This Texas Water Symposium panel, held on April 17, 2025 at Schreiner University in Kerrville, discussed nature-based solutions for water challenges in the Hill Country. The panelists address drought, rapid growth, and flood risks. Also emphasized are the benefits of green infrastructure, such as riparian areas and bio-retention basins, which enhance water security and resilience.
Moderator:
- Marisa Bruno, Hill Country Alliance
Panelists:
- April Sansom-Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve
- Ryan McGillicuddy, Texas Parks & Wildlife
- Marie Camino, The Nature Conservancy
Transcript of the program follows, generated by Otter AI and edited by Nathan Cone (some AI errors may remain).
Chris Distel, Schreiner University: Hello everybody. On behalf of Schreiner, I want to welcome you here. My name is Chris Distel. I'm a professor of biology, and liaison with the Texas Water symposium. Along with our partners Hill Country Alliance and Texas Public Radio, we've been offering this for quite a while now. I'll let Marisa elaborate on the exact amount of time here in a moment. I'm personally delighted to have this topic and this panel here with you tonight. We've talked about a lot of different topics in the hill in the Texas Water Symposium over the years, but this one is really, really special for us here in the hill country, and I think you'll find that it resonates with you all quite well.
Marisa Bruno: Well, good evening, everyone. I'm Marisa Bruno. I'm the Water Program Manager at the Hill Country Alliance. For those of you who don't know us, we're a regional nonprofit that works across 17 counties of Central Texas to protect what makes this region so special, our land, our night skies, our communities, and, of course, our water. This particular series, the Texas Water Symposium Series is a partnership program that, as Chris mentioned, is between the Hill Country Alliance, Texas Public Radio and shine University. And since 2007 so a long time, the series has provided perspectives from policy makers, scientists, water resource experts and regional leaders on various water topics. Each session is free and open to the public, and includes expert panel discussions and opportunities for audience Q and A. The events are recorded and aired on Texas Public Radio. One week later, in the email I sent out yesterday, I said the questions are not recorded. The question and answer portion does not go on the radio, but it is recorded for the webinar version, so or the web, the web version. All right, let's get started. The topic for tonight is nature based solutions for water challenges in the hill country. Right now, our region is facing some serious water challenges. We're in the midst of a deep drought, with Wells running dry, groundwater levels dropping, and streams flowing at historic lows, and at the same time, as you all know, we're experiencing rapid growth. That growth brings more pressure on our water supplies, more stormwater runoff and more wastewater, all of which put added strain on our natural systems. And of course, we're also in flash flood alley. I'm sure you all will remember that a few years ago, there were floods that tore through this region, powerful enough to take down bridges. So how do we respond to this mix of drought development and flooding? Traditionally, much of the conversation around water infrastructure has focused on gray infrastructure, and it's called gray infrastructure because that is the color cement and metal things like pipelines and treatment plants and levees and this gray infrastructure is a tool in our toolbox, certainly, but it's not the only tool. Increasingly, communities are also turning to nature based solutions to complement that traditional approach. These strategies work with natural systems to enhance water security and resilience. So for example, we always say that aquifers are infrastructure. They act like natural storage tanks, quietly storing water underground. And then they provide base flow to our streams, which is especially important during droughts like this, when you've got healthy flood plains and riparian areas with native vegetation, they help reduce flood impacts by slowing and absorbing flood waters. And when it comes to stormwater, we're seeing more green infrastructure, green because it involves nature, like rain gardens and vegetated filter strips. These are integrated into public projects, including right here in Kerr County. We know that Kerrville new public safety building is including a bio retention basin, and the new Kerr County Animal Control Center is planning filter strips to manage runoff. So this year's symposium about nature based solutions and infrastructure, really couldn't be more timely. If y'all are following the Texas Legislature, they're debating a historic investment in water infrastructure, up to $1 billion in dedicated funding through the Texas Water fund. Much of the focus has been on traditional infrastructure. You might have heard of a grid, a statewide water grid. But there's also a growing recognition that nature based solutions should be part of the mix, and that is what tonight's panel is all about, the role of nature based solutions and helping communities manage water in practical, long, lasting ways. And I'm about to be done talking, I am so excited to be joined by three panelists with deep expertise in this space, April Sansom from the Bamberger ranch preserve, Marie Camino from the Nature Conservancy, who is here instead of David Bezanson, who had a last minute conflict, and of course, Ryan McGillicuddy from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, they each bring hands on experience and powerful insights into how natural. Can support our community, their our communities. I'm so grateful they are here with us tonight. Please join me in welcoming them to Kerrville. So to get us started, I'd love for each of you to introduce yourselves, to tell us about your work and what nature based solutions means to you and your field of work. April, you want to kick it off?
April Sansom, Bamberger Ranch Preserve: Thank you very much, Marisa, and thank you for organizing this. This is a lot of fun. I'm glad to be here. So my name is April Sansom, and I have the privilege of being the executive director of Bamberger ranch preserve just southwest of Johnson City. We are a 5500 acre nature preserve whose restoration journey began in 1969 and so back in 1969 when J David Bamberger and his colleagues were starting the restoration journey that we are still on. They were literally writing the book on restoration. They were making it up as they went along. And one of the wonderful opportunities that we have is to invite people out to Bamberger ranch preserve so they can see what 55 and counting years of restoration looks like. It doesn't happen overnight. So it's really nice to be able to share that with people and have them see what it looks like. We like to say that when people come out to think about their own stewardship on their own properties that they're managing or that they own, whether they have 50,000 acres that they're responsible for, or 5000 acres, five acres, or even a fifth of an acre, everyone can participate in restoration and participate in The kind of natural resources management that protects the the resources that we all depend on. So at the same time as the team was first getting started in 1969 in restoration, they were also already using nature based solutions. It's just that that term didn't exist yet. That's exactly what they were doing, but they just didn't know it. So so a very important part of our story, of our restoration journey, is water, and I'll talk a little bit more about that as we go along. We use nature based solutions when we every day, when we have people come out for a top notch landowner workshop or a educational tour of the ranch, we're talking about nature based solutions all the time with those folks who come to join us for for those events, we also are participating in these kinds of solutions when we don't have visitors on the ranch. One of the things that I'm most excited about in terms of our ongoing restoration journey is that we are partnering with our local Natural Resource Conservation Service agent on a project where we are restoring an eroded creek bed that experienced erosion, particularly in the days when there were more domestic livestock on the ranch than there are now, and we're working to restore that creek bed using native trees, native grasses, and we're really excited about that and excited about the health of that riparian area, which is, of course, Ryan's wheelhouse. And so in that way, even when we're not talking with people about nature based solutions, we are living it and working it in our own ongoing restoration journey on the preserve.
Marisa Bruno: And you've used the word nature based solutions a lot, so I'm actually going to skip and ask, can you describe we talked about a nature based solution? What is the challenge that y'all are solving? And could you just provide an example of what you mean?
April Sansom: Sure, sure, absolutely. One of our big challenges was that, in 1969 much of the landscape was a monoculture of a native woody species that we'll talk about. And so our big, our big challenge was thinking about getting those native grasses back into place, so that the water would percolate down into the soil and then into the limestone. So we that's one of our biggest challenges, and that's something that we think of a lot.
Marisa Bruno: Awesome, and so y'all are bringing up the water table or helping to increase recharge through your restoration work. That's right, which is awesome, all right, Marie, tell us what you do at The Nature Conservancy and how nature based solutions show up in your work. Yeah.
