plan or have doubts about the plan. Councilman about how fast it's moving. It has been a three year process but there's a 518 page contract that was approved by the sword the saws trustees this morning. It now goes to City Council. Do you have the time you need for both those of you who are voting on this to absorb that contract make a judgment about it. That's the right questions. And do you have time in fact to go out reach out to your own constituents in your district and make sure they're comfortable with the contract before you go forward. Yeah well thank you also to the people who come out and for UTSA for making this a priority. I think that's a very good question. In fact you shaved four pages off the off of the booklet. I think it's 4 522 going through the contract which we have begun the process of doing now. Is quite cumbersome. What we're going to have to do is make sure that the public process that saws has embarked on. We're starting a negotiation making the public making the negotiations sessions public begins now in earnest. So these panel discussions a full debate and hearing at council is going to be important but we do need to have time to review the document. We also need to have time with our city attorney's office with our public utilities folks to review the document as well. In the end we need to make sure that the folks who are charged with making recommendations on on these efforts are able to do so. You know a month time I think is light years when it comes to making things happen and doing actions on council. But the magnitude of this decision and the far reaching effects that we'll have on our community and other communities outside of San Antonio mandate us taking enough time to get through this process. So I think you'll hear different opinions I'm sure from different folks involved in this. At the end of the day the council needs to be sure that they had ample time to go through and make sure that we're making the right decisions for the decisions of San Antonio. If that is not the case then we need more time. But my judgment right now this has been a very lengthy process certainly from February when the when the project was initially initially denied saw as moved on. We have had a lengthy negotiation process and discussion between the board and Vista Ridge and the Amigo folks. We have seen it unfold in public. This is a much different contract than what we saw a response to the RFP back in February. So we'll have a month to go through it and see where we are at that point. Thank you. Dean you get more rain in Lawrence Kansas than we get here. So this is probably something of a new experience people talking so much about water every day. How does this look though to you as a civil engineer frankly it's long term planning that has risk associated with it. It's a big commitment on the other hand not to engage in long term planning is its own other kind of risk. Thank you to the College of Public Policy for inviting College of Engineering to be part of this debate. We have a number of talented faculty that have contributed to this conversation over the years. Faculty such as Marcio Gianmoni who's part of our Water Institute of Texas. Faculty such as Evania Alucat who's part of the T-Series our Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute. And so engineering certainly has a role to play in assessing how to make these decisions and how to go forward. You're right I've only been here for a couple months actually and so I barely had time to drink the water much less than though I really end up studying it's very good by the way. But I can say this the idea of our infrastructure and the need to invest in our infrastructure is a nationwide problem. The American Society of Civil Engineers actually has a really nice way of rounding up a lot of information and looking and assessing our infrastructure and where it stands. They show report cards every four years and they take experts in the civil engineering discipline that look at hundreds of amounts of data, research reports as well as government reports and surveys that are conducted and they distill that into looking at eight specific areas that have to do with these different parts of our infrastructure. Could be bridges, can be water environments, can be roadways and so on. And they come up with a grade for how we're doing in protecting our infrastructure. And it's interesting to see that since 2001 the grade for water environment has been in the D to D minus range. That's for the entire nation. Now what does that mean really? Well they take all this data and they assign a percentage and so my area actually is instructional engineering so I can talk about bridges and 77% if a grade of 77% that would mean that 77% of the bridges in the country about there are in good or better condition. And that's the kind of condition out of my grade to be on when I drive over it. Excuse me. So to get a grade that would be a grade of C. To have a grade of D to D minus means that we're somewhere in the lower 60s and 60 percentile on how we're doing in protecting that infrastructure and making sure we have safe water supplies. Now they also do grades more locally so I took the time to look in Texas. How are we doing in Texas? In some areas of infrastructure we're doing better than national average. Our bridges are in better shape than the average bridges across the country. Unfortunately drinking water has still been a D to D minus rating since 2001 and it begins report card and sustaining it every four years or so. So there is a need to invest in our infrastructure and as you mentioned the long-term planning part is something that you can't escape. Any engineering design, any engineering solution has to take into account the life cycle costs and so when you consider a range of solutions to help make sure that you have a secure and safe water supply you have to look at the costs over the lifetime bringing back to present day money so that people and poor people can make decisions on what's best. Now American Society of Civil Engineers also have a solution for this and it's a green problem solution. The first is to talk to leadership, get a leadership engaged in re-investing and improving our infrastructure and that's why it's so wonderful that Councilman Gerber has taken us on to be here and to learn more about the data and the parts of this that make the decision possible. The second part is making sure that every engineering solution now or in the future includes sustainability and resilience inside of that so that's the life cycle cost of the element but it's also making sure that the environmental concerns are addressed and the engineering solution has to have that part in there as well and the third part is prioritizing the needs and impact of when it's appropriate and so when it becomes that critical junction to make sure that we are going for the future that's the time to invest the funds so that it's there for the future. Thank you Amy. You have, excuse me Amy Hardburger I have a terrible cold excuse me. Okay I'll give you a minute. I'm going to let all of you talk. You have concerns. Yeah I do have a couple of concerns. You know I think my concerns are about the things that aren't known more than anything and I just like to make a couple of points. One is it's a bit of a misnomer to say that this is a three-year process. Now technically there has been a discussion going for three years about this project but there's a couple of data points that I feel like haven't been mentioned. One was Ron you referred to this that we were sitting I think one room over in February when Mr. Puente specifically said that the SAWS staff recommendation after a two-year process was not to pursue any of these three contracts and it was Mr. Puente who eloquently stated that looking at stage D cell was actually a better way because we could sort of ramp it up as needed in addition to sort of some other reasons why that was a better project. You know the other thing to note is that even if you count from February this process has been mostly done because it has been a contractual negotiation behind closed doors and even in the very end when they did allow the public to come into the negotiation sessions it's incredibly important to note that there was no opportunity for public comment. In fact I'd like to say that I'm very happy that we're extending this so that people can say something because this to my knowledge is the first event to have a diverse group on the panel and an opportunity for the public to weigh in which when you have a vote in 30 days when you have a vote in 30 days just isn't enough and actually during the water management plan rollout that SAWS did themselves two years ago this was a line item in it and when at the meetings I was at people asked about it and we were promised that there would be an equal rollout program for this particular project because of the cost and it's worth noting that that water management plan rollout was approximately I don't know the exact numbers maybe there's a SAWS staffer that can weigh in 50 to 60 meetings over 8 months particularly within a 3 month time frame that allowed for public input that was roughly a 5 to 6 percent rate increase this is going to be at least a 16 percent rate increase and they're asking for a public comment or involvement period of 30 days and to answer the question not that you asked it to me that you asked a council person in Nuremberg it's not enough time and if it is the right project it will bear the weight of time and evaluation and nobody is saying I'm certainly not saying that we don't need diversification I'm certainly not saying that we don't need a new water supply but it needs to be the right project at the right price for the right reasons and it needs to be done in the right way this is a country built on due process that means we made a record of having public involvement that we're simply not seeing at this time and an important point I think that is continually glossed over is this idea of need all of the SAWS projections are not to show that there is no immediate need in a non-drought time frame for this quantity of water which means essentially this is a purchase for peak times under drought conditions and if you look at how we've actually been behaving under drought conditions because it is year four we as a community have banded together and continually used less than what the SAWS demand projections show we should be using in year four of drought and so this is the equivalent of building a base load power plant a giant coal fire power plant for the hottest days in August that we really need something that's a peak plant something that we can dial up and down so I think that there are a lot of important questions that have yet to be answered and once they're answered maybe this is the right project at the right time but I don't think that any of those questions have been answered in a public and transparent