News

The Cypress Creek Watershed Protection Plan has been accepted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and is currently available for public review and comment through April 30, 2015. This is one of only a handful of approved watershed protection plans in Texas, and the first with a groundwater component. The plan is designed to keep Cypress Creek clean, clear and flowing. 

The city of Woodcreek is falling from Stage 3 drought restrictions to Stage 2 after recent rains. 

This coincides with Aqua Texas and the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, as all three entities relaxed the drought restrictions.

“Thankfully, spring rains have brought us into a lesser stage, but if the rains don’t stay up, we’ll be right back where we were,” Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District Board President Linda Kay Rogers said. “Don’t get too water happy, because we are pretty sure it isn’t going to last.”

Still, the relaxed restrictions are a welcome sign of the recent rains, even with summer looming ahead.

“Hopefully it will last a little while,” Aqua Texas President Bob Laughman said. “We are always concerned as the weather gets hotter, we may have to go right back.”

If you are an everyday traveler on RR12, you witness the progress that’s being made daily on the new H-E-B store. One day a huge mountain of dirt, and then, what seems like the next day, it’s gone and walls are being put up. 

Bowen school is but a memory. Men and equipment are busy, digging holes or filling them in. The underground plumbing including grease traps and electrical systems are almost complete. Next the foundation will be poured, with the masonry walls already in progress.  They are awaiting the refrigeration units. According to field reports they are about one-third complete with the project. 

Due to the recent rains, the construction was set back a few weeks. Instead of a July opening date, it will officially open in the fall. Hiring for the new store will start in the late summer. 

Electro Purification released data on their test wells on Monday afternoon at a press conference in Buda. On Tuesday, another group released their own findings on the same wells. The two conclusions were in stark contrast of each other.

On one hand, Jim Braun, an attorney hired by the family that owns the Halifax Ranch said that if Electro Purification pumped three million gallons of water per day from the Trinity Aquifer, wells within a five-mile radius would be drawn down by 175 feet in a year’s time and those within a one-mile radius would be drawn down by 325 feet.

But projections for longer time periods are problematic, Hays County Commissioners were told on Tuesday, because when the draw down exceeds 500 feet it would begin to harm the resource itself, in essence “drawing water out of the pores of the rock.”

The Smoking Red Hot Chili Cook-off, presented by the Wimberley Community Civic Club is happening at Lions Market Days Pavilion, this Saturday from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. This is the Fourth Annual event and it is one of the major fundraising events for the club.

The admission is $6.00 and parking is included with a free ticket. Last year the event was attended by hundreds of locals and visitors. You will be able to sample each of the different spicy concoctions, red, white or green and vote for your favorite. Each of the vendors are required to make more than four gallons, so there will be plenty to sample.

On March 4, 2015, the Hays County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of an attempted kidnapping of an adult female in the parking lot of the Dollar General Store located at FM 2325 and Carney Lane in Wimberley. 

Upon leaving the store, the female reported that a white male forcibly attempted to drag her into his vehicle. The Hays County Sheriff’s Office was initially contacted when the female returned to her residence in Wimberley. 

During the course of the investigation, Detectives from the Hays County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division reviewed video surveillance captured from the day of the reported crime. 

State Representative Jason Isaac (R-Dripping Springs) and State Senator Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels) have filed legislation to expand the boundaries of two groundwater conservation districts in Hays County, as well as a bill that removes the expansive powers of eminent domain outside of the boundaries and service area of the Goforth Special Utility District. 

The legislators had been urged to address the issue after Houston-based Electro Purification (EP) established a well field with the intent of pulling some five million gallons of water daily from the Middle Trinity Aquifer in an area that is currently not regulated by any groundwater district. That sources supplies not only many private wells in the area but also feeds Jacob’s Well and Wimberley’s iconic Blue Hole. 

Dozens of Wimberley residents asked the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality for a contested case hearing for the city’s proposed wastewater treatment plant citing environmental concerns. 

The TCEQ heard the request during a meeting at the Wimberley Community Center in front of about 100 people last week for the commission’s official public hearing on the permit.

The request came from downstream property owners who fear potential adverse effects from the city’s proposal to release excess treated effluent from the plant into Deer Creek. The effluent would then make its way to the Blanco River.

Residents also brought up concerns about the location of the plant, which is proposed within the Blue Hole Regional Park, and the plan to use the treated effluent on the fields and landscape at the park.

There are a few more bald heads wandering around Wimberley, but after this weekend, they are being shown off with pride. Over a dozen people sat on stage at the Cypress Creek Café to have their heads shaved in support of leukemia awareness and local high schooler Lizzie Tennyson, who is battling the disease for a second time.

The Kokopelli Salon and Spa donated their time and chairs to the cause with three stylist. Kokopelli Co-owner Joshua Poole is friends with the Tennysons and helped organize the event and fundraiser.

“The fundraiser went well,” Poole said. “We are still in the process of collecting money, but we know we raised at least $4,000.”

The latest developments in the fight to protect our groundwater in Hays County go public at the TESPA Water Meeting, 6:30 p.m. Saturday at the Wimberley Community Center. 

TESPA, the recently formed Trinity Edwards Springs Protection Association, wasted no time wading into the Hays County water issues involving Electro Purification’s plans to draw 5.2 million gallons a day from the aquifer . Just weeks after the announcement of TESPA’s founding, the group is ready to take its actions directly to the people potentially threatened by pumping plans.