Marie Camino, The Nature Conservancy: Hi, everyone. Happy to be here. I'm Marie Camino. I'm the Government Relations Manager at The Nature Conservancy in Texas. I'm sure many of you have heard of the Nature Conservancy. We are the largest conservation organization in the US. But in addition to kind of that top down approach, we definitely employ a bottom up approach with our state chapters. So we have state chapters in every state, we have a whole land protection team dedicated to, you know, making positive relationships with landowners across the state, helping them with conservation easements, if that's what they if that's what they want to do, which is just a voluntary agreement between us and the landowner to do certain land protection, you know, things on their land so not develop in certain areas. It's custom. So that's, you know, primarily the work that we do in Texas. But of course, you know, where are the big swaths of land, the you know, huge, you know, many, many acres. They're mostly rural. So nature based solutions is a great urban and rural solution to some of the problems that we face. So in a lot of the, you know, kind of bigger areas, we do a lot of work around nature based solutions. And so since I, you know, mainly work in government relations, we do that the state level and the state government, with Texas Water Development Board, we talk a lot about it in the state legislature, which is, of course, as Marisa mentioned in session right now. And try to add it to a lot of the, you know, big funding pots that we see from from the state government, of course, you know, at the local level, you can put that in local policies, resolutions, or, you know, things like that. So that's kind of mainly what we do in terms of an example of nature based solutions for water. So, you know, you don't often think of land conservation as water conservation, but it is such a key component of water conservation, and a really great example of this is the Edwards Aquifer protection project, where the city of San Antonio actually bought up swaths of land on top of the Edwards so that we could, you know, conserve water by, you know, conserving the land above it and things like that. So, you know, that's just one example, and kind of a more urban example of a nature based solution to protect our water supply, and, of course, our water quality. You know, what doesn't filter water concrete, but what does soil? So you know, it's just viewing nature as infrastructure in both a rural and urban setting just really equips us with the tools that we need to conserve water and make sure that we have great water quality for all Texans moving forward.
Marisa Bruno: All right, Ryan, how about you?
Ryan McGillicuddy, Texas Parks & Wildlife: Good evening. It's pleasure to be here. My name is Ryan McGillicuddy. I'm the watershed conservation team leader in the Inland Fisheries Division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. So what my team does is we essentially work with landowners and conservation organizations to encourage adoption implementation of best management practices that benefit aquatic natural resources. Those aquatic natural resources, the water, the fish, the wildlife that are dependent, dependent upon them, are all state trust resources. We're situated in this state on primarily private lands. You know, 97 plus percent private lands. So we have to formulate relationships with landowners and partner organizations to make sure that we are conserving and encouraging the conservation management of those natural resources, those public trust resources. So what we do is we work, my team works with private landowners, providing technical guidance, trying to align them with potentially, you know, incentives or funding for restoration projects. We also do a lot of outreach, education, types events, type events of trying to educate land managers on, you know, some of those best management practices when it comes to, you know, what, how that plays into what nature based infrastructure is? I think you've heard some of the answers already. You know, testifying that, you know land management, proper land management is a form of managing water. It is a form of managing our natural resources, making sure that that we're conserving those for future generations. Yes. So, you know, the conservation of public and private lands in a manner that that returns ecological services is, is green infrastructure. When it comes to my agency's mission, making sure that there's those ancillary benefits to fish and wildlife habitat is key. So, so that we can continue to have the, you know, the use, enjoyment and economic welfare that those services provide for all Texans. So for us, you know, conserving headwaters is a big focus conserving riparian areas. So riparian areas are the strips of land that are along streams, hopefully filled with native vegetation and an active floodplain that can absorb floodwaters and process those we'll talk about some of those functions, I'm sure, as we go along tonight. And also, my team conducts some invasive species management, trying to promote healthy native vegetation along our streams. So that's essentially what my what my team does.
Marisa Bruno: Thanks, Ryan. So just because I'm afraid that nature based solutions is feeling jargony. I'm gonna just summarize what y'all said. So, April, if your challenge is augmenting the water supply, a potential nature based solution is restoring the soil so that they may act like a sponge. If Marie's challenge is water quality protection, one potential nature based solution is to conserve the karst features where there's a really strong connection between the land and the aquifer. And if Ryan's challenge is flood mitigation, one potential nature based solution is riparian buffer restoration and conservation. So maybe that was obvious, but just wanted to make sure that that was clear. So now that we have a sense for what nature based solutions are and look like, I'd love to hear from you all's perspective what you see as the main benefits of nature based solutions, whether they might be ecological, economical or social, absolutely.
April Sansom: Thank you. We at Bamberger Ranch Preserve, we see a lot of economic benefits from nature based solutions. We are, as I said, we offer top notch landowner workshops. We offer educational tours of the ranch. We run all of that programming off the resources that we have on the ranch, and those are income generating programs. So it's like a nice circle. We we engage in restoration, and we teach people about that journey, and we teach people and help them think about their own restoration journey. So that's economic benefit to us that we feel really grateful to have. We're also a working ranch, and so we've seen economic benefits from that as well.
Marie Camino: So at TNC, we really focus on the many stacked benefits that nature based solutions provides. So you know, for example, I think you've probably all heard that wetlands, you know, help protect us against hurricanes. So if we, you know, better, preserve our wetlands instead of paving it, for example, you know, we we have better protection against extreme weather if we add, you know, more green infrastructure in our urban cities, if you plant trees, if you have rainwater harvesting, things like that. You know more trees is cleaner air. It's also a mental health benefit for many of the residents there. There have been so many studies that say that more access to green space really helps everybody's mental health. So that helps our children, you know, all of our people and our mental and health and well being. You know, in addition to that, like I said before, it helps our water quality and quantity. So, I mean, there are just endless amount of stack benefits to viewing nature as infrastructure rather than, you know, an amenity that we all share. So kind of thinking about, you know, what does, what does it do naturally, and how can we put that into the kind of these less natural features that we've we've built into our areas? And with that,
Ryan McGillicuddy: Yeah, I'm going to echo the stacked benefits and the multi pronged benefits of nature based infrastructure, but I'm going to start with the ecological, because that is my agency's, you know, primary mission, you know, the ecological and, of course, providing recreational opportunities to our constituents. But you know, I'm going to mention riparian areas a few times as we go through this so let me just kind of start with, you know, that quick definition of riparian areas and what they and how they function. Essentially, it's that vegetated strip along our streams. But there are special, unique resources that need special attention and special forms of management. Essentially, they've got deep rooted plants that hold the soil together, help prevent erosion from when we have flooding events, when water spills out onto those in our normal flood events, it helps slow the water down, helps it sink into the into the groundwater table, that shallow alluvial aquifer that cleans the water, it cools it, and it stores it. So when water is stored in the land, it gradually makes its way back towards the stream channel over time. So with properly managed riparian forests, we're actually creating a time release capsule of water that will help sustain our base flows, for our water use, for our water quality, for our fish that require that for their habitat. So that's what I'm talking about when I talk about riparian areas and the functions and benefits of them. Now I'm going to tell a quick story about an initiative that Parks and Wildlife has led over the past decade or longer, called the Guadalupe Bass restoration initiative. So Guadalupe Bass are our state fish. You all have a beautiful statue of one right here in downtown Kerrville by the river. So that is a species that has faced numerous challenges, one of them being habitat loss and competition with and hybridization with non native smallmouth bass. So we've been attempting, over a period of years to restock numerous, numerous high numbers, a high volume, of Guadalupe Bass within our systems, to try and dilute that, that that genetic imprint of the smallmouth bass, and that's been relatively successful in a number of places. Number of places. We've also, in the Blanco River, been able to reintroduce them where they were completely extirpated or lost. In that system, we conducted a reintroduction, and now there are a successful, successfully self producing Guadalupe bass population. Now what does that mean for green infrastructure. Well, it means that we're also working with landowners, trying to encourage and adopt these best management practices, and bringing dollars into those communities to achieve that through the form of federal grants and other private donations. So touching on how that's a multi pronged approach, I'm going to throw a staggering figure out here of why we think that's an important investment. Zach Thomas, I believe, led the study several years ago out of Texas Tech University that showed that people targeting Guadalupe bass anglers have a $75 million annual impact on local economies in Texas just from targeting that from gas sales, fish tackle, eating in local restaurants, staying in hotels. So there are these stacked ancillary benefits that are societal, in the form of recreation, ecological in the form of conserving these species, but also economic in the form of green infrastructure is inclusive of entire communities and has added value and economic benefit.
