Partnerships among land developers, public entities and nonprofits will be vital in managing the Texas Hill Country’s water resources in the coming years, experts said during a panel discussion Wednesday hosted by the San Antonio Report.
But whether state legislators will need to offer more carrots to developers — or brandish more sticks — when it comes to protecting Central Texas’ water resources is still up for debate. The five panelists discussed this as well as other water-related topics, such as the state’s growing population, what responsible development in the Hill Country looks like, and how organizations can work together to protect Texas’ environment.
Panelist Charlie Hill, president and chief operations officer of Boerne-based developer DH Investments, asserted that carrots do better than sticks. The Texas native was the one who introduced the analogy during Wednesday’s discussion, which took place at the Phil Hardberger Park Urban Ecology Center. Hill is known by fellow Kendall County residents for the Cordillera Ranch development, which many point to as an example of responsible land and water use.
“More needs to be thought about from the policy level — whether it’s statewide or federal — but from the policy level utilizing the carrot as opposed to the stick approach, it’s very easy when policymakers get together to think of the only solution as tighter regulation,” he said. “I think we’re seeing more of a carrot approach now [where we see] funds set aside for the state to acquire land and open space.”
Hill was joined by Amy Hardberger, director of the Texas Tech University School of Law’s Center for Water Law and Policy and trustee of the San Antonio Water System; Katherine Romans, executive director of the Hill Country Alliance; Roland Ruiz, general manager of the Edwards Aquifer Authority; and Andra Wisian, Kendall County Precinct 2 Commissioner.
Texas has relatively few laws regulating water resources, Hardberger said during the discussion. She added that while this legislative session did see the creation of a massive new state water fund, gaps at the state level still exist, and cooperation among environmentalists, government leaders, developers and new residents will be critical moving forward.
“One of the biggest challenges with the conversation and how we’re going to move forward is the law doesn’t recognize systems well,” she said. “We love to draw boundaries, we love to say, ‘OK, well that’s the county line, that’s the city limit, that’s the Edwards Aquifer, this is the authority of the county,’ and sometimes that creates a lot of complication because there’s a lot of oversight and it leaves a lot of pretty significant gaps.”
Watch the full one-hour panel discussion below:
