Behind the white metal gates on Corley Road south of Boerne lie 375 acres of gentle pastures, Texas live oaks, and an old ranch house visible from the fence line.
In the near future, this ranch could look a lot more like a suburban neighborhood less than a mile away, just one of many new housing developments in the fast-growing town on the southern edge of the Hill Country.
What will distinguish the so-called Boerne West project is that it will be developed under some of the City of San Antonio’s most stringent environmental ordinances, even though the land is not in Bexar County and lies less than a mile south of Boerne in Kendall County.
These rules govern light pollution, the amount of tree canopy cover on the property, water quality from drainage and storm runoff, and cutting back on sprinkler use during times of drought. They hold sway inside San Antonio city limits and in the slightly larger sphere of influence known in the planning world as the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Something else that’s unusual: Water to supply this neighborhood will come not from nearby Boerne or from a local water supply company, but from Canyon Lake via an agreement with the San Antonio Water System.
The environmental regulations are a condition of the SAWS agreement. The public utility agreed to provide water, and the developer, Bakke Development Corp., agreed to adopt San Antonio’s regulations in a deal that Mayor Ron Nirenberg held up as an example of how the City can influence growth in the region.
“That development was going to get water somehow, some way,” Nirenberg said. “We’d prefer it be with full environmental protection and the kind of standards we put in place for regionally and environmentally conscious development.”
The deal is relevant as SAWS considers selling water from its Vista Ridge pipeline, now under construction, to cities and private developments hundreds of miles away. SAWS officials say they have approached nearly every community along the Interstate 35 corridor between Round Rock and San Antonio about buying water from the 142-mile pipeline that could tap into aquifers below Burleson County, east of Austin.
Nirenberg said such partnerships are necessary because the state government treats Texas like “several different outposts that have to look after their own [water supplies].”
“Large urban areas like ours are having to protect their long-term water futures in a sustainable and ecologically conscious way,” he told the Rivard Report. “We can also export our sustainable development practices that are more beneficial environmentally for the region.”
At its March meeting last week, the SAWS board of trustees approved a water supply agreement with Bakke to supply 62,600 gallons per day. This could eventually increase to nearly 650,000 gallons per day, provided the developer meets certain conditions, according to SAWS documents.
As part of the deal, Bakke agreed to adopt San Antonio’s ordinances governing dark skies, tree protection, drainage pollution prevention, and drought management. The company will have to install about 3.75 miles worth of new water mains and pay more than $10 million in impact fees to SAWS.
“The SAWS deal was based on a variety of reasons including economics: It costs less to buy water closer to my project rather than pipe it in from farther away,” said the company’s president, Phil Bakke, in an email.
At the SAWS board meeting, President and CEO Robert Puente said Bakke could have gotten water from “wildcatters” interested in pumping the nearby Trinity Aquifer, which is seen as sensitive to drought.
Puente didn’t mention the company by name, but he appeared to be referring to Texas Water Supply Co., which has access to Trinity water wells in Bexar County. Puente said that in dry times, SAWS shuts off its own Trinity wells to avoid affecting people living in nearby communities that rely on the aquifer.
At the meeting, Cara Tackett, senior vice president of Pape-Dawson Engineers, which is working for Bakke, confirmed that the developer did have the option to buy water from Texas Water Supply, but the choice of SAWS water came down to “cost and reliability.”
Through a spokesman, Texas Water Supply CEO Bill Gehrmann said the decision was about the distance to the company’s wells, with the nearest ones lying roughly 13 miles from the Biedenharn property, the future site of Boerne West, as the crow flies.
State water laws would not allow water from the vast Edwards Aquifer below Bexar County to be pumped over the Kendall County line. That’s why SAWS says it will supply water from Canyon Lake it receives via an agreement with the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority. The City of Boerne will provide a backup supply, according to SAWS.
Jeff Thompson, Boerne’s deputy city manager and economic development director, said in an email that Boerne “was approached about being the water service provider for the Biedenharn development and advised them that they should seek other water supply alternatives.”
