Bill Cofer walks inside the Frio Bat Cave on the Annandale Ranch in Sabinal, Texas, Feb. 14, 2020. The Edwards Aquifer Protection Program has spent more than $260 million in sales tax funds since 2000 to acquire about 160,000 acres of sensitive land over the aquifer. Sitting above the aquifer, the Annandale Ranch has been in Cofer's family for 130 years and in 2007, the San Antonio Water System bought a 7,553-acre conservation easement on the ranch- one of the last easements purchased by SAWS before the EAPP took over.
Josie Norris/Staff Photographer

San Antonio Express-News
Megan Rodriguez, megan.rodriguez@express-news.net
June 01, 2023 at 03:49PM

San Antonio added about 400 acres to land it safeguards under the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program, boosting the total protected acreage to just over 178,000.

The aquifer is San Antonio’s main source of water. The program has protected that critical resource since 2000 by purchasing conservation easements that keep development and pollution off land that feeds into and refills the aquifer.

The purchases essentially mean that the city owns the development rights of a property but allows the owner to keep their land. 

This newest conservation easement that City Council approved Thursday for Morrow Ranch in Uvalde County is important for the program, said Phillip Covington, manager of the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program. It’s in a “very high development pressure area” just south of Concan. 

“There’s lots of interest in creating resorts and recreational facilities for tubing and camping,” he said. “So this is an opportunity to protect a very sensitive area of the recharge zone that ultimately benefits the city of San Antonio’s water quality and quantity through recharge.” 

But the way the city funds such purchases is shifting this year.

The Frio River flows through the Annandale Ranch in Sabinal, Texas, on Feb. 14, 2020. The Edwards Aquifer Protection Program has spent more than $260 million in sales tax funds since 2000 to acquire about 160,000 acres of sensitive land over the aquifer. Sitting above the aquifer, the Annandale Ranch has been in Bill Cofer's family for 130 years and in 2007, the San Antonio Water System bought a 7,553-acre conservation easement on the ranch- one of the last easements purchased by SAWS before the EAPP took over.
Josie Norris/Staff Photographer

Buying the conservation easement to Morrow Ranch cost about $854,000, using most of the final dollars saved from a 1/8-cent sales tax collection that had been repeatedly approved by voters since 2000. 

In 2020, the City Council voted to keep the aquifer program using an existing funding stream from its water utility instead and redirect the sales tax to pay for Ready to Work, a job training program that has been criticized for repeatedly falling short of its goals.

After the Morrow Ranch easement, the city has about $500,000 leftover from tax collections and later this year will begin tapping into the new funding source that was approved in 2020. That new pot of money is a 10-year, $100 million funding plan, but it won’t be enough to acquire rights to all the land the protection program is interested in protecting. 

“There’s a much greater need,” Covington said. “There’s a lot of work left to do, so I’m always looking for opportunities to leverage our fund with other funding sources.”

The program has protected about a quarter of the approximately 500,000 acres of recharge zone that directly benefits the San Antonio area. A recharge zone is an area that allows water into the aquifer.

It has also protected about 2 percent — just over 40,000 acres — of the 2 million acres of the aquifer’s contributing zone, where water flows through to recharge zones. 

megan.rodriguez@express-news.net