Marie Camino: Kind of you know, to your point of studies. So Texas A and M actually did a study with The Nature Conservancy in Dallas that found that green and gray infrastructure combined, so kind of a mix of both, not one or the other, was actually 77% more cost effective than gray infrastructure alone. And they actually found that the biggest bang for your buck came in parking lots. So, you know, those little green patches of grass and parking lots, you know, make those rainwater systems like absorb rainwater. So there are, there are so many proven ways to just kind of incorporate this into your city planning that I'm not going to say are seamless, but that, you know, make a huge difference in terms of water quality and quantity.
Marisa Bruno: So, so my takeaway from this is that the word stacked, you've got all these stacked benefits with nature based solutions. They might be solving a water challenge like flooding, but you get ecological benefits, economic return and perhaps welfare return as well. So that's all great, but I'm sure there are also challenges to using nature based solutions, and I'm curious to hear from you guys what you see as the main barriers to actually getting these implemented at scale.
April Sansom: I'll start, since I'm sitting next to you, I feel like the main challenge is is knowledge about it. I think that there is a huge opportunity to really spread the word about how nature based solutions can be so effective in so many ways, as we're talking about here. And I think that sometimes it seems, if people don't know a lot about it, it seems a little bit daunting or scary, and. It doesn't have to be at all. I think that it's important to think about how there's evidence to suggest that urban communities often don't make the connection between the water that comes out of their tap and open space in rural communities, they're not making the connection that that's where those resources are coming from, from open space in rural areas and and that's really, really important. And I think nature based solutions can be part of bridging that gap, in terms of that knowledge, that that that we need to to build up.
Marie Camino: Yeah, I'll just add that sometimes design criteria for development can be a barrier in that engineers, you know, are often used to the the way that you're doing things now, they may not want to change, they may not have the knowledge to change, but as a community, you really have the power to say, you know, if my community is developing, here's how I want it developed. And so kind of, you know, pushing that a little bit to to make sure that it's developed in the way you want. And you know, being a little proactive rather than reactive in the future will really help. You know, it saves you a lot of trouble in the long run, you see lots of communities like Dripping Springs, who they're developing very rapidly, and they probably would have saved themselves a lot of headache if they tackled that on the front end and challenged their existing beliefs rather than trying to fight it as it's happening.
Marisa Bruno: And Maria, just to echo something that we've talked about, some of the challenges that traditional engineering is the sort of easiest path forward. So if you are worried about stormwater pollution or stormwater running through your streets, the default from an engineer might be to design a, oh, man, what are those called? Those round, circular, you all know what I'm talking about, culvert. Yes, thank you. But as a community, if you have the foresight to ask for a rain garden instead, right? That is something that the engineer is not going to probably say no to, but you have to ask, because there is that sort of barrier of the way you've always done things is going to be the easiest path forward, as we anyway. You mentioned that to me, absolutely. Yeah.
Marie Camino: And, you know, in some cases, they might say no, but if you tackle the knowledge problem and you come in with great resources for them, you know, examples from other cities I've seen that change minds. So the resources are out there, the tools are out there for people to be more proactive.
Ryan McGillicuddy: At the risk of entering into that territory, of being long winded, an interesting part of my job and the job of my team, is changing what people think is beautiful. How do you do that? It's a really interesting quandary that you enter into, because with with my background and my training as a naturalist, I enter into this field assuming that other people think that wild and wooly landscapes full of beautiful flowering trees and birds and bees are a beautiful sight for other people, it might be, you know, that it's prohibitive, that there's poison ivy, that it's thorny, you know that it's unkempt, that their neighbors might judge them for not mowing all the way down to the riverbank, right? So we have kind of, you know, these culturally imposed preconceptions about what landscapes should look like and how they should function. So getting people to change what they think is beautiful is a big challenge. I'll say that peer pressure goes a long way. And so does just experience right in the in the BLANCO in 2015 they experienced a catastrophic flood event. You know, 13 lives lost, 10s of 1000s of trees uprooted or broken in half, severe erosion. And people asked, What do we do to repair this landscape? And one of our you know, approaches was to go, you know, encourage, you know, changing management styles to create landscapes that are more resilient to the impacts of flooding and drought and disturbance. Resilience means it doesn't mean that it's going to prevent flooding. It means it's going to. So those systems are going to bounce back quicker. They're going to withstand disturbances better. Same thing with drought. These landscapes nature based infrastructure, they're more resilient to the effects of drought and flooding. So what we were able to do was create demonstration sites and show landowners that you can have access. You can mow this area down here and maintain it like you always traditionally have, but you can intersperse that with areas that provide these natural functions. And then as lands changed from one landowner to the next, I had a landowner tell me the story of how she started managing in a different way, because she just saw the benefits of it. But then new neighbors moved in, and they came up to her and said, I see that you're leaving this strip that's about 10 to 20 feet wide of vegetation where you don't mow. Is that what I'm supposed to be doing? Yes, that's what you're supposed to be doing. But instead, if they had have looked down and saw that everyone was managing a different way, they would assume that is the correct way. We're social creatures, you know, we we learn from our neighbors, so it's up to us to be good stewards and demonstrate what good management means.
Marisa Bruno: I want to pull out a thread of something that April said she was talking about education in the urban, rural connection, and I think that Kerrville is just such an amazing example of that, because you all rely on flow from the Guadalupe River. And here in Kirk County, the connection between West Kirk County and the Edwards Aquifer there and the headwaters of the Guadalupe is is pretty amazing. You all have some massive springs at the headwaters of the Guadalupe, and the travel time between what you see entering the Edwards Aquifer there is pretty fast into the springs. And so when you think about the flow in the Guadalupe River, think about West Kirk County, because that's the place capturing the water and helping keep the flow going. So speaking of flow, there's not that much of it. These days. We are in a really intense drought, and we're seeing more intense droughts over time. We're also seeing more intense floods. How do you all see nature based solutions evolving in the face of more intense droughts and flooding?
April Sansom: I think that it that we it's very clear that we need more nature based solutions, and I'll go back to that word that Ryan used so eloquently, resilience, because of the fact that we know that there are going to be stochastic events that we have no control Over. But what we want to do is try as hard as we can to make our landscapes more resilient from those kinds of events. And we know that drought is has always been a part of Texas, but will continue to be more intense as we in the years ahead. So building resilience to to that is something that nature based solutions can help us do, and means that it'll just become more important as we as we move along.
Marie Camino: Yeah, I will echo that and say that we're kind of in a spot right now where we're, you know, almost to the point where we can't afford to not use all of the tools at our disposal, and this is a major tool at our disposal, and it's natural, so it's something that we have, and we just have to make more of and so, and I've, I don't mean to belabor the point, but I've said this a few times. You know, being proactive rather than reactive. This is mitigation and adaptation. So as we see things like extreme weather events increase extreme heat, we can't keep, you know, you know, paving and creating more heat, for example. How can we mitigate that a little bit so that we can prepare for, you know, more extreme heat in the future, as we will inevitably see, you know, more flooding things of that nature. So how can we, you know, put down maybe pervious pavement to absorb some of that water? So there are many, many examples, and this is just many more tools in our arsenal to more effectively plan our development and make sure that it works for all of our community members. So I echo that. We're just going to have to see a lot more of it. And luckily, the knowledge is on the rise. Practitioners are popping up. We have someone on staff who has a PhD in nature based solutions, which is very lucky for us. And so as that, you know, kind of knowledge, and as more examples come up from, you know, other cities that you know we can look to and say, How can we emulate that? We're just going to have to use it. Quite a lot more great answers.