manner and I would like this to see SAWS continue in the history of how we do things in San Antonio and be willing to turn that over to the public Well let's take a couple of those points one at a time Robert what about the speed of the process and the openness of it Most of the criticism of this project has not been the project itself but the process and the number one thing is the time that there's a 522 page contract out there not enough time for our board to consider the community the city council to consider I remind the public and anyone else who thinks that this should be delayed is that the contract itself has been available to the public since July and yes the contract evolved during the time and it evolved during the negotiation process and it was not behind closed doors they were actually posted public meetings where anyone and everyone was invited to attend for example Ron Nuremberg I saw his aid there on almost every meeting other city council members went Edmond Goa's competitors went our own competitors went the press was there so it was a very open process so that contract that was available since July developed through these negotiation periods so if you're late to the game and you just picked up that contract last week and you want to read 522 pages in the short period of time well maybe yes it's too fast for you but for the majority of the people that are so interested in this process and this project they had the opportunity since early July to get the contract and start reviewing it it is not a fast pace at all the other criticisms if you want me to continue one for example is that we don't need all this water well that is true when it rained like this weekend we don't need the water but our planning purpose is what we owe to this community is to plan for the drought of record is to plan for the worst day possible when we are at our peak where everyone in this community needs and wants water that's during the drought of record that's during the hot summer month that's during those peak time periods during the day and so we owe it to that community to plan for that event and that's what we're doing our plan from the 2012 showed that we had certain gaps as early as 2018 and 2019 so to address those gaps our 2012 plan said you have to do de-sell and guess what we're doing it that our ground opening this summer on our de-sell plan that is will be online in 2016 it also said you have to conserve more and guess what we're on a projection to meet that goal where we will drive continue to drive down the per capita use during our community and it also said that you need 50,000 acre feet of water and that is this project and it is true I was very eloquent back in February when I asked our board to reject this proposal and go de-sell I hope I'm being just as eloquent right now to say that I would say the same thing to our board and I trust our board would do the same thing again to reject that project if it was the same then as it is now it's a very different project and the differences are for example is when it was brought to us in a response to a proposal they had an escalation fee in there we clarified that out they had a reservation fee in there $500 a year out they had where the risk of the project was borne mostly by sales now the risk, the volume risk the risk that if there's no water we don't have to pay for anything not only if there's no water if it's not the right quality that we're specifying in the contract we don't have to pay for anything and so all of these arguments can be refuted and what it boils down to is that then they'll criticize the process they'll want to delay it they'll want to streak hard it so the vast majority of the arguments that we get is it's going to add to growth well guess what growth is not bad growth is good growth if you don't grow you'll die on the line your comprehensive planning committee is planning on a million more people in the city of San Antonio greater San Antonio by 2040 or 2050 so is Amy right, do we have enough water or do we not have enough water well the water management plan made it very clear that in the out years we don't so that's the reason for additional push on conservation it's also in strictly economic terms why it's so important that we diversify our supply I think with regard to the DSAL project it is a great project it's the largest DSAL plan in the country and I think that's one aspect of a good water portfolio but if we're protecting the future of San Antonio we're protecting our ability to have a great quality of life to protect our economic development prospects to make us have a strong economy amidst an estate that's increasingly urban it's important that we diversify our water portfolio it's the number one concern for us economically as the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited with regard to the project's place in that that's why we have to go through a strong vetting process in terms of making sure number one the uncertainty of the water being there is addressed number two the financial uncertainty of us being able to pay for the water is addressed there certainly are questions that arise when you read the contract but those have been addressed in conversations with SAWS now the job and the reason why I think we need to have a due process and time to read the contract which at this point I'm on pace to do that is to make sure to verify I laid out a framework for us as as counsel and also as a public just to think about this project in terms of will we continue our emphasis on conservation will we make sure that the project is regionally responsible in other words San Antonio cannot be a water rich community in a region that's drying up it just doesn't work that way we wouldn't be a strong economy in that situation will we also have a public process all these things matter in terms of what we do over the next month or so but in basic basic terms diversifying our water supply and the reason why so many people use the phrase all of the above is the reason why we need to be considering this as you pointed out Bob this is not the first pipeline for San Antonio but we do need to make sure that at the end of that pipe we do have an investment for San Antonio well what about how much time would it take for the community to consider this at a pace different what is the importance of making a decision by the end of October if I may there was a comment about that and today we have had 61 public presentations events regarding this project 61 and it's not that we're personally have done about 10 of those and so in neighborhood associations in the evening on Saturdays to talk about this project and so and we're doing we're continuously doing more during the month of October so there's a lot of opportunities for anyone to have their say and there is some opposition but it's basically coming from for example the Sierra Club back you mentioned it back in 1991 they felt a lawsuit asking us forcing us the federal judge made us to diversify our watch supply guess what this is the biggest diversification project in our history and they are against it so where do you go from there Dr. Harberger yeah I mean I would just say I just I think that we're going to have a fundamental conflict on the 61 public meetings I mean I also had a representative at every single one of the contract negotiations because I was unable to attend so I have been following the specific contract I've been listening to read first of all those meetings were held at 7 o'clock in the morning they started at 7 o'clock in the morning on a weekday even citizens who want to be involved that's going to be quite difficult for them and then asking an average person to read a 500 paid contract SAWS has always done sort of power points and broken things down before I feel like that's a bit of an onus the other thing is just as Mr. Puente just admitted it was a moving target yes it's been available since August but the final sorry since July and just being able to read a contract doesn't really ask these bigger questions and discussions and as Mr. Puente just said we're talking about planning for a drought of record on growth but yet this is a taker paid contract for water that is going to come every day all day whether it rains or shines outside or at least we're going to be responsible for paying for a chunk of that even on the days that we don't need it that's absolutely wrong not true go ahead talk amongst yourselves Amy first of all stop calling Mr. Puente okay Robert I'll go with first names for everyone if we can do that that would be a lot easier it is not a taker paid contract if the water is delivered we pay for it if it's not delivered we don't take it we don't pay for it so if there's regulatory changes back in the groundwater district if they change the rules back there there's a earthquake if there's a cut in production if they don't deliver a certain quality of water at our doorstep we don't pay for it period right so I think we're saying the same thing in a different way that is not what I was saying by a taker paid contract what I was saying is if it comes we have to pay for it whether or not we need it in that moment or not and based on what you said in my understanding of SAWS data we're only really going to need that quantity into the future in a drought of record so creating a water supply project that we can ramp up and down that isn't a if it comes we have to pay for it in that moment seems to be a more fiscally responsible way to manage drought management and the way we're going to handle that is if there is a series of wet years or if it's wintertime whatever we don't use whatever we can't sell to our customers either we have existing contracts with communities from Bertelsen to San Antonio where we are able to sell some of that water wholesale so that 16% increase is not a minimum it's actually a maximum we're going to try to drive it down as far as possible we can sell some of that water to the communities to lower the impact to our rate payers and these are going to be short-term contracts so that when we do grow in we will grow into that need sort of like the diesel was supposed to do so we're very excited about that so currently also when the water comes in if we're not using the entire allotment what we're going to do is store the excess Edwards water into our underground storage that you talked about Bob by the way it's the second largest in the country it's been a great tool we do use it during drought conditions we do it during the hot summer times but we also manage it in a way that helps this entire region we are responsible for the HCP which is a Habitat conservation program which was part of ERIP all you water gox gox know what I'm talking about but it was a federal program where we are protecting this entire region so we have a commitment to them to store some of this water so we believe we're being very environmentally conscious and responsible in the way we're going to manage