Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Demand for water brings search, and then conflict, to rural areas

As San Antonio and its workforce have grown, so have their need for more water, so water company officials have been forced reached farther out into rural Atascosa County, where communities often have opposed any use of "their" water, reports Jerry Needam for the San Antonio Express-News. His story is a good case study of the history of a local problem that is occurring on the rural fringes of many metropolitan areas.

The San Antonio Water System met opposition again recently when it proposed to build a desalination plant in Atascosa County, and Needam says it is not the first time SAWS has battled with rural residents to bring more water into San Antonio. "Water creates conflicts, there's no doubt about that," William Mullican, deputy executive administrator for the Texas Water Development Board, told Needam. "The history of San Antonio is a very good example of that. Anywhere they start to look, local entities will do whatever they can to try to put in place barriers to that exportation occurring."

Needam says rural residents worry that if the water is used elsewhere, it might not be available if their community's demand grows. On the flip side, one SAWS official argues that sprawl and the spike in commuters mean thousands aren't "paying their water bill to SAWS, but they're using a whole lot of SAWS water" at work. Clearly, it is a difficult balancing act, with the needs of a growing regional hub one side and the concerns of a rural community on the other. Or as another SAWS representative put it, "I don't know that there's any source of water that can be tapped without irritating someone." (Read more)

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