The three-month moratorium on well permits set by the local water district was challenged by End Op, a water marketer, and their business partner, the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, in a presentation Feb. 18 to the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District board.
At the board’s regular meeting, End Op’s manager Joel Katz claimed the district was ignoring End Op’s well testing data and also said the district did not fully understand the science behind it.
“The district has not dealt with our data in a responsible manner,” Katz said, reading a statement to the board. “Let’s make sure we use scientific data, not emotion, when making decisions about water availability.”
Katz said End Op spent in excess of $3 million on test wells in the Simsboro aquifer and the data they produced indicated there
would be a minimal impact to local groundwater if the district approved their pumping requests.
End Op has signed a letter of intent to sell up to 45 million gallons of water per day to the GBRA, which would distribute the water to fast-growing populations along the I-35 corridor between San Marcos and San Antonio.
Katz said the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District board did not consider the well test data, may not have fully understood what it meant and filed the documents away.
Joe Cooper, general manager for the LPGCD, said that End-Op was speaking to their constituents – a group of landowners who attended the standing room only meeting and who want to sell their water to the group.
“The applications (from End Op) are not complete. I don’t think we should pay our consultant hundreds of dollars an hour to review and research incomplete permits,” Cooper said.
After Katz spoke, Mike Thornhill, a consulting hydro-geologist working with End Op, made a slide presentation to the board.
“Texas needs water,” Thornhill said. “Water not used is water wasted.”
Thornhill asked the board to protect the rights of landowners and water users.
“There is plenty, plenty, plenty of water in the aquifer,” Thornhill said. “It is impossible to pump it all out.”
Thornhill asserted that the group had conducted unprecedented field studies by drilling and logging test wells in unexplored areas, including a 20-day pumping of the aquifer at 2,000 gpm, and that the local district may not know how much water is actually there.
“These test wells that are being referred to are in one of the most sought after areas of the aquifer,” Cooper said. “The area has been tested repeatedly.”

Misunderstanding
Thornhill, referring to the recent desired future conditions (DFCs) agreed to by Groundwater Management Area 12, which LPGCD belongs to, said a fundamental misunderstanding of how aquifers work is driving some of the DFCs.
“The best available data, from End Op, was not considered,” Thornhill said. “Decisions were made from flawed scientific and hydrological data.”
Recently the GMA 12 unanimously approved their DFCs data and is set to present it to the Texas Water Development Board, which will use the information to determine the amount of groundwater available for pumping in the GMA 12’s aquifers over the next 50 years.
“The only tool we can use to mange groundwater, legally, is the managed available groundwater figures from the TWDB,” Cooper said. “They (End Op) are attacking the science. We did not come up with these numbers by ourselves, there are five groundwater districts in GMA 12 that produced DFCs for this.”
William West, general manager of the GBRA also spoke to the board, stating that the purpose of the river authority is to manage and develop resources and that there will be a negative impact to the regions they serve if they don’t get water.
“I assure you, we have looked at many, many options,” West said. “We have been looking at doing a Simsboro project for over five years.”
West also said that the authority was looking at a long-term power contract with a “southeast Texas” nuclear power generation company and that the group would supply them with groundwater for cooling and for a retention pond for drought situations.
In response to questions about other options the authority has pursued to acquire water, West said that they had also researched feasibility of desalination plants to meet their needs.
“Desalination is a long way from being cost effective,” West said.
The GBRA wants to build a pipeline, referred to as the “GBRA Simsboro Project” and pump 30,000 acre feet per year from Bastrop County and 20,000 acre feet per year from Lee County and deliver the water to the San Marcos area for treatment and distribution.
“This water is designated for our growth areas,” West said. He added that there would be tremendous sticker shock for consumers because of the costs for the project. “The best conservation tool in the world is price,” West said.