all that water coming in well let's talk a little bit about buying and selling water CPS energy buys and sells electricity energy they even hedge against pricing should saws get in the business of being a water utility that buys and sells water and if New Braunfels or someone else along the line needs water will we make a profit making a profit is obviously contrary to what a public utility has to do we only can charge for the cost of service but yes it would be a great situation to where you could have sort of an air-cut system for water and we're maybe going to have a mini one from Burleson to San Antonio where we do plan and we've already been talking to a lot of the communities Kenyon Regional Water Authority Hayes County, Travis County private developers all along this area about their need for water to potentially sell that water during the first stages of this project again to drive that cap drive down that cost this gives those communities time also to plan for their future knowing that this water is available to them for this period of time so it's a great opportunity yes it is something that we haven't done before is something that is something that this state needs is more of a regionalization of this precious resource not the parochial feeling that we've had so often about water and its source of where it's coming from should we just state too for the record that even if the contract were signed tomorrow the earliest this water could be delivered would be 2019 is that correct earliest or probably 2019 2020 so we're five or six years away in terms of our own urban growth where we reached the point where the first gallon of water will come out of that new pipeline let me follow up on that point about selling water throughout the reason on that pipeline I think that's well and good in terms of reducing risk to the San Antonio taxpayer we have no desire to take the place of Texas in terms of the job that we're trying to do for the reason in water I'm interested in the prospects of this contract simply to reduce that burden on the rate pair if that does not happen council has to be comfortable with the idea of at what price are we ensuring long-term water security we know that down the line in the later years of this contract that's water that we will need in the earlier years not so much but at what point are we investing in our long-term water security and in the meantime if we can do these contracts I think that's very important while we do those contracts so we need to be responsible because again at the later years of the contract we want to have that water available for San Antonio not be continuing to sell it so it's very important as we look at these contracts to help deal with the larger tranches of water that we don't need earlier on that we're working with those communities also to make sure that it's not just selling water perennially that they're working to shore up their own communities too this is not a new situation for Texas this is not a unique situation for San Antonio in terms of trying to figure out long-term water security we need to make sure we're selling X number of acre feet to a community near in Comal County or elsewhere that they're doing what it takes to shore up their own diversification efforts so that when it's time for San Antonio to take the entirety of that contract it's available for us I think that's a critical point that hasn't been brought up much is that this idea of who are the purchasers going to be and are they going to be able to survive the short-term contract that we sell you know is and so as a community I think we need to really think about that the other thing I think that Ron was alluding to is even in the short-term it will be much better it will reduce our risk if we're able to have pass-through contracts essentially of this water but right now we don't have anything like that lined up so while council is voting on something they have to be comfortable that if it takes one or two years or we're unable to do that San Antonio can finance that difference and coming out of a very contentious and very long budget discussion a question has to be asked of what are we going to cut if it turns out we have a shortfall in our estimation of how much water we either sell to our existing rate payers or that we're able to give out to other contracts and we all know that this is going to raise rates how much cumulative rates are going to be in five years I haven't seen a number but it's worth noting that Board Williams has said on several occasions that increased rates decrease demand so we're going to in the middle of all this mix have a price trigger that will affect some of the elasticity of the uses of our existing rate payers so when we're looking at the demand projections and figuring out when San Antonio will in fact need that water you have to include in the calculus the fact that people are maybe using some quantity less because we're driving the price up is that I love the idea of a price trigger but do you want that price trigger to come after you've already signed on the dotted line it seems like we should be passing that along to people and getting to that elasticity reducing demand as we've been doing with conservation but continue to do that before we bring on such a large water quantity if I may and Amy that's exactly what we're doing you should applaud that because that's exactly what Solve is doing already we already know that we already have experienced that so we know when it's been a rainy winter that our sewer bills are lower and therefore the projection for the next year of revenue is going to be lower we have a great staff that can predict these outcomes and we look at that we know what these tier the tiering of water does where there's certain amount of individuals that they get into a different tier therefore they're going to cut back and we lose that revenue we have experienced this we adjust for that we know how to work with that we know what to do about that so this future endeavor that we're going after is not going to be a new way of doing things that Solve is regarding that particular issue because we have become very good experts at it for utility the size of Solve to run itself dependent on the weather whether it rains or not depends on the revenue that we receive it comes free from the sky why should you have to buy it and so when you have a series of wet years our revenues go down because it's free when you have a series of drought years sometimes the revenues goes up because there's more of a demand but often times the restrictions tamper down those revenue sources so we have become very good at predicting that and adjusting to that so that any rate increases we need and want are really manageable by ourselves and by city council that eventually has to vote for those let's talk a little bit about the rate payer because we're really two cities in San Antonio where the urban core people tend to have smaller yards or gardens or none at all they don't tend to have automatic irrigation systems they don't tend to have elaborate expensive landscaping of non-native species and they use 8 to 14,000 gallons of water a month per household I believe and then you get out into the suburbs where we have our gated communities our beautiful lawns that people have a lot of landscaping automatic irrigation systems which are very difficult for people to manage most people have no idea how their irrigation system works or how to adjust it or how to make sure they're not wasting water or losing water and they use a multiple of water and there is as you mentioned Amy a pricing structure where the more water you use the more you pay but nevertheless the amount of water that people use particularly in times of drought to keep those lawns green is substantial and it is a substantial part of the inventory of the water I think that SAWS provides during those months so if we're going out into the market to further diversify and to buy more water which is more expensive should the people who are using a larger multiple of water every month pay a disproportionately higher rate for that extra water than those that are saying we're modest about our water uses we conserve water we don't need extra water than what we're using right now the answer is yes and that's exactly what we have been doing and exactly what we are going to be doing we currently have a four tier rate system the more you use not only do you pay more because you're using more but the incremental cost the unit cost is more so you pay a whole lot more and that's four tiers working with our rates advisory committee which is made up of city council appointees that are looking at this issue and what we so far looked at is creating another tier to make it even more expensive but at the bottom part is also a tier for low volume users not low income but low volume users so that there's less of an impact on that individual so again the pricing of water is a science and I believe we become very good at that science Bob if I may I just want to add a couple of points to that I think that your overall sort of description of the city is true but there's an interesting astrocese to what you said that I personally learned when the SAWS board appointed me to the citizens conservation group and that is the two highest use neighborhoods are Tarrell Hills and all this park and San Antonio water systems has done excellent job in enforcement in other neighborhoods but since those aren't city of San Antonio they're retired not retired or off duty police that they hire can't enforce in those areas so I do think that that plus the other comments that you made really highlight that there is an equity issue that we need to get down to and we do need to function as a community and certain neighborhoods should not be and this is not the fault of SAWS but I do think it's the fault of the community for not sort of thinking about this together but we should all be in this together and certain neighborhoods shouldn't be able even if they're paying more to sort of get themselves out of the rules that most of us have to follow and I also think a corollary to what you mentioned is again back to these demand projections how you grow affects demand so of course we're going to grow and growth is good for the city but there is a suite of options within that growth of what that's going to look like and it doesn't mean everybody has to live downtown and high rises even if people want new homes the way we landscape those homes whether or not we put in irrigation systems all of that affect that nationwide cities have overestimated demand when they have assumed that cities will continue to grow out because there's a tendency nationwide that people actually want to come in and so we've actually many many cities have over forecasted their demand because of that reason so I think even within the paradigm of growth there's so many options that can happen Councilman at the staff briefing for your