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Local groundwater districts have been empowered by the Legislature to craft management tools that best suit their particular aquifers and user needs.
The Victoria County Groundwater Conservation District is developing two foundation documents that will guide its operations.
- Management Plan: A district must adopt a management plan which outlines its broad goals and objectives for managing the aquifer.
- Rules: Specific rules are implemented as a way to accomplish the objectives of the management plan.
Let us hear from you
As we develop our initial management plan and rules, we are taking measures to ensure that the public is aware of and has ample opportunity for input into the process.
Public comment was first taken in a meeting held with Victoria County's water-well drillers in late summer. That comment is already being incorporated into our draft, or proposed, plan and rules.
You can comment on what you think should be included in our plan and rules in several ways:
Issues
Here are some of the issues that district officials are considering as they develop the new management plan and rules:
- The question of sustainability. Should the district be a sustainable district, meaning one that will maintain aquifer levels and water quality in their current conditions? Or should it be a district that allows aquifer levels and quality to decline to some degree in order to meet user needs? If so, what level of decline would be acceptable?
Just so there's no mistake, we support the concept of sustainability. So while district directors will take comment and entertain arguments to the contrary during the management plan and rule making process, we fully intend to write rules supportive of the doctrine of sustainability.
Such rules are likely to include limiting the amount of groundwater that can be produced by certain wells and requiring new wells to be spaced at reasonable distances from existing wells.
- Pumping limits. Limits are necessary to protect the resource, but how restrictive should those production limits be - and how should they be determined? Some districts, like Goliad County's, set limits based on the amount of land owned surrounding a well, so that only a certain number of gallons can be pumped per surface acre owned.
Some districts set production fees based on the amount of water used, in hopes that those charges will lead to voluntary conservation.
- Out-of-county export fee. By law, wells to be used for out-of-county groundwater exports cannot have more restrictive pumping limits assigned to them than other wells.
But the district can levy an export surcharge. Should that surcharge be maximized or minimized - and how should the fee amount be determined?
- Mitigation. Mitigation in this case means compensating a well owner in some way for harm done to his well by a neighboring well. Should big-volume pumpers be required under district rules to pay for damages to neighboring wells or to the aquifer? How would such a requirement be applied?
- Historic use. Should the district assign pumping limits to existing wells based on the historic use of that well?
What about such cases as the city of Victoria's water-supply wells and rice-field-irrigation wells in which historic use was much greater in the past than it is in the present?
And what do we do if we find that historic use allocations leave little or no groundwater to be allocated for the future development of Victoria County?
- Well spacing. What rules should be adopted for well spacing, which requires new wells to be a certain distance from an existing well or from a property line?
A big question with well spacing will be trying to find common ground between adequate well spacing needs and the lot sizes developers want for new housing subdivisions.
- Should we regulate the ranchette? Under state law, we could impose production limits and district fees on wells on ranchettes, homesites or lots of less than 10 acres.
State laws do not allow us to impose production limits or charge fees on small domestic and agricultural wells on tracts larger than 10 acres.
But lawmakers gave us the option to regulate wells on ranchettes, because a new subdivision with 100 ranchettes, each with a new well, could put a lot of strain on an aquifer that previously had supplied maybe just one or two wells.
- Meters on wells. Should water meters be required on new wells to more accurately track water use? The more accurately the district can track the amount of groundwater actually used, the better it can manage the resource.
- Well registration. Should owners of existing wells be required to register their wells with the district? Well registration can be a valuable aid in management of the resource. Should there be a registration fee? Should unregistered wells be eligible for exemption?
- Fees and permits. What types of procedures and fees for registering and permitting new wells should be put in place?
Timeline for Management Plan and Rules Adoption
After our public meetings, the district will review public comment received and then develop its first draft of the proposed management plan and rules.
That draft will be made available for additional public review and comment - and the district will make adjustments to the draft as guided by public input.
Once that's done, the board will consider the management plan and rules for adoption.
State law gives a new district three years, or in our case until Nov. 2008, to complete its management plan and rules.
But our district directors would like to have their plan and rules completed before the three years are up - perhaps as early as this year. | 