Ryan McGillicuddy: And I think it's, I think it is important to clarify that I don't think any of us are suggesting that nature based infrastructure replace traditional infrastructure, or that it is a silver bullet or a panacea. You know, I think it's another tool in the tool belt. And you all have mentioned some great ones. You know, the filter strips. And you know, impervious cover reductions. And you know, more effectively processing storm water using bio swales, vegetated strips, rainwater harvesting for our communities, you know, get ensuring that that is more of an integrated component to planned communities. And so those are some of our urban solutions. But kind of like, you know, where I tend to do a little bit more work, let's, you know, go out to our, you know, our headwater landscapes and and our more rural landscapes. I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw out a commonly cited figure by the US Department of Agriculture. Who likes statistics? It's estimated that an increase in 1% or one I'm sorry, excuse me, it's estimated that an increase in one inch of organic matter onto the soil profile is capable of storing 27,000 gallons of water per acre. So investing in the soil holding or the water holding capacity of our soils, is an incredible investment, and that is done through proper land management, meaning that we're having the types of practices that return organic matter to the soil, whether that's no till agriculture, or whether it is encouraging. Again, you know, the growth of robust forests that contribute that leaf matter and material. So, you know, investing in our in our soils is going to have to be something that we that we look towards, and investing in our in our land managers, the people who are responsible for stewarding our reach our resources, is something we're going to have to continue to invest in. Just one of the like I said, these aren't going to replace our reservoirs or desalinization or rainwater harvesting, you know, any of our other you know, water sourcing strategies. It's just another added component that we might be overlooking, which is catching water and storing it in the land.
Marisa Bruno: Well, I love what you said about gray and green infrastructure, both being tools in the toolbox and that they don't need to be in competition. But I am curious, in the sort of competition for funding at the state level for infrastructure projects, are they in competition? Ryan, maybe you can comment.
Ryan McGillicuddy: I'd love to comment, because I think there's a great example from a community just down the road that is in the process of making sure that, you know, both of these approaches are taken into consideration. You know, when they're investing several million dollars into improving stormwater. So the city of Bandera was, you know, interested in well, first they approached myself, and then your colleague, Daniel Oppenheimer from Hill Country Alliance, about just management of their riverfront in their park there downtown that has over a mile of of the medina river. And it was really just, you know, how can we manage this to, you know, process stormwater water a little bit better, add a little bit more riparian zone, create some targeted access, you know, enhance those ecological functions. And we made some recommendations, but they were also under the process of looking towards securing flood infrastructure funding through the Texas Water Development Board, which are those low interest loans, and they found a way to take those recommendations that we'd made, hire actual engineers, and incorporate them into their larger, more traditional, gray infrastructure where they were, you know, re contouring some of the, you know, the storm municipal stormwater system that drains, you know, in from the streets into those areas. Some of that comes through the park. It's, you know, the plan is for it to be processed that that water to be processed by natural infrastructure in the form of bio swales, things like that. So they've really found a way to integrate both of those into a multi million dollar project. And kudos to, you know, former mayor Rebecca Gibson, who is in the room, but for really spearheading and seeing the vision of that project, and making sure that it was, that it was integrated and now being carried forward by current leadership in the city. So it's just a great example of a hill country community that's, you know, taking every tool that is in the toolbox to address, you know, problems from a multi pronged approach.
Marisa Bruno: And another great example of asking for what you want, you know, and asking for non traditional solutions. And I will make a plug that the Water Development Board rewards projects that have green infrastructure components. You get extra points in your competition for funding, and you also get free money. If you have green infrastructure components, you get grant funding.
Ryan McGillicuddy: And I'll add that it was, it was, you know, as all things that are kind of visionary. It did not come without its challenges. It required that we had to, you know, put a lot of thought into how we design and integrate those components into it. And it was a lot of meetings and a lot of. Search, and, you know, a lot of coordination with their consultants. And, you know, we, we Texas Parks and Wildlife and Hill Country Alliance, I think, played a minor role in that. But, you know, it was interesting to see that process from the inside and just how much it takes. But it now those engineering firms have experienced that. Now, a community has experienced that they are better equipped to inform other neighboring communities about the process. And, you know, there are now more consulting firms that that have been through this process. So, you know, the first one through the door always, you know, has a little bit more legwork to do, but hopefully things are in motion.
Marie Camino: I'll just plug something very positive here, which is that the Texas Water Development Board is coming out with a nature based solutions manual. So it's kind of, you know, a state not blueprint, but a state resource for local communities who are interested in doing this. And you know, during our flood planning process, a lot of those flood planning groups actually recommended nature based solutions in local policies. So we have support from the state government, essentially our Texas Water Development Board, they're coming out with the resources. So, you know, we've got even more tools in the toolbox, as you would say,
Marisa Bruno: Well, that's a great segue into my next question for you, Marie, so obviously, you're doing a lot of work at the legislature right now, but TNC also does a lot of work at the local level, and so I'm curious if you've seen or if you could share with us the efforts you've seen at the state and local level to support more nature based solutions for our water supply and flooding challenges.
Marie Camino: Yeah, so I'll start with the state level. So as I kind of mentioned before, land conservation is such a key tool for, you know, addressing a lot of these challenges, it is a nature based solution. So last in the 2023 legislative session, the legislature allocated a billion dollars to expanding and creating new state parks across Texas, which is great. It provides, you know, economic benefits, recreational needs for all Texans, while also including all those stock benefits that we mentioned that comes with land conservation. So, you know, that was a really, you know, Keystone moment in our in our Texas history, if you will, this legislative session. So we have through Texas Parks and Wildlife. It's a pass through program called the Texas farm and ranch land conservation fund. And what that fund does is it helps fund conservation easements for agricultural lands. So, you know, as as development pressure is on the rise, you know, things become more financially attractive to kind of like, sell your land if you're a farmer, maybe you're not making the money that you used to farming. This, this program kind of comes in and funds an easement, which is a agreement in perpetuity or for 30 years that you enter into kind of, as I mentioned before, where you agree to certain land practices. You agree not to develop portions of your land if that's what you choose. So that, right now, is funded very, very low. It's $2 million a biennium. Other states are, you know, four to five times that, and four to five times smaller places like North Carolina, you know, Florida really, really, greatly outpaces us and that kind of funding. And so we're advocating for $30 million of biennium, and that program has really proven to be effective. With that $2 million they've pulled down nine to one ratio of federal funds. We've seen so many ecosystem services as a result. You know, we support our farmers who give us food and fiber. We all need that that helps our food security. You know, so many stock benefits with that. And we've actually found a 21 to three return on investment to those dollars. So it's a it's a trusted program. It's established it. You know, landowners know how to utilize it, and they want to utilize it, and right now, 60% of their applications go unfunded. So we really need this funding right now. You know, the budget process is ongoing. We've got 15 million of that funding in the House side, none on the Senate. So we're really fighting in what's called a conference committee where they, you know, kind of flesh out the two bills and decide on a bill to get that full amount of funding. So more to come on that. Keep updated.
Marisa Bruno: I hope you guys are successful, because it would really stink to be beat by Florida.
Marie Camino: Florida does a great job! You know, I'm from Florida. We did a great job. Go Gators. We okay. So I will move to the local level and just mention that in Travis County, in November 2023, they passed a bond. It was $200 million for land conservation, $500 million for roads and things like that. Last summer, we helped work on a resolution. And although it was a resolution, it was still we wrote it in such a way that it was pretty binding, and usually they're they're kind of not. So this was really positive. So we, we wrote a policy that ensured that when Travis County, you know, contracts out for these roads projects and things like that, they score their contractors hire if they can do nature based solutions. So if they have the knowledge, if they can implement it where it's appropriate, they're preferred. So that's really, really positive. We would love to see that in, you know, more areas that pass bonds, because, you know, it just gives them more more power to do these things so, and it tells contractors in the area that that they need to have this knowledge. So it has a really positive impact on, you know, the private business community as well.
Speaker: And I know TNC was involved with some bond activity. Do you want to comment on that a little bit? Or I can also chime in?
Marie Camino: Yeah, sure. So in Hays and Kendall County, they're great examples. They both passed local ballot measures to raise 75,000,020 $5 million respectively in bond funding to invest in conservation. So they did this with an emphasis on projects that provide water supply and quality. So there, there are many great hill country examples of, you know, this type of funding.
Marisa Bruno: I don't know if there are any Kendall county residents here tonight, but they're in the process of allocating those $20 million for conservation easements that will provide water quality benefits to the residents of Kendall County. All right, April, nature based solutions are going to have a different maintenance regime than gray infrastructure or engineered solutions. And I'm curious, in the case of Bamberger Ranch, y'all are doing a lot of work for water supply, but imagine the maintenance is pretty different from what we'd see with gray infrastructure. What does maintenance look like, at Bamberger?