first meeting about comprehensive planning I think John Dugan said that if we were left alone we would double from a city of 500 square miles to 1000 square miles by 2040 or 50 and that the goal ought to be to try to contain it to perhaps 600 square miles and increase density and accrue all of the scale benefits that one does by instead of expanding out and sprawling as it were condensing in more into the urban core and that would affect I assume what Amy is saying about water consumption per capita water consumption and how much we would need to plan for people so how much is water going to be an assumption in your comprehensive planning I think it's fundamental it will determine how we grow as a city and I think for transportation purposes also for natural resources purposes you're seeing more densification of the urban core however we're also seeing this is the fastest growing region in the country this I-10 corridor the 35 and 281 corridors between here and New Braunfels are the fastest growing in our region I think it's based on our state demographer and our own population estimates at the MPO we've underestimated how fast that is occurring over the last 10 years it's actually accelerating so for that reason also for the reasons of what we expect our conservation efforts to do and in addition to that the fact that in this region we know whether or not you believe in the climate science things are changing it's getting hotter we don't know if the drought of record means the drought of our record keeping or the drought of historicity you know we there are scientists who believe that there will be a new drought of record occurring in the south Texas area for all those reasons I think it's very important that we continue to diversify our water supply knowing that the primary source for this community has always been a very drought a very drought sensitive politically delimited source of water in the Edwards additional water from outside of the area and desalination and conservation all of the above is going to be very important for us to again lower the risk on our own community Dr. Browning does this make you want to infuse new resources into the UTSA institute for water studies there's a lot of research in this area but it's really important that you bring together opinions from diverse disciplines as well the social sciences, natural sciences as well as the engineering portion of this and that's why we have institutes like the water institute and the T-Series but I did want to mention too when you were talking about building new infrastructures and how the range of assumptions can really affect what this plan should look like those are really the basics of any good engineering design the engineers we train out of the UTSA would understand that on both sides of the equation on the demand side looking at San Antonio there's a range of assumptions on population growth as well as what kind of demands there will be based on the legislation and other things that happen in the region and on the supply side there's also going to be a range of assumptions based on what the availability of water changes in the drought conditions changes in the areas that you use to calculate that water resource comes from and so a good engineering design I haven't been able to look at this contract in detail either but should take into account that range of possibilities to make sure that we have mitigating circumstances that we're going to be able to go against another key part of this is that by building that infrastructure that connects the two regions of southern part of Texas which you've done is you've extended that critical water resource that can then be added on to the future to provide additional water as it's needed even beyond these 30, 40 years we're talking about and so it could be along the line that pipeline, it could be at the end of that pipeline that we know that we're going to have to continue moving water and what is the solution as we pick right now? Let's talk about moving water from basin to basin because that's something completely new in Texas most of us have been highly critical of the lack of leadership at the state level in trying to take water from places where there's an abundance in Texas to moving it to a place where there's scarcity most of these regional water districts are very turf conscious so on the one hand it looks progressive to think that we are connecting a region and creating a grid of sorts Robert that you mentioned on the other hand there is a feeling a growing feeling that we're starting to hear in Burleson County of they're coming up here to take our water so what's the right balance there between moving water from rural areas where people have a right to pump their ground water and to do what they want with it they can sell it or they can use it and urban areas have a need and we're willing versus making sure that we don't take more out of their aquifers than they can afford to have pumped out excuse me the right balance is this project and the reason for that is you have to show that the receiving basin or the receiving entity has done all it's could it can to deserve that water and that is water conservation you talked about the 25 year history of our water situation all these students here were probably not born but during their life their lifetime we're essentially using the same amount of water in San Antonio as we did when they were born and so part of that balance is making sure that you're using your own water source in your own backyard your own aquifer to the fullest extent possible and I think we're doing that and then you go into a community that has excess water that doesn't have that need for water in their planning horizon and that's the post oak savanna district where this water is coming from the beauty about this project also and that balance you're talking about is we're not taking their water we are paying for and renting the water that is privately owned it is not government owned it's not owned by who knows who it is privately owned and those landowners are leasing their water to this consortium and they are and we are paying for that water is a set cost what we're paying for that water today is exactly the same amount of money that we're paying for it 30 years from now so compare that to any resource as precious water anything that you owned that will cost the same today as it'll cost brand new 30 years from now and again the beauty of this project is that at the end of those 30 years the debt will be paid for the interest will be paid for all of the infrastructure reverts to saws the easement the pipeline will belong to saws and now we can have an independent relationship with that landowner and instead of getting a 10% royalty like they currently are we have negotiated into that contract a 50% royalty so we are taking care of the landowner where this water is coming from we're taking care of our rate payers we're taking care of this entire region by this project so if I sound like I'm very proud of this project I am the solution the regional solution that the rest of the state needs to look at to see what we've done here in San Antonio and by the way all the things that you mentioned at the beginning of your of your conversation when you talked about our ASR a direct recycle our conservation we do all of that by having and still having the lowest rates of any major city in Texas the lowest rates people are spoiled here by the cheap energy in fact for both electricity and water has been very inexpensive here and I think one assumption that everybody that's in the public policy arena makes is that the cost of energy and water has to go up there's just no way to sustain these artificially low prices and that is something that perhaps doesn't get talked about as much but people do have expectations Councilman I'm thinking of you you're going to basically have to take the vote without really having being able to tell rate payers constituents exactly what the rate increases are going to be over that continuum they're definitely going to be rate increases and they're definitely going to be bigger perhaps than some of the rate increases in the past but there's really no way to put an exact number on it at the outset yeah and I think that's why we need to vet the contract but also during the first 18 to 30 months of the construction phase of this contract the board has negotiated off ramps so if it turns out that this is not a deal that's sustainable financially we do have options as a community but you're right and I think that this community has enjoyed low water rates I don't think we should complain about that we should enjoy it but the reason for that is that we have been primarily a single source water community the Edwards aquifer is a prolific aquifer and we can pump from it and not filter it and it goes directly into our water supply but in order to manage the risk of a built environment in order to manage the risk of increasing population and changing environment and changing climate we need to diversify we can't diversify to a cheaper source it's just not available so what we're doing with these cell and again the cheapest diversification obviously is conservation we're doing that but when we're reaching out into other basins we need to make sure that people are aware of the cost at this point in the contract we've been told that the rate impact would be watermarked 16% that is if we can't offload any of the water that we don't need up front we'll get a clear picture of that as we move along the council vote however we would support the notion of us being comfortable with the idea that for long term water security 16% rate increase is something that we can tolerate as a community I do want to go back to something you were talking about with regard to balancing the needs of both communities the state estimates on that particular region are quite generous in terms of the growth that's going to occur this is not an urban area this is an area that's not going to be seeing the kind of growth that our region will have so I think with respect to the community out there yes we need to make sure that we're being responsible citizens and I love what councilman Williams said about that relationship just as we protect our own Edwards aquifer we will protect the Carrizo and be concerned with desired future conditions in both areas we need to do that because in order for us to be responsible stewards of water in our region we have to protect both sources from which they came but in terms of the rate impact I think again we need to be comfortable with the idea that this is a new era we are experiencing tremendous urban growth and at what price do we want to ensure long-term water security for San Antonio I have one more question about Burleson County and I don't know if we happen to have anybody in the audience today that came down from Burleson and if we do well if I will hear from you in a minute then but we're hearing