Change does not come easily when the old way of doing things worked so well for so long that it has simply become “the way it’s done.” This rings especially true with a service as basic as water. Our water management practices are buried under decades of local policies and state and federal regulations, millions of miles of gray infrastructure pipelines, a library of case law, a smaller but substantial collection of wealthy developers, engineering firms, and lobbyists keen on maintaining a system hierarchy that has facilitated their careers and success. These are just a few of the headwinds faced by those who seek a paradigm shift for how we manage water in the Lonestar State, so it was no small achievement in 2020 when a quaint Hill Country community opened doors for classes at “the first One Water School in Texas,” Wimberley’s Blue Hole Primary School. Located in western Hays County, the third fastest growing county in the United States between 2010 and 2020, Blue Hole Primary was built to educate 700 pre-K through 2nd graders on any given day, but it is achieving this task on 90 percent less potable water than the design standard for new schools thanks to its One Water design.
What?
One Water is a water planning and management approach that rethinks how water moves through and is used in a community. It brings stakeholders like developers, community leaders, urban planners, water managers, and engineers together with the goal of using water as thoughtfully and efficiently as possible. I think of One Water as simply applying best-fit solutions for the available water resources while being mindful of the environmental, social, and economic impacts. Why do we need to use water treated to drinking water standards to flush toilets or irrigate lawns? The answer is… we don’t.
One Water has been the practice of many communities and individuals throughout history. It is still the practice for many rural towns and the handful of folks living off or on the outer reaches of “the grid.” Take my father, for example, the traditionalist of all traditionalists. Dad has been using One Water strategies for years without giving it much thought as he totes his five-gallon buckets used to collect air-conditioning condensate and rainwater from his roof over to the garden to water his tomatoes. Blue Hole Primary takes this simple concept and uses 21st-century technology to amplify its impact, maintaining the landscape and flushing toilets for more than 700 children and teachers daily.
So, what happens to the water when it gets flushed down the toilet? We are not through with it yet! Rather than constructing a half-million-dollar lift station, laying pipes, and paying a hefty monthly fee to send this blackwater miles away to a centralized wastewater plant for treatment and disposal, the designers chose to install a low-energy, low-maintenance water treatment system onsite to provide nutrient-rich irrigation for a new athletic field. Because the water is delivered through sub-surface drip irrigation lines, the design maximizes both safety and efficiency. This decision is expected to save the Wimberley Independent School District approximately $1 million over the next 30 years. Not bad!
The above examples demonstrate a key tenet of One Water, beneficial reuse. Still, engineers have a few more considerations, particularly in the Texas Hill Country, where welcome rain showers can become thunderstorms and devastating flash floods in the blink of an eye. Developed areas with lots of roads, parking lots, sidewalks, and rooftops can significantly exacerbate the effects of flooding. These impervious surfaces limit the ability of the land to absorb stormwater. The result is often supercharged stormwater looking for any way possible to dissipate energy. It does this by picking up anything it comes in contact with. Typically, that includes copious amounts of sediment and other substances like oils, fertilizers, pesticides, and animal waste before eventually finding a large enough water body to relax and release its bounty of pollutants. The One Water design at Blue Hole Primary has a solution for this too! Use nature’s free and available environmental services with a touch of 21st-century engineering to develop a drainage plan for the site using green stormwater infrastructure. Green stormwater infrastructure on the site includes vegetated swales, rain gardens, and existing open space to disperse and drink-up stormwater. In areas where hard surfaces are required, like parking lots and sidewalks, permeable pavers that can absorb water at rates up to 100 inches per hour were strategically placed in lieu of concrete and blacktop. The use of strategic green stormwater infrastructure at Blue Hole Primary enables the site to mimic its predevelopment hydrologic footprint protecting sensitive, downstream receiving waters and recharging the underlying aquifer.
Why?
One Water practices have largely been overshadowed by the traditional water infrastructure paradigm of the 19thand 20th centuries. When I say traditional water infrastructure, think big. Think concrete. Think giant reservoirs. Think billions of dollars. We built huge dams on creeks and rivers to impound water for use. And where these surface-water resources were not available, extensive well fields have been developed, mining aquifers to provide the water needs for bustling communities, residential developments, and industry that could not have existed otherwise. Think miles-long, concrete-lined hexagonal channels, dry most of the time and generally scattered with litter and the occasional clump of grass. These channels were built to convey massive amounts of stormwater away from population centers as quickly as possible but often not fast or efficiently enough as weather events have become even more extreme over recent decades. Finally, consider high chain-link fences surrounding acres of smelly pits and containment vessels. They’re often adjacent to the most vulnerable and economically distressed neighborhoods, where millions upon millions of gallons of wastewater are treated and discharged into natural surface waters each day.