April Sansom: Thank you, yeah. I'm really glad you asked that question, Marisa, because it is, it's it's work, but it's not as significant as as you might expect, in terms of the the time investment. So backing up a little bit, I mentioned that in 1969 a lot of the what's now the 5500 acre nature preserve was covered in a monoculture of ash Juniper cedar. We know that Ash Juniper is a natural part of our ecosystem here in the Texas Hill Country. The reason why I bring that up is because in 1969 when the when they were figuring out what to do using the tools they had at the time and the information they had at the time, they engaged in an extraordinarily aggressive removal of a lot of that Ash Juniper, and we actually don't recommend that aggressive approach. Again, they were figuring it out as they went along in those days, but the result 50 some odd years later is that we actually have a landscape. One of our management goals is to manage our landscape with the mosaic of different habitat types that would have been prevalent here pre European settlement. So that's one of our land management goals, and the maintenance of that is much less than it would have been had the had the clearing been, had not been so aggressive in the early days and so but it's still 5500 acres. So one of the things that we do is, although we manage the preserve as a whole. We think of it in smaller sections, and we treat those we have five different sections that we conceptualize, and we treat those sections in a rotation so that it's not so daunting to treat the whole 5500 acres at once, and we in our rotation, we don't leave any one of those five sections long enough to where it goes back to a condition where we have to really get in there and do some aggressive work. So our maintenance. And consists of, we talk about the five tools of wildlife management that Aldo Leopold championed all those years ago, and so we use not much recently because of the drought, but we do use prescribed fire. We use what we do. We still do brush clearing. We use a drum mulcher on the front of a skid steer. All of these are maintenance tasks that we'll always do, because we will always be on a restoration journey, and we will always be evolving our management plan. We always joke that our management plan is always written in pencil, so that we can adapt it as necessary, and so that that does require maintenance. But it's not the it's certainly not when we plan it and we rotate our activities across the landscape, it's not insurmountable. We are actually a staff of only five people, and so we are able to handle that because of the fact that the planning and the maintenance is is not what you might think that it would be. And again, that has to do with making sure that we're using all those tools in our tool belt.
Marisa Bruno: I think Ryan's about to jump in. You did open up the ash Juniper, mountain cedar flood gate. I'll just share an anecdote that my first time visiting the hill country ever, I was out in Bandera. I went to one of those dude ranches, and I was like, what is that giant pile of trees? And the cowboy looked at me, and he said, those are cedar. They're water hogs. And I was like, Okay, I guess you know that's that we don't like these trees here. And since working at the Hill Country Alliance, I've since learned that there's actually a big debate about the role of of cedar. And so I would like to hear from you all, you know, what is the, the verdict on Cedar?
Ryan McGillicuddy: Can I go back to one previous question and just add, add a little bit of, you know, build on, on April's, and then I promise you, we'll have a, you know, a very robust discussion about about cedar with all the hoots and how hollering that goes with it, yeah, with as far as maintenance goes, you know, certainly I'm not an expert in, you know, urban low impact development or green infrastructure, but it does take, you know, kind of recalibrating some of those maintenance regimes, and, you know, training up personnel who are on the ground doing the maintenance of those, maybe buying different equipment to get down into those areas without damaging it. You know, we held a Texas urban riparian symposium in Waco, this, this, this last winter. And that was a big question there, but I was very, very delighted to see that one of my colleagues at the City of Austin brought their maintenance staff. So this isn't just something for for wonky scientists or, you know, for engineers. It was like, No, we need to bring the people who are, you know, constructing, maintaining these. So I think there's just that learning curve. But when it comes to going back to our rural areas, let's, let's look at our riparian areas. How How much maintenance does it take a lot less than mowing? You're out there mowing every week, you know, but with, with riparian areas, it takes kind of monitoring for invasives and you know, then, you know, occasionally mowing your targeted access area. But it's, it's a lot less work in many cases than having to go, you know, consistently mow and maintain, you know, and as far as kind of, you know, just general land management and maintenance of it. April, I think you touched on it really well. But you know, land management is essentially, you know, continuous maintenance. You know, our agricultural producers, our ranchers, are out there interacting with the land every day, whether you're urban or rural, when you're maintaining our natural infrastructure, it's continuous participation with the natural resources and adaptive management, and that's just part of it. So are we talking about cedar now?
Marisa Bruno: We're talking about cedar now.
Ryan McGillicuddy: I think, I think perspectives on Ash Juniper are changing, and I don't think that's new. I think perspectives on Ash Juniper have been changing for as long as we've been interacting with the land. Ash Juniper was initially documented in, you know, by Spanish explorers in the 1500s as having an undulating forest with no end and no way through it. You know, of of cedar. It was historically more broken up by mosaics of grassland than in a lot. That was cleared by by German settlers and Irish got settlers around Wimberley and westward, and that dramatically changed the landscape. And then what we see is a lot of topsoil loss. And once those plants were gone, an aggressive return of ash juniper and now expanding into many areas where it previously was not, and diminishing those mosaics of grassland and ash Juniper so that's, you know, a very, you know, a long period of history. I'm trying to, you know, consolidate into a quick statement, but just to illustrate that, it has been changing. But what we see now is, you know, in many places, areas that have lost their topsoil, our ash Juniper forests are doing the job of repairing that so nothing else wants to grow on those rocky hillsides where there is no organic matter, but an ash Juniper sure will, and it drops an incredible amount of organic material, the duff from its leaves. And you can go into those areas and find six, seven inches deep of just ash Juniper Duff in time, you know, hopefully other species will come, you know, reclaim that and and you'll get a more diversified area, you know. And I would just say that, you know, with any management strategy, whether it's ash Juniper, or grassland management or riparian areas, you know, be intentional. Be thoughtful, be prescriptive. Be cautious, be deliberate. Don't just go into the in there and just clear everything at once. I prefer an Ask Juniper monoculture to a monoculture of KR blue stem, which is often what replaces it as soon as you clear it without having any foresight, without having a native seed bank in place. So I actually fund, you know, Ash Juniper removal projects, or ash Juniper management projects. Let's call it that, because we're being selective. We're being targeted. We're interacting with the landscape. So those are my thoughts. I think, you know, with publications like Elizabeth McGreevy, you know, recent book, mountain cedars wanted dead and alive. You know, it's kind of changing some of the conversation around it, and I think that's good. I think we should react to our changing understandings of how what our impact upon the landscape have been has been, and be adaptive and be thoughtful and not just go with something because we were told it's gospel, and that's the way it is. Let's continue to learn from our predecessors, mistakes and successes.
April Sansom: Sure, I think that's extraordinarily well said, Ryan, and thank you for those thoughts. I think the research on astronaut first relationship to soil and building soil is very, very interesting, and I I'm looking forward to that research being continued. It is one of the great privileges of my team. And I to when people come for an educational tour of the ranch, and we ask them whether ash Juniper is a well, we sometimes we give them a trick question, and we say, is it native or invasive? And of course, the answer is both. And so it's it's one of the great privileges that I have to when people think that it is, in fact, an exotic species, to say, No, it's a native part of our hill country landscape, and in fact, a very critical one, as Ryan indicated, I also love showing people the stately, huge old growth ash junipers that we do have still on bamburger ranch preserve that survive that initial, aggressive clearing that, like I said, We don't recommend and provide part of that mosaic of different habitats that we are really that's one of our land management goals, as well as providing an important part of our other main land management goal, which is biodiversity.
Ryan McGillicuddy: And I'll add one more thing, which is, we're talking about natural infrastructure here. We're talking a lot about water. Well, does do ash junipers use a lot of water? Yes, they do. They're plants. Plants use water. Do they use more water or have more of an impact than a than a landscape with no topsoil? I would argue, I would argue that, no, when we get runoff and compaction instead of, you know, interception and infiltration, when we don't have a soil profile building that again, Juniper contributing to the repair of, you know, then we're not getting that, that water storing that we're looking for. So, yes, they may be aggressive in certain instances, but I think when people are managing for Juniper, they should be managing with an eye towards soil health.