more and more Robert about fracking activity in Burleson County which is not something we heard at the height of all the Eagleford headlines and so are you concerned are your hydrologist concerned at all about the fact that blue water or Vista Ridge went out there and secured all these water rights from farmers from ranchers from private landowners who are now being approached about their mineral rights and so you'll have two issues there depending upon the degree of fracking that happens in the county one is access to sufficient water to do the mining to do the drilling and then second of all any concerns at all about possible contamination that weren't an issue perhaps when these conversations started as a citizen of San Antonio in Texas you have to be concerned about any contamination to a water source but if you talk specifically about this contract that has been negotiated that risk of contamination of the aquifer of any regulatory change back in Burleson County has been born by this project they will continue to have to pay for that pipeline if they cannot deliver the amount of water that we've contracted for or if they deliver the quality of water different from what is set in that contract so if it's contaminated if it's not the right amount we don't have to pay for it that's the beauty about this contract is if the water is not there if it's not clean we don't have to pay for it so another unique thing about this is that the ground water district post oak savanna district when they issue permits they have already taken all of these issues into consideration in other words what is the desired future condition in that area what is the drawdown of the particular wells what amount can be exported what amount can be produced so that that permit to draw that water all these issues have been addressed already much like what we are currently experiencing here in the Edwards when you get an Edwards permit all of these issues already taking into consideration is what is the permit for how much is it for the desired future conditions have been set already by state law as a matter of fact the draw conditions have already been set for by state law in the Edwards so it's much like the Edwards in burleson county that's why this project is so unique in what we're doing and how we're doing it because all these issues have been either negotiated or are being taken care of already by the ground water district can I just say a couple of things on the rates the first thing I want to say about rates I'm very proud that San Antonio has been a low rate city for a long time I mean I think those days are over and to some extent that's going to have to happen and you're going to see that across the board when it comes to rate increases we've talked a lot about 16% again I would like to see some information of how we got to 16% but assuming that's true that's for this one project you have to remember that SAWS also has different projected rate increases for infrastructure replacement the EPA the water agreement and nowhere have I seen sort of a cumulative number I've cobbled one together from different SAWS presentations and it looks like a total of about 41% and that's not 41% at all at once it's 4% on that 4% so it actually is sort of more cumulative or exponential so I think when we have this conversation we really do need to talk about what is a bill going to look like five or seven years from now building in this low income sort of out but that is for a very very low income family and I'm very glad that we're doing it we should have done it a long time ago but as you know there's a lot of families in the city of San Antonio making between 40 and $60,000 they may not qualify for this and they're the ones where a bill increasing by 50% or 100% they're the ones that are really going to get hit and they don't have a safety valve the other thing that I wanted to say is even if a groundwater district it's doing its best and they're hitting they're permitting perfectly to represent their DFCs if fracking comes in you're using a lot of acronyms I know I'm sorry desired future conditions so essentially as Robert sort of referred to each aquifer has sort of this group that comes together all the different groundwater district and decide what do they want that aquifer to look like in 50 years and so it would sort of the way I think of it is if you said you wanted to retire at 65 what money do I need to have in the bank the first thing that your investment person is going to say is well how much do you want to live on every year because you're going to have to put away a different amount right now if you want to live on 50,000 a year versus 100 a year so that's kind of what these groundwater districts are attempting to do what's important about the fracking aspect is that the outside of the water quality concerns the water quantity use for fracking is very high and under existing sort of law that is considered to be an exempt use for groundwater district so even if a groundwater district is trying to do its best to permit you're essentially giving away ATM cards for people to make withdrawals and you don't know how much they're going to make now I do think it's good that San Antonio has negotiated that we don't have a risk if in fact that happens so at least financially we're in a good position but if this city has planned for 10 years that we don't need to you know this water is coming and it doesn't show up we're going to be in even worse position because we will have expected that water so there's some definite complexities that are hard to get into in a short forum about Texas groundwater law and how much you can really guarantee that that water is going to show up and although it's good that we don't have the financial risk associated with that you still want that water to show up if you're going to sign on the dotted line essentially I mean that you know at the end you just want it to be there isn't it true though that if we're going to go out and diversify which means go outside of our area and find new water it's going to come from other districts and there's no such thing as as a deal without risk to some extent yeah but that doesn't mean that that risk shouldn't be really well evaluated and thought through and some risks are going to be higher than others and certainly when you have fracking moving into an area it has an additional concern because of the quantity of water that is essentially unregulated that's being removed and potentially contaminated okay I think we have some individuals with microphones that are going to roam around the audience and give people an opportunity to ask a question I do as a courtesy want to invite either Mayor Taylor or Chairman Guerra if they have anything to add that we haven't covered or that they would like to say to invite them to raise their hand and we'll get a microphone to them if they are both at a loss for words we'll proceed we'll proceed ahead but Mayor Taylor left okay well that settles that and Chairman Guerra I see you there and your hand is up so do we have the individuals with microphones go ahead let's Chairman Guerra I'll invite you and then we'll go to the audience for questions after you've made any observations or points that you'd like to add thank you thank you very much ladies and gentlemen this is an incredible deal for San Antonio a fixed water cost for the next 30 years at the end of 30 years the price reduces because we're through paying for the pipeline so there's a reduction in price if I could assure my grandkids that I can buy them a gallon of milk today for $3 and I can still buy that gallon of milk for their grandkids for $3 in 30 years and that 40 years later it might cost $1.50 I would say it's a pretty good deal we have we have really worked hard to include everybody in our plan we have tried to be as transparent as possible for you for every citizen in this community we have even negotiated that the pipeline transfers to us at the end of 30 years we have negotiated the operation and maintenance fees they were going to start at $9.75 million the first year and climbed to $12 and $14 and $15 and we negotiated a deal for two of our people two of the Vista Ridge people and an engineer would sit before and what that expense was going to be to operate and maintain that product that pipeline rather so that's been taken care of the electrical charge was going to go to them without any control from us we asked that they give it to us since our city owns CPS we could trade electrical rates for communities in this case blue bonnet and we could save money on the electric rate we have done everything possible to make this the most incredible deal for our city for our children and for our grandchildren thank you we'll start with the gentleman right here since you're there with the microphone so close and I would appreciate it as a courtesy to the panel and ask your question my name is Steve Hickson one of the things about this that kind of concerns me is that we may be cutting our nose off despite our face SAWS has to supply water to other counties in the recharge zone and I'm concerned we're going to be bringing water in to supply subdivisions in that ETJ to build over the recharge zone and the contributing zone which eventually will cut back on the amount of water that is getting into the Edwards aquifer we need to make sure this water comes in to San Antonio and supplies people here not to supply the people building over our aquifer I think number one we're purchasing water we're purchasing water not for using water now this is water for long term long term security so when it comes to conservation we need a renewed commitment or reinforced commitment by SAWS and by the city of San Antonio to redouble efforts on conservation also protection of the Edwards aquifer it should be noted that even with diversification efforts for SAWS and for the city this community will by and large get its water from the Edwards aquifer we are reducing risk but we're not eliminating risk so it's very important that we continue our efforts to conserve it's very important that we continue our efforts to protect the Edwards aquifer both within the city limits but also in the ETJ does this get us into the subject though and I don't want to get too off track but development fees which was an issue the council considered and then tabled for this budget but in fact when the gentleman who asked the question Mr. Hickson asked about the added cost long term of letting people develop over the recharge zone how do we take that into consideration in our comprehensive long term planning and pricing for buying more water? I think this is an important part of this is Texas's water but I would add to that and we do need to think of it that way so you know it can't be this little sort of it's mine you can't have it there does need to be some moving around but I also think it's Texas's land and so how you develop it both in terms of all the ecosystems