{"id":2624,"date":"2025-10-14T11:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T11:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/2624\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T11:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T11:16:09","slug":"why-san-antonios-water-future-looks-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/2624\/","title":{"rendered":"Why San Antonio’s water future looks different"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Antonio isn\u2019t running out of water any time soon and that\u2019s no accident. Decades of planning, policy shifts and persistence have made the city a national model for water security, even as much of Texas struggles to keep up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the latest episode of the bigcitysmalltown<\/a> podcast, guest host Cory Ames spoke with Robert Puente, president and CEO of the San Antonio Water System<\/a>, about what makes San Antonio water different, future readiness and a potential rate increase on your bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Puente said city residents will enter 2026 with no rate increase, with SAWS planning to ask city council to vote on an increase<\/a> early next year. That rate increase would go towards funding system improvements, including wastewater plant upgrades, accelerating leak detection and line replacement across 7,000 miles of underground pipe.<\/p>\n

San Antonio\u2019s edge, Puente said, comes from its diverse water portfolio, stretching far beyond the Edwards Aquifer with conservation at the forefront.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have water coming from multiple different sources, surface water, groundwater, four different aquifers, so that we are insulated from a lot of different things that may happen,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look at the state water plan, they talk about reusing water, they talk about conserving water, they talk about storage of water, underground storage of water, and all of those we\u2019ve already done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Puentes credits large projects like the desalination plant in southern Bexar County for strengthening the system\u2019s long-term reliability and outlook.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve secured our water future into the 2070s. It\u2019s not just a plan. It\u2019s actually what they call wet water,\u201d Puente said. \u201cIn other words, water that we can access as we grow. And so we\u2019re very proud of what we\u2019ve done at SAWS over these last 17 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

While San Antonio\u2019s population has surged, he believes the efforts SAWS has made in the past 17 years have kept one metric steady.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe have the nation\u2019s best water conservation programs,\u201d Puentes said. \u201cIf you look at our growth over the last 20 or 30 years, we\u2019re essentially using the same amount of water now as we were then.\u201d<\/p>\n

As San Antonio continues to grow, he said SAWS challenges will shift from securing water to maintaining and upgrading infrastructure, including the upkeep of the 7,000 miles of underground pipes the system depends on.<\/p>\n

That dependability, Puente said, is what matters most to customers \u2014 and what he considers the true measure of success for the utility.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single second of the day we fail or we succeed,\u201d Puente said, adding that \u201c99.99% of the time, the water comes on when you turn on the tap and it leaves your home when you\u2019re done. Reliability is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click the link below to listen to the full conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Antonio isn\u2019t running out of water any time soon and that\u2019s no accident. Decades of planning, policy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3212,3213,82,84,83,3214,3215,3028,3216,410,3217,3218,3219],"class_list":{"0":"post-2624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-bigcitysmalltown","9":"tag-robert-puente","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","12":"tag-san-antonio-news","13":"tag-san-antonio-water-system","14":"tag-saws","15":"tag-typedaily","16":"tag-utilities","17":"tag-water","18":"tag-water-and-energy","19":"tag-water-conservation","20":"tag-wc-less-than-500"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}