The City of San Antonio and the San Antonio Water System must change how they approach conservation if they want successes in decreased water usage to continue, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said during a special council session Thursday.
“We’ve had great success inside the home” over the past four decades, Nirenberg, who serves on the SAWS board in his official capacity, said during a council briefing session.
He added that the city and SAWS must start enacting conservation policies for developers if they want to see water conservation continue to do well in San Antonio.
“I think we have not been as focused on irrigation policy and development policy as we should — but the time is now, especially with the growth that’s happening and the land being developed as it is,” he said.
The City Council will likely vote on SAWS’s proposed new drought rules next week, which would do away with city-issued citations and instead charge rule breakers directly on their monthly water bills. The rules, which the SAWS board approved May 23, also aim to implement a surcharge for high-water use during extreme drought and to better align SAWS’ drought rules with the Edwards Aquifer Authority’s drought pumping restrictions.
The responsibility is now on the City Council to adopt changes to the city code on development standards, he said.
“This is the City Council’s domain,” Nirenberg said. “We have to adopt this policy into our own city code, and I would suggest that there needs to be a much broader conversation about development standards in the city as it relates to things like spray irrigation systems.”
During a 30-minute presentation given by SAWS staff to the council, Donovan Burton, SAWS’ vice president of water resources and governmental relations, said the municipally owned utility hopes to cut its daily water use per capita per day down to 87 gallons by 2075. Burton added he feels confident SAWS will reach this goal.
“Obviously there are going to be some ups and some downs, depending on the particular year, but the trend is always down,” he said. “You’ve seen we’ve had that success — there’s a lot more that we can do.”
Nirenberg seemed less sure, noting that while SAWS seems to have successfully moved the needle significantly in the 1980s and ’90s, it has seen only incremental improvements over the last two decades despite the severe drought of 2011 and the ongoing drought.
“Count me as slightly pessimistic about that number,” he said. “What I’m suggesting is that a lot of the onus will be on us doing what [Councilman Jalen McKee Rodriguez (D2)] has suggested, which is that we’ve really got to drill down on our irrigation policies and on how we plan this community and what we expect from new development.”