impacts but particularly when you're building over the recharge zone that's you're impacting potentially a water source so you have to think about that one thing that's worth mentioning I think is that in the impact fees conversation that San Antonio just had which was pretty contentious it turned out for a 3% increase over 10 years so a pretty small number compared to this people felt very strongly that the existing rate payers should not have to cover that sort of growth this is not going to be passed on to impact fees because they're really because it's more considered O&M since we're not building it so this really is going to be borne by rate payers and so that needs to be part of the larger conversation of sort of what is the cost of development and how do we balance or assuage that to make all the interests represented and protected for our next questioner please can you hear me my name is Emil Montseviz former planning director for the city of San Antonio and one of the big things that I think you're going to have to deal with and hasn't been addressed up here and I don't know if it is going to be addressed through the process is the type of plan used that demands a lot of water if we're talking about single family development you're going to have a lot of that right now in the ETJ the city of San Antonio has no jurisdictions in terms of the size of the lots or anything in the ETJ I come in as a develop a master plan for the city of San Antonio that gives me best of the right for all that development that's going to occur most of the development is already out there before I even annexed the area so I think one of the key questions here is that what type of land uses are we going to be promoting for the city in the future and can we try to take some of those areas in the suburban area and transfer them to a mixed use pedestrian oriented environment and create more tax incentives in the inner city to create more activity in the older areas of the community I think those are the things that need to be addressed in part of this entire process so down the road we don't have so much demand for that much water or if we do at least we have plenty of water for people to have all the fountains in the downtown that we can enjoy okay do you have a question or was that just an observation what's the question in terms of land use where is it it's not in the contract is the city going to be looking at types of land uses that need to be done how are we going to go about addressing the issue of state law that gives me the right best in rights if I already have a major development I think those are some of the fundamental questions are we back on here? those are some of the fundamental questions that are part of the comprehensive planning effort the attempt by the city to put together a master plan that integrates water as its foundational issue I think it will involve land use we're looking at our land use regulations right now we're looking at our annexation plan for the city and we're also looking at all the other things that affect land use and water planning including multimodal and transportation plan in general so getting all these discussions to happen in the same room and on the same page so we can have a cohesive plan as a city to not only grow but also to deal with demand management our very scarce natural resources is the fundamental issue so we are doing that now we're at the beginning stages of it but better start now than not at all I'm Meredith McGuire I'm a professor of sociology and anthropology at Trinity University I've spoken here several times for the Sierra Club but I'm speaking mainly as a professor of sociology and anthropology just a quick comment and this is very quick I'm very disappointed that nobody when you're talking about other sources of water nobody's talking about rainwater collection cities like Tokyo and Berlin have rainwater collection on a large scale and it makes enormous sense to me that that's a much more reliable resource that we could take advantage of and even save on our stormwater management problems if we had concerted rainwater collection here in San Antonio so that's just my little aside I think it would be cheaper, I think it would be feasible and it would be actually much better to have it right here where we could control its uses it could become part of the recycled water that gets sold to the various secondary uses now my main question my main question and this is more to Councilman Nirenberg but it's also challenging something that I heard Mr. Puente say and that is I came to San Antonio in 1988 and I've seen a lot of change here but the main change that I've seen is much greater stratification much greater inequality not just between the middle the upper classes and the lower classes I see a great deal of inequality between the middle classes and the upper classes and it's become segregated by neighborhood as you know from a recent report in the news I think one of the most serious things that we have to address here is how are we going to set these rate increases in a way that they are not forcing this development this increase of whatever we're calling it growth on the backs of not just the poor but the middle classes I think that this depending upon how these rates are changed and I've taken a look at the proposed changes in the rate structure I think they could be devastating you need to be able to guarantee to San Antonio's middle class that and not just the middle class of course the poor as well you need to be able to guarantee that the increases in this rate plus the increases in the CPS rates plus the cost of rentals and so forth are not going to leave these families with 40 or 50% of their income going into just the housing part of their income that's tied in with why those families are not able to afford as the paper today said the middle classes are not engaging in retail part of the economy we are actually hurting our economy by the fact that we are increasing the inability of the middle class to be able to afford what they need for their homes that's a long way from water professor but I appreciate your questions so let's just take that into two pieces rainwater how much of a potential resource is that for us Robert and what is underway with that already or will be underway rainwater is great especially in Tokyo because it rains twice as much almost three times as much as it does here in San Antonio 2012 that was actually an above average rainfall year for this area a third of that rainfall happened over a three day weekend so rainwater is harvesting is unpredictable it's not a solution you have to retrofit your home if you connect into the potable water system it's a nightmare too many public safety concerns about that so rain harvesting is great like my brother-in-law sitting right over there does it he has huge barrels with pumps and he does it for his gardens he does not do it necessarily for drinking purposes so that's great if you want to do that but for the entire community you have to do that it's too costly individually and too costly for utility and too unpredictable for utility collection yes we do and we actually pay for part of it the conservation programs that we have in place will help pay for retrofits that you want to do and you essentially save water they get to save on their bill we get to save and not having to deliver more water to them so water conservation in that regard does work because of the investment that they're able to put into it to make it work I heard you say at the outset Robert that there will be a new rate structure or ultimately there's one being discussed about pricing for people either that are socioeconomically challenged or simply that are just such good conservationists they're not using very much water and you want to I guess reward conservation exactly you know there's the middle class that different people have talked about we do have affordability programs for them also what often happens is the one time event in their lives a divorce, a loss of a job certain medical bills that are out of the ordinary and so we do have those programs that help regardless of that type of need we're also tightening up our affordability program to where we're looking at usage in particular neighborhoods to where one particular house is way out of whack for that neighborhood we know there's an issue there so we help them with that we have programs such as plumbers to people to where if you cannot afford to fix your leak that you might have where it's just something that's maybe it's not an emergency we help pay for that so there's a lot of programs that we currently have in place and there's also programs that we are developing for this particular reason that we want the community to know that we are addressing those concerns about the affordability of water and if we talk about the affordability of water please also mention in that conversation how much you pay for not your cell phone but for your 13 year old child cell phone so it's nothing compared to what we pay for cable for telephone for any other utility for a necessity like water it's actually very very inexpensive okay let's go to this side of the room we have a question from a citizen in mylam county this came via now cast essay from the live stream and the question is as follows the original rfp in 2011 was for 20,000 acre feet a year so why did the saws approve a contract of 50,000 acre feet per year originally the request that we had out was for 20,000 acre feet at the first year and incrementally raising to a total amount of 50,000 acre feet so what we did we issued an amend an addendum to that proposal where we changed the concept a couple of reasons were because we just were a forced marriage with Bermette they came online that we had to take care of those resources also but ultimately what we found out was to deliver 50,000 acre feet eventually in the out years was going to be just as expensive to build that pipeline as 50,000 acre feet on year one so essentially we did it through an addendum process and we we did it because of the economics of building and receiving all that water at the beginning rather than just incrementally over time okay that's great that now cast is making this available to people in mylam and lee and burleson county we have a question sir up there right behind you thank you I'm going to argue with you Robert about rainwater collection oh my name is Brad flink and I'm the former building trades teacher at bandera high school and our class projects out there for the last five years was building rainwater collection tanks we built two 42,000 gallon tanks there so we got 84,000 gallons of storage in 2013 we caught half a million gallons of water that's about 30% more than one acre foot now I got to looking at your numbers and if you take 3.4 billion and divide it by 65,000 which is the amount of money it cost us to build those systems we I could take and he gave me enough teenagers