This is the third and final part of a series by the San Antonio Report about the sustainability of area lakes. Read the first part here and the second part here.
As you approach the edge of Medina Lake, no water is immediately visible. Instead, bone-dry layers of limestone bake under the blazing sun, their jagged shapes anything but inviting.
At just about 4% full, Medina Lake has been reduced to a creek. Tree branches stick out along the lake’s edges. Boat docks stuck on rocks dozens of feet above the water populate the fringes of the lake. The lake hasn’t been this low since 2015.
Constructed from 1911 to 1912 as an irrigation reservoir, Medina Lake has been a popular recreational spot since the 1920s — during the years it has water in it, at least. The crescent-shaped lake has become infamous for extreme fluctuations, overflowing during floods and almost drying up completely during severe droughts.
Some blame the lake’s extremely low levels on natural causes — such as evaporation amid the ongoing drought or recharge into the Edwards Aquifer, which lies beneath parts of the lake.
But the residents and business owners who make up a conservation group called Save Medina Lake say the lake’s low levels — even with the crippling drought — are made worse by mismanagement by the entity tasked with overseeing the lake: the Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Counties Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, known as BMA.
The group argues the water district could improve its management of the lake’s outflow and immense system of canals the water travels through to reach farmers and ranchers downstream.
Now, after a decade of clashing with the BMA, Save Medina Lake is seeking changes at the state level that will either force the water district to abide by improved water management practices — including those outlined in its own drought plans — or eliminate the district entirely. A petition launched by the group has garnered almost 1,700 signatures of support seeking more oversight from the state regarding the lake’s management.
“The state of Texas needs to look at this situation,” said Henning Eilert-Olsen, a Medina Lake resident. “Water is an enormously scarce resource, and it’s getting more and more important.”
The San Antonio Report made numerous attempts to seek comment from the BMA and its board members about their management of Medina Lake. Office manager Bonnie Sallee declined several calls from a reporter before sending an email statement from the water district.
In the email, Sallee said the ongoing drought “has taken a heavy toll on water resources throughout the state of Texas and Medina Reservoir has been severely affected.”
“We pray for rain not only for our farmers and Medina Reservoir, but for everyone affected right now by this drought,” she wrote.
Years of conflict
The BMA operates like many water districts in the state of Texas: it’s run by a board of directors whose members are elected to four-year terms by residents in the area it serves. Of the current seven board members, five mention in their biographies that they farm or raise cattle. The BMA has jurisdiction over sections of land within Bexar, Medina and Atascosa counties although exactly how far its authority reaches is still hotly debated.
The tumultuous history between the BMA and Medina Lake property owners stretches back to 2013, the last time the lake’s levels were dropping at a rapid rate following a period of drought.
Save Medina Lake sought to answer a single question: Why had Medina Lake become practically empty between 2007 and 2013 while comparable lakes in Central Texas had not?
Some of the lake’s water is naturally lost to evaporation, similar to other bodies of water, and the U.S. Geological Survey estimates roughly 3,000 acre-feet from the lake seeps into the Edwards Aquifer each month. However, the lake’s levels had seemingly dropped more dramatically, the group said, and it wanted answers.
Initially, the group sought to find out when, why and how often the BMA opened the gates of Medina Lake’s dam, but the BMA declined to provide this information, Eilert-Olsen said. Medina Lake’s dam has two gates to release water into Diversion Lake, a smaller reservoir four miles below Medina Lake, which feeds the district’s 312-mile canal system that distributes water to farmers.
Save Medina Lake responded by using drone flights to try to monitor when the BMA was opening the gates, which led to a drone pilot for the group being ordered to cease and desist by a BMA attorney who cited “national security issues.”
The group discontinued flying drones but continued to push for the BMA to disclose the status of Medina Lake’s gates. While the BMA’s website now shows if the gates at Diversion Lake’s dam are open and letting water flow into the irrigation canals, the water district still does not disclose when Medina Lake’s gates are open, Eilert-Olsen said.
He said he was shocked to learn the BMA didn’t keep records on when it opened and shut the dam’s gates, nor did it have a meter to measure the outflow at the lake’s dam. The group came to believe the lake’s depletion could be largely attributed to poor management of the dam’s gates and the dirt canal system.
While tensions temporarily died down in 2016 when heavy bouts of rainfall helped refill the lake, they arose again as the lake’s levels quickly dipped down again in 2022.
Losing precious water
Off to the side of County Road 271, about 15 miles from Medina Lake, a long canal is carved into the ground several feet deep. Easily mistakable for a drainage ditch on the side of the road, the canal is overgrown with a thick layer of shrubs and several small trees. A torn black liner is slightly visible on one side, partially crushed under fallen limestone. A gate bars access to the canal, marked with a warning not to trespass.
It’s largely in these 110-year-old earthen canals that much of the lake’s water is being unnecessarily lost, alleges Mike Crandall, founder and owner of Wallys Watersports on Medina Lake and a member of Save Medina Lake.