Marisa Bruno: Thank you for bringing it back to water. We'll circle back to Q and A in like four minutes. Thanks. Yeah. So this is the last question before we go to our wrap up questions. So one of my takeaways from this conversation is that there are a lot of nature based solutions that individual landowners could be applying to their own properties, so things like managing erosion and building up the soil profile to promote recharge. If a landowner wanted to learn more about this. Do you all have any quickly resources that you might share with this audience? Absolutely.
April Sansom: Come to one of our excellent landowner workshops at Bamberger Ranch Reserve. That's a great way.
Ryan McGillicuddy: Yeah, you have so many more resources at your disposal than you know of we've got in the room, Representative from Texas Forest Service. They're an excellent resource the NRCS Natural Resources Conservation Service, they're the ones out there deploying Farm Bill dollars and giving you advice on land management. Every county has a a Texas Parks and Wildlife wildlife biologist. Don't hesitate to lean on those resources and ask for free advice. It's out there. And then, yes, please visit the Selah Bamberger ranch for some you know, excellent examples of a long history of Land Management and adaptive management, for when it comes to kind of some of the nature based erosion management structures using wood and rock. I'd point you to the Quivira coalition out of New Mexico. The bamburger, again, was some of the earliest to adopt those kind of low profile erosion management structures in the hill country. But those are practices that have been adapted from indigenous practices in the in the American Southwest, going back 1000s of years. So lots of resources for low cost, low intensive land management strategies that are out there.
Marie Camino: I think I mentioned that TNC has a whole land protection team, so that is, kind of their job is to help people who, you know, want to maybe enter into a conservation easement, you know, kind of access the resources that they need to do that there. There's one bill in the legislature right now that, and it's got bipartisan and bicameral support. So it's bipartisan, and it has both chambers support. It would allow counties to give a tax break for rainwater cisterns, so tools like that. You know, your local your local governments sometimes can, can have those resources, but really leaning on maybe land trusts like TNC to kind of help you figure out what's best for you. You know, other options could be, if you've got groundwater rights, you could donate that to the Texas Water trust. So there's also a bill in the legislature to kind of make that process more seamless and more attractive to landowners. So, you know, there's really a suite of options that that we are happy to help landowners with.
Marisa Bruno: Okay, one last question. One minute, rapid fire, what is the one takeaway that you hope people walk away with tonight from this conversation on nature based solutions?
April Sansom: I think my one takeaway is that we nature based solutions are a relatively simple and very practical way for everybody to participate in making sure that future generations of Texas have the natural resources that they are going to depend on, just as we do now,
Marie Camino: My takeaway is that nature is infrastructure. As I said before, it is not separate. It is, you know, not only a tool in the toolbox, but it is the first tool in the toolbox ever. And you know, kind of to what I was saying about being proactive about how your community is developed. You know, before things get bad, you have the chance to do that. And you know, you have your voice, so contact your local officials and really advocate for these nature based solutions.
Ryan McGillicuddy: Similarly, we don't need to think of infrastructure as being separate from the landscape that we inhabit and that we interact with daily. Whether it's in your urban environment with some of the some of the green infrastructure, or whether it's on working lands. You know, it's there to not only to serve us, but to inspire us. So be inspired by nature. Work with nature. And yeah, let's move forward.
Marisa Bruno: My takeaway? Stacked benefits and that everyone has a role they could be playing. I hope that you'll join me in thanking our awesome panelists tonight. [applause] Thank you all so much, and now we will turn it over for Q and A. Raise your hand if you have a question, and Nathan will lightly jog in your direction.
Audience member: Is there any such thing as a natural Texas landscape anymore that requires no maintenance, where flora and fauna and water are all in equilibrium?
Marisa Bruno: Great question. Is there any such thing as a natural Texas landscape that doesn't require any maintenance?
Ryan McGillicuddy: I think it's probably a matter of opinion. But I think we've so thoroughly interacted with the landscape and intensively managed most areas of the Texas landscape that I would be inclined to say, No, we've interrupted fire regimes large grazing animals, like like Bison, and, you know, most of our large predators. So, you know, we've got an area now that, for better or worse, we have settled altered, and now it is our responsibility to steward. So I would say that, you know, there may be some areas that are still a little bit more more wild than others that require less intervention, but you know, for the most part, no, it takes some, some active management, whether it be in the form of, you know, mimicking those historic grazing regime regimes, using cattle as a tool. You know, mimicking some of the historic grazing regimes of, you know, bison by rotational grazing. Some people are, you know, coming around to short term, high intensity, high intensity, duration grazing practices which mimic, mimic that, but prescribed burning as a way to reduce fire as a tool, those types of things. So, yeah, how's that?
Speaker 2: I wrote it down, we settled it, we altered it. Now it's our responsibility to steward it. That was good.
April Sansom1:06:59
Yes, I like that very much, Ryan, that's really well said, and absolutely even on our nature preserve, we talk a lot about how the RE one of the primary reasons why that Ash Juniper was allowed to become invasive, even though it's a very important native species, is because of the removal of the processes that Ryan was just talking about, and with the removal of those of particularly the bison and the natural fires, the landscape necessarily changed. And so what we do is we use tools to maintain what the landscape might have looked like and woody encroachment is an issue on grasslands all across the globe. It happens everywhere that there are grasslands. And so if we're to maintain native prairie and native grasslands, then we need to use our tools in our toolbox to to maintain those areas.
Marisa Bruno: Any other audience questions? There's one in the back from Chris.
Chris Distel: You mentioned fire and I wonder if nature based solutions for fire management can play nicely with nature based solutions for water management.
Marisa Bruno: Tough question, can nature based solutions for fire management play with nature based solutions for water anyone have an answer?
April Sansom: I think the answer is yes, because of the fact that, again, for us at Bamberger Ranch Reserve, I mean, we all know here in the hill country, we are blessed with this karst geology, and we have a lot of elevational gradient, and so our aquifers are in the top 120 feet of our limestone hills. And that's why it's so important for us to have that healthy soil and those healthy native grasses, particularly the bunch grasses, that allow water infiltration into what thin topsoil there is, and then into those porous limestone areas, and fire helps us maintain those grasslands. So I think that's a great relationship, actually, between fire and water,
Ryan McGillicuddy: I may be misunderstanding the question, but are you asking if nature based infrastructure has a role in in fire prevention in our landscape?
Chris Distel: More asking if somebody is focused on the. Or fire management on their property. Can they use overlapping approaches for their nature based water management?
Ryan McGillicuddy: Yeah, I think that, yeah. I definitely think it's an integrated approach. And, you know, case by case, but I would say that we know one of the things we've been advocating for is, you know, conservation of our headwaters. You know, conservation of our larger intact landscapes, and we have seen in some urban areas where we have large contiguous tracks that are green space, they are forest and they are not actively managed to prevent fire. So there is an inherent risk there that needs to be considered when we conserve those lands, that you know, maybe they're just being left alone, but they're not being actively managed in a way that might prevent it. So it is something for communities to consider, as they conserve lands around themselves, for recreation and for green infrastructure, that it is an associated responsibility.
Speaker 2: So then maybe the connection is good. Maintenance is good for water and it's also good for fire.
Ryan McGillicuddy1:11:05
I think that's a great way to summarize it.
Audience member: I was wondering what you are doing? Are you doing anything on the water conservation in regards to the best plants that are coming in here, battery, battery energy.
Marisa Bruno: Sorry, doing anything in for water conservation
Audience member1:11:32
there, if one of them starts a fire, you have lost the the area, area,
Marisa Bruno: what I've been told is that there are, depending on the counties, limited tools to stop something like that. So as far as water conservation goes, if you're a county that has a fire marshal, then you could impose more restrictions. You have to be near and adjacent to an urban county to have a fire marshal. So this is no shade on Kirk County. Your hands are somewhat strapped there. There is a version of like an emergency services district. I don't know if you have those in Kirk County, but those can adopt fire marshals, but they're expensive, and in that case, you can require more of a battery storage of a Bess, but the tools are somewhat limited, unfortunately, and I'm sorry, I know they are coming to the hill country.
Audience member: The other question I had, I was up to the head of the Rio for real not too long ago. It's down, I think more than one mile from what it used to be, and I know the Guadalupe is now intermittent up there. How far down has it come?