I could build 50,000 of those projects alright so my question is to the engineering dean you've got 2,000 engineer new engineers coming up do you think they would enjoy designing 25 systems and if not what are they going to do can I ask you can I ask you before you take the microphone away who finance that sir and where is that water going who's the owner of that rainwater bandera high school owns it the lcra gave us a $25,000 grant the petersen foundation gave us a $25,000 grant we got the hill country alliance gave us $500 and if you want to see a book that we wrote explaining it it's on their website hill country alliance we spray we catch water off a 60,000 square foot parking lot and we spray it on the baseball field thank you very much we reduced the high school has its own well and it pumps 9 million gallons a year out of the lower trinity aquifer and so we reduced that by 5% with those 2 tanks congratulations that's terrific do you learn not just the technical skills they need to be able to serve society that's the most important thing so we can look for a unique experience in raw art to get it certainly service learning is one of those we have very active community about order book sets providing drinkable water and other types of water management in other underprivileged areas in our students are very active in that and travel around the world to help the community build these types of systems so certainly that is an active part of what our students are learning about how to contribute back to society I imagine again I'm a structural engineer I imagine that the idea of doing a large harvesting effort such as that is also you have to consider the infrastructure that has been built between all those harvesting elements and how you get it out and distribute it but again that would be a question for somebody else well it sounds like a terrific project I asked about the financing because it often times whether you're talking about at the individual level solar or doing something like rain water it's financing and it's subsidies and it can be a very expensive game to get into creating sustainability on your own and probably beyond the grasp of so many of your rate payers that saw us to even think about doing that but on the other hand you do provide subsidies for certain sustainable steps including removing turf and putting in wildscape do people take advantage of those or do those go unused no actually that just went up very very quickly that particular program so we have other programs that in our opinion and that opinion is based on studies on empirical studies on a lot of different reasons why for example that particular program where we pay people to install hardscape patios pavers, decks and take up turf is more cost effective than for subsidizing rain barrels for example and so it's not to criticize rain harvesting as a matter of fact when I was in the legislature I passed a statewide rain harvesting bill to make it easier to do so it's not that I'm against it or saw it as against it it said that is not the solution to this problem that we're having of having to bring in 50,000 acre feet of water for our growing community okay question on this side please thank you Richard I'm a former elected official and I want to thank you for the university for this opportunity for you to come here today I'm going to stretch a little bit of what you mentioned earlier in the opportunity to people to have their say and to have some discussion but there is a question at the end one of the things that really concerns me deals with the EAA and you mentioned the lawsuit brought about by the club and as I see this I'm trying to get people not to throw acronyms out there at the audience and my habitat conservation plan you know there's a lot of things there's 1.2 million people that never get to hear our side of the story but we certainly get to hear it all because we watch your news and we read your newspaper and we watch these kind of discussions but we just don't get to be a part of the discussion in the city of San Antonio very often so I'm speaking for some of those citizens still back in the rompals we're one metropolitan area now after the census it's now officially the San Antonio New Bromphals metropolitan statistical area so we like the idea of being involved in the dialogue unfortunately we see that slipping away with the current lawsuit that's going on with the Edwards-Ockford representation and we see SAWS heavily involved in pushing that along but a week and a half ago I got to watch a little bit of a battle going on between Dr. Vodler from the Guadalubi Blanco River Authority and Mr. Greg Flores from SAWS in which Mr. Flores reminded the people of New Bromphals that SAWS is our savior because they're paying for 80% of that Habitat Conservation Plan and tonight I heard it echoed in some form or another but I look at some of the other statistics for example New Bromphals has a population that's about well, the San Antonio population 19 times that of New Bromphals but SAWS holds 31 times the number of acre foot permits that New Bromphals has so there's a lot of disparity that and while I appreciate all of the things that SAWS has done in past years it doesn't make up for the fact that this year most of the summer one of our three main springs spring run number one has been completely dry our Kamau River has been at low 63 cubic feet per second this is something that's only happened seven times in recorded history seven times it's the worst it's been in 25 years we started out two years ago in January in the 220 cubic feet per second range we normally are right at just under 300 last year we started out at 60 cubic feet per second most of those water experts including water masters believe that we're going to probably start January 1st under 100 cubic feet per second so folks the math from 63 from 100 from what we went down this past year we're going to have a dry spring completely completely dry so when I read SAWS talking about bringing 165,000 with these 50,000 acre feet which I understand you're about to get the fight of your life on and I see all the talk about growth I see SAWS publicizing this will allow us to avoid stage 3 and 4 yet New Bromphils has been in stage 3 narrowly avoided stage 4 many other cities like San Marcos went into stage 4 we have first time stage 5 going on in Edwards Aquifer communities and San Antonio remained in stage 2 the entire time okay you've stretched it now how about a question so one last thing councilman thank you I do want you to understand as a council member if you take a look at Attorney General opinion DM 444 you as a group you control everything about SAWS you as a group decide what SAWS can and cannot do all of SAWS is entirely under the control of the city government so exercise that and look at it there's more than one opinion so the question would be what can SAWS do if they get this water which in many ways I hope you do if you get this water why not start offsetting some of those EAA permits the springs and New Bromphils are your Alamo they mean as much as the Alamo means to the Alamo city so imagine somebody coming in here to slow down well without imagining that that's a good question about whether or not any of that water can be used to supplement permitted water from the Edwards and increase the spring flow if I may New Bromphils could for example you talk about water restrictions and the fact that y'all are in stage 3 and 4 close to 4 and we're still at stage 2 you could easily easily be in stage 2 also if you do what we did and if you do what our rate payers are paying for and that is for example a direct recycled system today, currently, finally New Bromphils is talking about building one of those we've had one online for the last 15 years you could also talk about driving down your per capita use to what San Antonio has it ours is currently about 124 gallons per person per day you could also ask your rate payers to start paying for alternate sources of water for example we have Trinity water our D cell project that our community is paying for all of these resources extra resources are the reasons why we don't have to go into other stages where we saws, yes we cut back we saws are in stage 4 not our rate payers, not our community because we have alternate sources of water because our rate payers have paid for through rate increases that our council has given us these ability to pay for these projects and by the way we do it by keeping the lowest rates of any city a major city in Texas so what we're doing actually is what I think New Bromphils should be doing also what happens in New Bromphils is you all have surface water you have diversified off of the Edwards but you still have Edwards permits but those Edwards permits are used when during peak periods during when the aquifer is most stressed so you also talked about we are over allocator more than our share of permits if you use it by a per capita basis the reason we do that is because we have purchased permits from farmers in Uvalde, farmers in Medina County which New Bromphils can very easily do also and all you have to do is buy them on paper you pump it out of your existing wells so for the criticism of saws for doing these great innovative things I just don't understand because these great innovative things are being done by going to our rate payers asking them for rate increases getting them from city council and then doing the right things with that money on alternating diversifying our water supply Councilor I'm not sure I'm going to hear it I'll add to that I think one of the things that gets glossed over in all of this is that saws has been very successful in reducing for gallons per capita use over the last 25 years from around 220 of what we are now in a drought condition of around 135-143 we want to continue to be good at that and I think that's one additional evidence of being regionally responsible in terms of our utility I will add to that by saying that the San Antonio citizenry has been extremely responsible and has taken on the responsibility of being the largest entity in the room with regard to the Edwards Opera by protecting it over the last 15 years we've been investing our sales tax revenue in Edwards Opera protection districts, conservation districts we've protected over 120,000 acres of the Edwards Opera recharge zone that hopefully will continue we want to see that continue but saws rate payers, San Antonio tax payers, the saws utility in general has been at the forefront in terms of dealing with what is not a desirable situation in terms of Texas groundwater rules and making the best of that situation I think it deserves an entirely different form to talk about the lawsuit but in terms of what we're doing as a community I think that's why we want to continue the efforts for folks in Burleson County but also in New Bromphill, San Marcos and everybody in between to show that we know that we are acting responsibly as we