Kerrville is resorting to what some would call a desperate plan<\/a> to dump treated wastewater into the Guadalupe River, then pull it out, treat it again and serve it to a thirsty public.<\/p>\nWhat about San Antonio and the surrounding counties that depend on the Edwards Aquifer?<\/p>\n
More than 2.5 million people rely on the fresh water that comes from the Edwards, considered one of the most pristine aquifers in the world. The water is so pure that no filtration is needed. It\u2019s one of nature\u2019s greatest gifts to us.<\/p>\n
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But that could change very soon, as government agencies like the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, San Antonio Metropolitan Health and San Antonio Water System are allowing Lennar Homes and its partner, Municipal Operations LLC, to dump 1 million to 4 million gallons of sewage effluent onto the\u00a0Guajolote Ranch.<\/p>\n
That filthy water will contain forever chemicals like\u00a0PFAS or PFOS, and dangerous pharmaceuticals like\u00a0fentanyl, microplastics and other toxins, and it will pass rapidly through the Swiss cheese-like\u00a0karst limestone.<\/p>\n
Within weeks, it will end up in the Edwards Aquifer permanently.<\/p>\n
To put this crisis in perspective, consider that 71% of the Earth\u2019s surface is covered by water, with oceans holding 96.5% of all Earth\u2019s water. You can\u2019t drink salt water, and desalination plants are expensive and energy-intensive. Transporting reverse osmosis water from the Gulf Coast to San Antonio via a massively expensive pipeline would unnecessarily raise taxes on average residents.<\/p>\n
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Only 2.5% of Earth\u2019s water is considered the kind of fresh water that is necessary for life. Of that,\u00a069% is locked in ice caps, glaciers and snow, 30% is in groundwater, and less than 1% is in rivers, lakes and rain clouds.<\/p>\n
So, if a mere 0.75% \u2014 30% of 2.5% \u2014 of the planet\u2019s fresh water is found in groundwater like the Edwards Aquifer, why would anyone in their right mind risk polluting such a rare and precious source of life-giving water?<\/p>\n
Desperate communities have little choice but to drink\u00a0repurposed toilet water like Kerrville\u00a0or reprocessed seawater like Cancun.<\/p>\n
San Antonio isn\u2019t desperate quite yet.<\/p>\n
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We are blessed with some of the purest water on the planet, but if the\u00a0Guajolote Ranch development proceeds, we are perilously close to squandering it all away.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened to the near-sacred warning of \u201cDon\u2019t mess with Texas\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The TCEQ, San Antonio Metro Health and SAWS must think it doesn\u2019t apply to them. So much for them taking seriously their jobs of protecting the public health, safety and wellness.<\/p>\n
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At this rate, the day is coming when parents will be reading their children a bedtime story about San Antonio\u2019s great waste of water: \u201cOnce upon a time there was water so pure that you could actually drink it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael\u00a0Schick lives in Northwest San Antonio. He is a former spokesman for the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A large sink hole is seen in May 2016 as about 500 cubic feet per second of water…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3608,99388,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-265756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-edcommentary","tag-edwater","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265756","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=265756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}