The BMA is responsible for the 312-mile canal system below Medina Lake that was created in the early 20th century to water 33,000 acres of farmland for roughly 3,300 properties. Today the district holds permits to draw about 46,000 acre-feet of water from Medina Lake annually for farming, although last year it allotted only 6,000 acre-feet to its roughly 400 farmers due to the drought. One acre-foot is enough to cover an acre with a foot of water, or about 325,851 gallons.
Since 2000, the BMA has lined 47 miles of its canals with piping or liners to help save water, however, most of its canals remain earthen channels.
Crandall said a longtime data expert affiliated with Save Medina Lake was able to roughly calculate that 75% of the water that leaves Medina Lake does not make it to the farmers it’s intended for.
In other words, for every 4 acre-feet released, only 1 acre-foot reaches farmers, Crandall said. That means to deliver the allotted 6,000 acre-feet to farmers in 2022, the district expended 24,000 acre-feet from the lake, he said.
Eilert-Olsen said they believe roughly 50% of that is lost in the canals alone.
Using data from the Texas Water Development Board, the Diversion Lake outflow meter and the farmers’ inflow meters, Save Medina Lake believes that estimate to be pretty accurate, Eilert-Olsen said.
“That’s how we come up with the numbers,” he said. “Nobody has argued against these numbers.”
Last summer, Medina Lake’s levels once again began dropping in a manner that seemed unusually fast even with a drought.
“Last year when they had the gates open in July, the lake went down 5.5 feet,” Crandall said. “That’s enough water to water all those farmers down there for years. It’s unheard of.”
BMA said in its email statement that due to drought conditions it has not released any water from Medina Lake since August 2022.
“The BMA board understands the hardships the current drought has bestowed on landowners and the BMA District,” the BMA stated. “During this time of drought and lack of irrigation water, BMA will be diligently working to make necessary improvements throughout the district.”
In a normal irrigation year, the BMA has two to three months to work on the district’s canals, the BMA stated. These improvements are meant to “address the areas of large losses, better water conservation and improve delivery time to landowners,” according to the statement.
Renewed efforts
Tired of battling the water district, Save Medina Lake has recently tried a new tactic: get the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission to review the BMA.
A sunset review, performed by the state’s 12-member Sunset Commission, is an evaluation of the need for the continued existence of a program or an agency. The two-year evaluation process either results in an agency being given mandates on how to improve or the agency being ended.
While the BMA is not currently subject to sunset review, Save Medina Lake would like to see it be, Eilert-Olsen said.
The group has also tried to get the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) involved. Last year, Eilert-Olsen filed a formal complaint to the TCEQ accusing the BMA of not following its 2013 Drought Contingency Plan (DCP).
The BMA’s 2013 drought plan states the water district will initiate a critical water storage stage should the volume of water in the lake drop to 46,000 acre-feet or below.
However, even though Medina Lake reached that level in May 2022, the BMA continued to release water from the reservoir throughout June and July of last summer, Crandall said.
But while the TCEQ has jurisdiction over water districts, its powers are limited, said TCEQ media specialist Ricky Richter.
“The TCEQ does not have the authority to require entities to implement their DCPs in times of drought,” Richter said in an email. “Each entity is responsible for overseeing the implementation and enforcement of their DCP.”
According to an investigation report by the TCEQ, the commission sent a specialist to visit the BMA office in August 2022 to confirm that the DCP was posted in the BMA’s main lobby — and it was. Beyond that, the TCEQ doesn’t have a role, Richter said.
In response, Eilert-Olsen and Save Medina Lake launched a new petition in late 2022 seeking to change Texas Water Code law to make DCPs enforceable.
It also seeks to establish a conservation level at 50% of the total capacity of Medina Lake “which will secure recharge of the Edwards Aquifer,” put BMA under Sunset Review, and “bring an end to municipal water users in San Antonio subsidizing the BMA.”
San Antonio’s water utility could indeed end up forcing changes at BMA, albeit indirectly.
The majority of BMA’s revenue — roughly 75% of its annual income or about $3 million per year — comes from a take-or-pay water contract the San Antonio Water System inherited from the Bexar Metropolitan Water District in 2012.
Despite the contract, SAWS hasn’t used water from Medina Lake in nearly a decade due to the lake’s poor water quality. Still, the municipal utility has paid the water district more than $28 million since 2013 and is set to pay the BMA an additional $78 million over the next 25 years.
SAWS filed a lawsuit against the BMA in June seeking to end the contract. The decision to sue the water district came after several years of trying to negotiate a way out of the contract. Donovan Burton, SAWS vice president of water resources and governmental relations, said the utility offered funds to support BMA as it transitioned to other sources of revenue, but couldn’t reach an agreement.
The BMA declined to comment on the lawsuit.