continue to protect our water future. Okay I do want to keep what little time we have left on the Vista Ridge deal that's why we're here tonight and people wanted to talk about it so sir you have a question? Yes David Clark an upset rate payer basically because this whole deal seems to me unnecessary we've been talking about conservation that's low hanging fruit the outdoor water usage in this city done by our developers and by our citizens we have got to take some responsibility and lower our usage we need to get more into our acceptance of Zurich as an appropriate way to save water usage it not only saves the homeowner and the business owner money because if the rates are going to go up 16% including other rates that would prevent us from having to spend 3.5 billion dollars on this pipeline my question is why not instead of spending 3.5 billion on a exploitative pipeline that steals money from another region why aren't we being more responsible and giving more money to citizens and developers to save money in the outdoor landscaping because that's 50% of our usage. Okay thank you why not spend the money on enhanced conservation efforts to reduce irrigation instead of on a diversifying the water supply by buying the because that will not solve the problem if you do Zurich it's great we already have programs to help out with that where it pays for itself but that will not solve the problem. It's situations where young ladies like Emma Thompson sitting right there the child of one of our employees deserves a community where she can know that her parents can know that if she gets educated somewhere and comes back there's room for her here in San Antonio. Rain harvesting as important as it is will not work zero escaping as important as it is will not work to solve this problem and I'm talking from an individual that served in the legislature that I had zero escaping bills I had homeowner associations to leave the homeowner alone when they want to do rain harvesting and want to have zero escaping I come from a conservation ethic where I passed and introduced a repeated legislation that is statewide law now about water conservation so we know that it works but that is not the answer to this situation that we have about meeting our needs during the drought of record for our growing community okay do we have a question over here my name is Jack Finger Jack Am Finger my question has to do with the cost of this Mr. Ridge project I preface it with the following remarks I frequently criticize SAWS for its mismanagement a couple years ago it couldn't even figure out where 15% of its water was going Jack we're running out of time do go right to your question this thing is very very expensive it costs about a thousand two thousand dollars per acre foot why haven't the cheaper alternatives such as recharge and recirculation they considered and implemented it only cost maybe a fraction of this amount thank you okay thank you alternatives have been taken for example the gentleman from New Bromphiles the cheapest water out there right now is Edwards water so we can easily spend a hundred and ten millions of dollars buying Edwards permits and that keeps us under the threshold of the statewide DFC that's been established by the state for the reason why DFC of the Edwards we can repeatedly buy those permits but what are we doing we are being good stewards of this water resources we are choosing with our rate payers in mind to pay for more expensive water because we care about the aquifer we care about diversity we care about this situation so yes Jack there's a tremendous amount of cheaper water Trinity water for example is cheaper but it's unsustainable we would affect the wells of private landowners the wells of Faroq and the wells also of Comal County where we are aware of these situations but we're being good stewards not only to the Edwards but to the Trinity also and this entire area okay we have time for a couple of last questions right here sorry we're past that now this is ask these two questions here the two people with their hands up and then we'll answer them I know there's more questions when we have time we've gone past our time I'll stay as long as people want to ask questions my name is Margaret Day and I chair the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club and I just wanted to speak to the students and public in the room you're going to ask a question I hope I would like to make a preface since many other people tonight have made a preface I will try to I know but this is the problem you are taking a lot of time out of our lives to research I'm sorry we're asking questions and answers she can ask a question there is not time for a Sierra Club talk this is the panel that was invited the Sierra Club was not invited we've been told that there's an opportunity for public input and we have been involved in this process from the beginning and we have not been able to speak to them and we challenge almost every single assertion that SAWS is making about this project and we have been working with a network of people across the state and across the country to evaluate their determinations and we find questions with them and we are being shut down at every opportunity SAWS claims that this is an open process that there's a lot of opportunity for input it's transparent it is not it is absolutely not and I want to know from your panel up in front how you're going to assure people who have taken the time and energy to study these issues that have information that diverges from what SAWS is telling everybody if we have an opportunity for not only our ideas to be discussed with you but for the public to understand what our positions are about these 25 years ago it was the Sierra Club that created the movement to change this community and create SAWS and all of these great changes the city is touting as SAWS contributions are actually been promoted and supported by the Sierra Club all these years and I think we have a right to be at the table speaking to the public about this and not having all of our positions being dismissed automatically by SAWS and the public elected leaders thank you there a question up there before we close I've had your hand up a long time I'll tell you I'll invite you myself personally to submit a piece on the RIVARD report if you don't think you're reaching the public I'll be happy to publish you I have personally met without any time restrictions the professor from Trinity with Annalisa Peace I invited the Sierra Club to come meet with me when I saw him standing out in the council lobby wanting to meet with different council members they didn't take up that opportunity but the Trinity professor had all the time in the world for her and I to discuss these issues so did Annalisa Peace so for y'all to say that y'all have been shut out of this process is entirely wrong I have given you every opportunity to come personally to talk to me about this and discuss anything you wanted to discuss I'd just like to ask one question because like the citizens of New Braunfels the citizens of San Antonio have been shut out of this and we have one more public forum where people are not permitted to make statements but rather to ask questions this is the way it's been all along my question has been several statements made tonight we're just running out of time I understand that but I'm just saying my questions for Councilman Nuremberg before council votes on this will there be at least one public hearing where the public is allowed to express their opinions without being limited in any way shape or form three minutes my understanding of that is that there will be a public hearing and this is the beginning of a public process in which we want public input we want to have people at the table to explain our positions to explain what the issue is and at the end of the day make a decision with the backing of the public I think what I'm hearing from the audience not only from New Braunfels but our citizens in the environmental community but also people who just want to be assured of long term water at a reasonable affordable rate there's a lot of the same concerns being addressed and in my mind are being addressed by the SAWS Board of Trustees on these issues that's why we need to take the time as a community now over the next month to vet this contract make sure that the assertions that are being made are actually in the contract sure there's going to be some philosophical differences some of us in this room are concerned about different things there are some people in this room where I sure start with the notion that there should not be any inter-basin transfers in the state of Texas unfortunately that's the situation we're dealing with we don't have desirable groundwater rules in the state of Texas to deal with the kind of population growth climate change and environmental urbanization of cities that we have today so we have to look for new solutions I think there's a way to do it that's regionally responsible that continues to press on conservation I think the board has been open to those ideas now we just need to make sure that the actions that we're taking are fiscally responsible and that they truly address those concerns I'm hopeful about the situation I know the temperature has been raised quite a bit with regard to the timeline but we are going to take our time we are going to look at this with due diligence over the next month and be assured that we make a great decision for the future of San Antonio well we stretch 60 minutes to 90 minutes to 100 minutes but we're out of time we started a public dialogue that people asked for and I want to thank the panelists for their contributions well let's go to 101 minute and then we'll we'll close it my question is simply on the contract there's about 26 articles sir but when you get to article 26 it's titled miscellaneous provision and then it leads to section 2612 and section 2612 simply refers it's titled as confidential sauce information and then it goes on to say project companies confidentiality obligations the next section section 2613 is vice versa it's titled sauce confidentiality obligations so my question hopefully you know is there anyone here that can elaborate on what exactly is the contract referring to when it says project companies confidentiality obligations as well as sauce confidentiality confidentiality obligations as you know sauce is a public utility anything that we do is public so you can ask for my calendar for example on my email all that's public we are contracting with a private company they have certain issues that they want to keep confidential because they may want to replicate this project they don't want to give their competitors a situation where they may want to undercut them or do something differently wherever else they may want to build a pipeline build a project okay thank you very much for coming we appreciate it I hope there's more opportunities to do this again thank you