Marisa Bruno: Is the question around the flow production or
Audience member: where the headwaters are, because they have moved, because the aquifer has gone down so far. They're no longer...
Marisa Bruno: I'm not I'm not certain of the change in headwaters location, but I can comment that we're seeing historically low stream flow. You know, there are many stream segments in the hill country where streams are flowing at the lowest record or the lowest flow in historic record. That's true of some segments of the Guadalupe. Again, historic record doesn't mean that that's in history. That just means, based on the record we have, that's true in the perinalus, and I'm sure that's true of other Hill Country stream segments. So this is a very nasty drought,
Audience member: I think is a concern of mine, is that as the drought is likely to intensify and as the water shortage becomes more acute and pressing, the consciousness among Texans is going to become higher and higher. It'll become more desperate. We know that Charles Perry, up in the panhandle, is really jonesing from for major expenditures on infrastructure, on everything from, you know, in Texas, we like dams and we like pipelines, and talking about not only desalination, but also transporting East Texas water, maybe even Louisiana water, you know, into the regions that need more water in Texas. Because what he's trying to do is say, for us to continue the juggernaut of the expanding Texas population and economy, we need more water. Because guess what, our aquifers aren't going to do it. So do you think that, or do you worry I do that the that these green initiatives are going to just, are just going to fade into the background as the Texas legislature continue considers bigger, more, you know, more steel and concrete type. Our infrastructure, not so much green infrastructure.
Marisa Bruno: I'm happy to take that unless Marie, you want to. Okay, so a little bit of legislature talk. There are two pools of funding. There's the Texas Water Fund, which funds a lot of different Water Development Board programs, and the Water Development Board chooses which projects it funds. And so the Water Development Board can choose to fund a project like the Bandera flood project. There's another pool of money, the new water supply for Texas fund, and that is only for new water sources, things like bringing in pipe piped water from other states, desalinated water, brackish groundwater, and cleaning up produced water, which is the water you get from oil and gas operations. There's a bait right now, a debate right now being had at the legislature about how much of the potential $1 billion in funding goes to each of the funds. Ideally, more of that funding goes to the Texas Water fund, the more flexible fund. And I think in that scenario where we have more water going to the Water Development Board to give out to projects, including nature based projects, I'm not that worried. You know, the fact that there is a Texas Water Development Board nature based solutions manual is a great sign that there's support for it. If that money gets trapped in the new water supply for Texas fund. None of that money is going to nature based solutions, and so the breakdown of those funds is really important. So if this is something that you feel passionate about, it is not too late to tell your legislators that you would like to see more flexible funding at the state so I don't know, Marie, maybe you can.
Marie Camino: I'll just add that. So the House version of that is different than the Senate version. Their goal right now is to pass both versions and then kind of reconcile the language in a conference committee, which is just, you know, if a bill passes in the House and the Senate and the language is different than they come, they have a whole new committee to rectify that. So the funding in the House bill is a lot more flexible. And so I know we gave comments in support of the House bill and the house enabling legislation, which is the HJR. And so there is still a chance for it to be more flexible.
Speaker 5: I like a lot of what you're saying, but I'm going to try and take issue with the framing or bracketing here. Just by looking at the title of the presentation tonight, and say a few things you can respond or not. You know, first of all, nature based. I mean, that's cool. I think the one water thing was the hip thing to say earlier. It has a kind of, you know, Mantra, jargon, buzzword, feel to it is what rhetoricians call a self recommending term. I mean, who would be against a nature based as opposed to an unnaturally based solution? Right? So I have a problem with that, to start with solution, and you all did speak to this in a number of different ways, like the saga of the BAM burger, having to learn by doing from the early days, going forward, learning from your mistakes. But there's still that word itself, suggesting that there are solutions behind that is a thing that some of us learn to think of as enlightenment, Western rationalist arrogance, belief that you know what works in the world and what makes things come out correctly, and the modesty that says we're going to make mistakes all the time is, you know, in short supply. But you know, the Bamberger progress indicates that there's some ways of approaching it again. It's, it's that term, I think it, you know, it bothers me. The one that bothers me the most is challenges, because I haven't really heard you talk about what we all know is the challenge, and that's the power of capital to make anything happen. It wants to.
Speaker 21:19:23
And that's now where I thought this was going. I have to say,
Speaker 51:19:27
Yeah, and that's what's happening in the hill country. If we could declare a moratorium on development right now, that would be the best thing we could do for water in the hill country. I don't think there's any doubt about that. For me, there's no doubt about it.
Marisa Bruno: Can I chime in? Before I forget, because I'm going to lose the point, I just want to say there was a healthy debate about the word nature based solutions versus natural infrastructure, and we thought nature based solutions was less jargony. But perhaps we were wrong. These are two terms that are used a lot to describe the things that we talked about today, and we. Didn't invent them, but that is how they're being talked about at the state level and on a national stage as well. So in challenges, we talk about challenges ad nauseam, and they are very daunting, and as you recognize, we have historic growth, historic drought. And I think some of the inspiration for this panel was to talk about, maybe solutions isn't the right word, but some things we can be doing at a time when things feel so dire, but I will pause and let you continue. I just didn't want to lose the...
Speaker 5: I think I've said enough about it. You got my point. And it's just that maybe next year the Texas Water symposium would want to look at that broader perspective on what's going on here. I myself just got a letter from you know, area Realtor in that wonderful Bandera County, which actually most of us there call it banducky, but that's another issue that you know, told me you know how valuable my property was, and how they would put it in videos around the world, and they have, you know, just on and on, and it's the and we heard that about Kendall County. We've heard it about K fastest growing, hottest and everything like that. And, you know, it's just, I mean, that's what the challenge is, how to stop that. And I want to stop it, you know, I want to stop it right now. I know this wishful thinking, idealism, maybe it's woke it could be that bad, but that would be a way to deal with the challenge is to get that to that process to stop, and that requires a much broader discussion. Is all I'm saying.
Marisa Bruno: I'm going to put a target on my back when I say this, but growth is coming, and I think the challenge is to ensure that it happens in a responsible way, which is a much easier said than done. And it looked like, you know, Ryan was was about to say something, but I'll just chime in and say, one of the benefits, I think, of conservation easements, that Marie is talking about is that in some ways, you can decide where you don't want to see development happen. So it's it's going to happen in some places, right? But if you know that there is an extremely valuable tract of land that has really critical recharge features, or is just super important to the community for other sort of cultural values, you can put a conservation on, conservation easement on it, and that is how you ensure that forever, that land does not get developed. And so unfortunately, you know, that is one of the tools in the toolkit. And Ryan, if you want to look like you want to say something, I'm debating it.
Ryan McGillicuddy: I'm just going to say really quickly that eventually people are going to stop coming here when we run out of water. So let's do what we can now, and everybody do their part to make sure that, you know, we're pitching in to have solutions, even if they're not the solution. You know, a piece of the solution towards securing a better water future, not just for our human use, but, you know, for our wildlife, for our fish, you know, for our farmers, for our ranchers, for our working folks. That's as deep as I'm gonna go into that one, sir. Thank you.
Marie Camino: I'll just add kind of building on Maurice's point, Texas is over 94% privately owned. And you know, regardless of what your politics are, Texas has this ethos of, you know, it's my land. I can do what I want with it, and and in some cases, that helps people, and in some cases it doesn't. But I will just echo that conservation easement is your greatest tool. If you have your land and you say, I want to protect this in perpetuity. That's really powerful. That means you know your grandchildren, your great grandchildren, my great grandchildren, will see that land not untouched, but well managed. And so while it may feel a little powerless, there is some power there, so just leaving it on a like a positive note.