That is not to say that traditional infrastructure has not had an upside. It has brought clean water safely and efficiently to cities and towns all over the country. It has brought prosperity to many and enabled our country to thrive in the last half of the 20th century through great accomplishments in industry, transportation, and technology. Because of these advances, we live in a society that has achieved a level of comfort and reliability in basic services that our ancestors could not have imagined. The pipes, dams, and bridges built for and by the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers have lasted a long time. Still, there is a reason that the phrase “America’s crumbling infrastructure” is one of the few statements that Democrats and Republicans can both agree on. And I’ve heard that phrase A LOT lately.
Our traditional infrastructure served the purposes of the two generations that made it happen, creating a strong American middle class and heaping untold wealth onto many of the most powerful people and corporations that have come to define the American Dream. Other dreams, like those of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., have been helped along by our 20th-century approach to infrastructure as well, but by no means was this success felt equally across our beautiful, spacious skies. As is the human condition, perhaps we got a little too excited about all this newfound prosperity and didn’t think enough about the long-term costs or the value of those being left behind. It’s pretty hard to stop a freight train running at full speed.
So, let’s bring it back home to wrap up this post on the what and why of One Water. The water supply infrastructure throughout the Wimberley Valley and much of the Texas Hill Country is intricately tied to the region’s available groundwater, with only minimal regulations on developing and extracting that resource. The stunning hills and valleys, karst topography, fractured limestone, sinkholes, caves, and springs formed over the millennia have sculpted an area of unmatched beauty and ecological diversity; however, it’s a delicate balance. The crystal-clear waters that emerge from Jacob’s Well, a natural spring at the headwaters of Cypress Creek, flow gently through the Town of Woodcreek to the natural swimming hole at Blue Hole Park and on to the City of Wimberley’s picturesque downtown are entirely dependent on sufficient water in the Trinity Aquifer from which the spring emerges. As more homes are built in the area, and more groundwater is withdrawn, the springflows from Jacob’s Well approach zero on a regular basis. On the flip side, the aquifer itself depends on precipitation and surface water infiltration for recharge. Climate change, periods of extended drought, and increases in impervious cover like roads, driveways, parking lots, and rooftops threaten the quantity and quality of available groundwater. When Jacob’s Well ceased flowing in 2000, the Wimberley community faced an existential threat. The answer was a proper One Water solution.
The threat to Wimberley’s economic and cultural future fueled dramatic efforts by local stakeholders to ensure a clean, clear, and flowing Cypress Creek. They established the Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan to provide outreach, education, demonstration, and implementation of best practices for smarter growth and more sustainable, resilient natural resources. In 2018, as coordinator for the Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan, I had a feeling that the time was right for something big when the Wimberley Independent School District approved a major bond package to purchase almost 150 acres in the heart of the watershed. A new primary school and future site development were on the docket when our team – consisting of David Baker, Executive Director of the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association; Joe Day, long-time colleague and water guru; and myself, representing The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment – engaged in a series of conversations with the district. The One Water concept for the school quickly emerged, and with early support from Wimberley Independent School District superintendent, Dwain York, and eventual buy-in from the general contractor and the architecture and engineering teams, a memorandum of understanding to embed our One Water Team with the design and construction crew was ratified by the school board in June 2019. Construction started shortly afterward in July. The school’s One Water design acknowledges the importance of protecting Wimberley’s sensitive water resources by managing all water as a single resource that is sustainable and reusable. Further, in capturing this innovative conservation technology through grassroots community efforts in an educational setting like a new school, the students, teachers, staff, parents, and local community are afforded a front-row seat to an environmental education like no other.
As Texas’ first One Water school, Blue Hole Primary will serve as a model for communities throughout the Texas Hill Country and a teaching tool for Wimberley Independent School District students about the value of water conservation. The region faces enormous water challenges over the next 100 years and beyond; however, Blue Hole Primary School is an important reminder that it’s possible to balance the challenges of growth with continued stewardship of our precious water resources.
Additional information about One Water can be found at One Water News.
Author Bio:
Nick Dornak is Director of Watershed Services at The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. With 20 years of experience in watershed planning, research, and stakeholder engagement, Nick operates at the nexus of science and policy to inform decisions and advance best practices for protecting water resources. Nick received a B.S. in Agricultural Development/Animal Science from Texas A&M University and an M.S. in Rangeland Ecology and Watershed Management from the University of Wyoming. He lives with his wife, Carrie; three children, Aiden, Emery, and Townes Edward; and a variety of other critters on the banks of the Blanco River in Wimberley, Texas.