Boerne only provides water inside its city limits “with only rare exceptions,” he continued. The way the development is structured and financed will make it difficult for Boerne to annex it “for many, many years,” he said.
The City of Boerne has secured enough water to plan for more than 20 years of growth that would see its population jump from 15,000 to 35,000, he said, adding that the development “would significantly alter that plan” as it relates to periods of high water use.
“The ability to serve not only the homes, but also the water needed for irrigation of lawns and other non-essential uses does not fit our current plan,” Thompson said. “Furthermore, modifications to the city’s existing water treatment plant to meet the additional need for the Biedenharn development are not financially feasible for a system of our size at this time.”
SAWS documents show the utility aims to eventually supply water from Vista Ridge to the Boerne West project. Water is set to begin flowing through Vista Ridge in 2020.
Bakke said that Boerne West’s first phase will be residential only, and the number of lots it will contain has not yet been finalized.
“I will have that in the next month or so as we tidy up all remaining details,” he said.
I thought the water supply from Canyon Lake was nearly maxed out, unreliable in times of drought, and subject to stringent EPA restrictions based on downstream habitat concerns. Which are some of the reasons SAWS gave for why Vista Ridge was necessary.
Or, to cite the infamous Water Policy report of 2015 regarding Western Canyon/GBRA water: “The project is a high-risk water-supply project because the lake is more susceptible to contamination than groundwater, the water price changes based on GBRA’s independent calculations, water requires treatment, and relatively short-term contracts are involved.”
Wasn’t there a Councilman Nirenberg intimately involved in that report? I wonder if he ever actually read it?
We need darker skies and brighter stars, deep in the heart of texas. The future is for places with character.
The title of this highly instructive report begs a lot of questions from this resident of Kendall County and neighbor of San Antonio—San Antonio Uses Water To Influence How Kendall County Land Is Developed.
There’s a lot more to this story as it only discusses the initial phase in the life of a special purpose water district. This one is called a Water Control and Improvement District (WCID).
It’s actually the third WCID in Kendall County. The existence of a fourth one, on the other side of the county, will no doubt demand attention soon. As a matter of history, the first one was created in 1949 to serve the Comfort area.
In between the first, third and fourth WCID, a second one is worth mentioning.
In 2007, Senate Bill (SB) 1245 was introduced by then Senator Jeff Wentworth. This bill sought to create Kendall County WCID No. 2 in the Extra Territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) of Boerne. Public debate began as soon as the bill was introduced and lasted the better part of two years before a development agreement could be reached.
This became the Master Planned Community of Esperanza—2,400 homes on 1,240 acres that at the time would nearly double the population of Boerne at full build-out.
WCIDs, just like their close cousins the MUDs, are typically created out-of-sight through “local bills” which end up being approved as law in no small part because they are considered “uncontroversial” by the Legislators who sponsor them—until the general public finds out, but then it’s too late to do much about it.
The one being discussed today was passed during the legislative cycle of 2017 and was sponsored by Senator Donna Campbell as SB 914, which created Kendall County WCID No. 3.
Similar to its predecessor—WCID No. 2 (Esperanza), the boundaries of WCID No. 3 would be in the ETJ of Boerne, it would encompass 1,012 acres and build up to 2,450 homes with commercial buildings. Keep in mind how big Esperanza is destined to become.
Unlike Esperanza, this development has not been exposed to public debate. At the time this bill was passed as law, the specific water source was not named, only that that no local groundwater would be used. Also absent was the source and method of wastewater treatment.
Today, through this excellent reporting by Mr. Gibbons, those sources may have been initially introduced, but certainly nowhere near being a done deal.
Considering the ramifications of San Antonio extending water service beyond its present boundaries, with the attached physical and legal considerations, this can only be seen as the beginning of a very lengthy and detailed discussion, then action, by all affected parties.
I will be very interested to see how the people of Kendall County respond when they hear that their future development is being influenced by water from San Antonio.
Furthermore, we all should start paying more attention to the proliferation of the WCID and MUD throughout the Hill Country.