Speaker 3: Hi. I'm involved with the Scenic Loop Helotes Creek Alliance. We are fighting Guajalote Ranch development in northern Bexar County. But the issue is how much a development of four houses per acre and all of the infrastructure and their impact of their wastewater treatment on the headwaters of the whole Lotus Creek, which has been identified as 15% that Hello, Helotes Creek watershed contributes 15% of the Edwards Aquifer flow. That means that if they contaminate it, San Antonio can say goodbye to unfiltered water and they. Can say goodbye to cheap water. What I want to know is what a panel like you can do to impact the legislature, the knowledge that's held in the public about these issues, because it isn't going to get better. We are going to have to manage how much growth versus how much natural resources we have and we can provide without ruining what we already have. So my question is, individually, we can do what everybody can do what they want. Can be proactive if they want to be. But how as a group do we get better organized to start having a more impactful conversation with our state legislators and the actual decision makers, because they're the ones that have historically allowed the developers to do what they want. So how do y'all see that evolve?
Marisa Bruno: I just want to say thank you for your work on on that campaign against that development, which is going to be proposing to release a lot of treated effluent into Helotes Creek. I will say the developers are watching Hill Country communities fight every single discharge permit, and you better believe it's having an impact on their development decisions. So, you know, I'm hearing more and more developers say, I'm going to go straight to land application. I'm not going to deal with all those crotchety neighbors who are going to fight me. And I'm like, Great y'all are paying attention. The hill country is going to put up a fight if you want to potentially contaminate their drinking water supply. So that is having an impact in and of itself. Now the question of the legislature and growth, because moving to tlap is not going to make the development not happen, that is a much bigger question, and I wish I had an answer. Maybe someone on this panel is braver.
Marie Camino: It's a tough answer, but what I will say is, there are many ways to organize. So one of the things that we've utilized is we kind of call it a fly in so if you have a community group or something like that, you can come together and say, let's all go to Austin on this day, March 24 or whatever. You all schedule meetings with your legislators. You kind of knock it out. You have the same talking points. Really powerful to have a unified message amongst all people. And if lots of legislators are hearing this from lots of different people, especially their constituents. You know, it might not change the conversation right away, but at the more they hear it, the more it changes it, so the more people you can get from different areas to sound the alarm. And, you know, come to Austin as much as you can which, which is hard, like a lot of people you know, have have jobs, or, you know, you can't be there at 8am on a Monday morning, and so that can be difficult, but you can go once or twice, and you can, you know, kind of organize those Advocacy Days. You know, you wear your T shirts, you go and you talk to them, and they they're receptive. I'll also highlight there's lots of work to be done in the interim. So many bills are crafted long before they're introduced. You know, you can pre file in November of the year before the legislative session. So if you you know you don't see something on the dock at the session that you like, you can go to your legislator and say, Hey, can we have an interim study on this thing? And what that does? If they, you know, if they put the interim study on, they kind of gather information in the interim so that they can better legislate on the issue in the next legislative session. So it just adds to their information pool. It flags the issue for them, and it, it kind of, you know, creates more knowledge in whatever committee they choose to do that in. So, you know, there's, there's work to be done in the legislative session, but also in the interim, which sometimes can be a lot easier, because staffers are more receptive. They're less busy, and so you can kind of bend their ear a little bit more.
Speaker 2: I'm a huge, absolute supporter of conservation easements, but I have to remind there's one exception to protecting your land into perpetuity, and that's eminent domain. I'm on a land trust board, and we recently discussed two conservation easements that pipelines are coming. You know, eminent domain, you can't fight that aspect of it. It's a great thing, though, and it's our only hope, really, to protect our land from. Are being put into small segments and losing the big picture that we want.
Marisa Bruno: I'll repeat that though it's not a cheery note that there she's right. There's an exception to conservation and perpetuity, and that is eminent domain cases. Lee had a comment or a question back there, and Lee during this time, I will introduce you. You are at the Save Barton Creek Association based in Austin, a far cry from Kerrville. So welcome.
Lee Burton: Yes, although we look at streams all over the hill country. So just, I believe it was your question, if you get wind of a development going in and you know, you think it's going to be problematic, and someone is filing an application permit for either wastewater discharge permit or land application permit that you don't think is appropriate. You can request tcq Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for a review of the draft permit. They almost always issue a draft permit, but you can request for a review of it, issue comments. They often time, I shouldn't say often, but sometimes they will tighten the requirements around that permit. And then there's another step beyond that, that then you can actually ask for a contested case hearing.
Audience member1:31:17
[untintelligible]
Lee Burton1:31:17
Okay, right, right. And it's difficult. It's not easy. But even though their motto is to conserve and
Speaker 21:31:31
protect water quality,
Speaker 41:31:33
that's bulls***, well,
Speaker 81:31:36
and that's not for the radio.
Lee Burton1:31:38
I'm going to cast a little different light on that. So there are things. It's changing. Things are changing. One of the things happens when you do either one of those processes, they do listen and they will actually strengthen the requirements a lot of times on the permit. Now, usually the permits still going to be issued, but sometimes it can be so onerous and expensive that it's, and I think Marisa was alluding to this earlier, it's not worth their time on a wastewater discharge plant. Okay, that's number one. Secondly, there was actually a big victory earlier this year up in Georgetown on the south San Gabriel, okay? And there was a wastewater plant put in at Liberty Hill there, and it caused huge algae blooms for about three miles downstream. And for the first time ever, TCEQ ruled that they had to cut back their phosphorus emissions by 95% which doesn't go quite far enough, is what we think they should have, because Hill Country streams are very low. Nutrient streams very low. Okay, so they can't take much, but still, that was a big victory. And then I'll mention one last thing, and if you talked about this earlier, I apologize, but there's another bill right now that's been introduced in the Senate. It's SB 1911 and this is something our organization works with, and Marisa obviously knows about this, and it's called the pristine streams bill. It's been introduced before it passed the House, but it basically would ban any future wastewater discharge permits on 20 of the various streams around the hill country, many of which are in Kerr County. Okay, it doesn't actually apply to municipalities, just to be clear, but it does apply to other developments that pop up. So I just met actually with Verdell just last week, and he was very receptive to this. There's not a companion House bill yet in the Senate. It's Senator Eckhart, who's actually carrying this bill, authored it. So I would ask that you please reach out if this is something of concern to you, and say, Hey, we would like to have a committee hearing for this. Senator, Charles Perry is the one who chairs the water committee in the Senate, but also having someone who would carry it in the house, Verdell or someone else, and he actually seemed very receptive to it. I want to put words in his mouth, but that would be extremely helpful. So that's definitely one of the things that you can do to protect not only your water supply, but also the water quality and the streams that we all love in the hill country here.
Speaker 2: And that's SB, 1911 and with that, SB, 1911 pristine streams, I always like to end on a positive note, and I do feel that we've taken a turn towards the darkness these issues. Do you have a positive note to end on? Okay, one last hope for positivity.
Audience Member: Hi, my name is Rebecca. So I'm from San Marcos, where we're actually having a huge mobilization of young people, which I'm hoping is happy news for everybody sitting here for an issue that's going on between a city and a developer and a relatively small property, not even very close to the river, but it's getting traction, and people are starting to take notice. And my question for the panelists, and I'm very thankful and happy that you all answered my first question, which was, what resources are available if. Sitting city planning employees and engineers, and I'm glad to hear about the manual that's coming out, but for the average lay person, is there a resource available to help us better understand the intricacies of water in Texas in general, with the groundwater and the surface water and who runs what and what municipality charges, which wastewater versus stream and all that sort of thing. Is there something to help us make sense of all of that?
Marisa Bruno: There's a great course that Parks and Wildlife offers Texas Water specialists, and I wish I know there's some probably graduates of that program here, so you can go and get a certificate in that. There's another great book, water for Texas, or right, which is, I think your dad wrote that. April's dad wrote it. Andy Samsung, actually, it's a great book. And primer on water. We have a bunch of resources, and I can connect afterwards, but water for Texas that Parks and Wildlife forces are really good places to start. And because that was not optimistic enough for me, I will just say, even though the challenges are really tough, I really do think that there are a lot of tools in the toolkit. I am always saying that nature based solutions are one of them. The fact that we're having a conversation about them here tonight, I think, is a good sign, and I am optimistic about what the future holds for Hill Country water and we will get through this drought. So anyway, thank you all for thank you all for being here tonight. I really appreciate you making the time. Thank you all for being here tonight. I really appreciate you.
