Residents on edge as Medina Lake evaporates

The Medina Lake reservoir only is about 9 percent full. Businesses have shuttered, and tourists are steering clear. The Medina Lake reservoir only is about 9 percent full. Businesses have shuttered, and tourists are steering clear. Photo: BOB OWEN, Express-News Photo: BOB OWEN, Express-News Image 1 of / 143 Caption Close Residents on edge as Medina Lake evaporates 1 / 143 Back to Gallery

LAKEHILLS — Tourists are steering clear, businesses have closed and wells are failing in this shoreline town because of troubles with its lifeblood, Medina Lake, according to those who work and live here.

The reservoir only is about 9-percent full, leaving “waterfront” homeowners a long walk from wetness, docks grounded and locals anxious about the future.

The café that Johnny Hubbell opened in 2010 did fine until the falling lake sucked away customers.

“We were very successful until the lake dried up,” said Hubbell, who closed shop in September. “It killed us.”

The once-bustling community that logged 5,839 residents in the 2010 Census has become “a ghost town,” said Bandera County Commissioner Bobby Harris, who shuttered his own eatery here a year ago.

The only salvation many see for this drought-stricken community, and others like it in the Southwestern United States, are inundating showers.

“We pray for rain all the time,” said Pastor John Work of the Lakehills Baptist Church. “There's big concern for the lake coming back.”

Others are seeking intervention less divine — closure of the gates at the Medina Lake dam to help maintain the water now left in the reservoir that stands at 72 feet below the dam's spillway.

“What we're asking them is to hold back on releasing more water,” said Ernie Lerma, a retired game warden who, on Wednesday, contacted the dam operator, Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Counties Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, known as BMA.

The irrigation district, under fire from locals for its management of the lake, appears disinclined to shut the dam gates.

BMA stopped supplying farmers with water in September, and last month informed them that no water would be available until further notice.

However, it has continued to sell about 13 acre-feet daily to the San Antonio Water System under a contract struck in wetter times 14 years ago.

An acre-foot is 325,829 gallons.

BMA Business Manager Ed Berger estimates 23 acre-feet of water is flowing daily into the lake, based on readings from a U.S. Geological Survey gage on the Medina River in Bandera.

Lynne Fahlquist of the USGS said that gage is too far from the lake for the agency to determine the lake's inflow.

The continuing drop in the water level is attributed, in part, to evaporation and seepage into the porous lake bottom that feeds the Edwards Aquifer.

“If we didn't take a drop of water out of there, that lake would still go dry (without rain),” said Tommy Fey, BMA board president. “It's got its own valves in the bottom of it that nature put in there and we can't close.”

Dozens of lakeside homes are on the market, and prices have fallen “in direct reflection” to the lake level, said Alan Speaker, a realty agent.

He's among those concerned about the already suffering marinas, fishing outlets and lakefront resorts on which Lakehills' economy depends.

“I wish the state of Texas, which owns the aquatic life, would step in to limit the water releases from the lake,” Speaker said.

The “Save the Fish-Close the Gates” campaign is being led by Lerma and Steve Bonahoom, owner of a resort in nearby Mico that didn't open last year because of low water levels.

“Our big concern is, if they continue to drain the lake and the fish die, our water table will be poisoned by the decaying and dead fish,” Bonahoom said.

That scenario appears unlikely, said John Hoyt of the Edwards Aquifer Authority, who likened the threat to the aquifer from rotting fish to that posed by runoff from soiled cattle pastures. “I'm not saying there would be zero effect, but I think it would be minimal,” he said.

Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist Randy Myers said the survival chances for fish decline as does the lake's level, but there are too many variables — such as water quality and temperature — to say if a major die-off could occur.

“It's a fact of life in Texas; water is like gold,” he said. “Water is more important for people to drink than fish to live in.”

The BMA has not set a lake level at which it will resume supplying irrigators, if it rains, nor a level at which it would shut the gates if the drought persists, Berger.

Because the lake bottom lies below the level of the dam gates, he said, a pool of water would remain even if the gates were opened all the way.

The lake reportedly has dried up, or come close, three times since the dam was constructed a century ago to irrigate surrounding farmland, for which the BMA initially held the rights to draw 66,000 acre-feet annually.

Some fault the BMA for reallocating almost 20,000 acre-feet of its rights in 1999 to the Bexar Metropolitan Water District, which was absorbed last year by SAWS.

Berger says the contract revenue — which amounted to $1.38 million of the BMA's $2.2 million budget in 2012 — has allowed the district to make major improvements in delivering water across its 33,000-acre service area.

Besides funding the laying of pipe to reduce water losses to evaporation, leaks and seepage from the open earthen canals, he said the contract has paid for meters at water delivery points to get accurate sales data.

Those upgrades have extended the availability of water in the lake, Fey said, adding, “If it wasn't for that, we would have been out of water two years ago, or better.”

The “take or pay” contract provisions require SAWS to pay for all 19,974 acre-feet of water, even if it takes less, as long as the BMA makes it available.

SAWS drew almost 7,000 acre-feet in 2012, said Berger, who estimated 24,000 acre-feet of water remained in the lake as the new contract year began Jan. 1.

SAWS spokeswoman Anne Hayden cited water quality concerns as a factor in how much water was taken in 2012, when the agency inherited the contract from Bexar-Met.

Even though SAWS also has access to water from other sources, she said fiscal diligence dictates it not pass on Medina Lake water that it's obligated to pay for, if BMA makes it available.

“Our ratepayers have paid for water permits, so it's our responsibility to make sure that we are using the money wisely,” she said, noting a water treatment plant was built on the Medina River to treat water from the lake.

Many local wells have run dry because of the decline in hydrostatic pressure as the lake fell.

“They're having to drill deeper,” said David Mauk of the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District, but added, “A lot of times, as the wells go dry, they collapse, so they're not usable when the water table returns.”

Locals often gripe about the BMA's management of the lake, he said.

“Trust me, the pitchforks are out around Lakehills right now,” Mauk said. “Everybody is just frustrated that the lake's down.”

Commissioner Harris sees the culprit as nature, not water politics.

“The level of this lake is not due to the BMA, in my humble opinion,” he said. “We're in the worst drought we've been in.”

zeke@express-news.net