PLUM CREEKCONSERVATION
DISTRICT

Plum Creek Conservation District
N E W S L E T T E R
D E C E M B E R5 ,2 0 2 2

DAM REHABILITATION PROGRESS: FUTURE PROJECTS ON THE HORIZONINSIDE THISISSUE:

Dam Rehabilitation
Progress: Future
Projects on The
Horizon Page 1
Dam Rehabilitation
Progress: Future
Projects on The
Horizon Page 2Water
Conservation Tip
Page 2
New Staff
Page 3
Desalination ofGroundwater
Page 42022 Groundwater
Use
Page 52022 Groundwater
UsePage 52022 Water Levels
Page 5The Site 2 State Upgrade Project occurring at “Lake Kyle Park” is located in Hays County just
East of Interstate 35 in the City of Kyle off of Lehman Road. This dam is listed as “highhazard” by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). This designation isbased on the potential for loss of life and/or property, should the dam fail. The Natural
Resource Conservation Service’s (NRCS) original design for this site planned for a 50-year lifespan. Fortunately, the site has continued to function beyond this time frame. The state
upgrade project was started in November 2021 at a cost of $8.2 million dollars and has aprojected completion
date of February 2023.
The design of this dam
incorporates a roller
compacted concrete
spillway (RCC) in thecenter of the dam. A
new riser will be
installed with a larger
diameter principal
spillway pipe. The
designs also include an
added rock rip rap face
to prevent future wave
action erosion fromtaking place during
severe storm events.
The crew is working on finishing the concrete on the inlet
The new design allows
structure at Site 2.
for the dam’s life to be greatly extended andwithstand considerably more severe weather. Funding for this project was received fromThe Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board (TSSWCB) along with a District match of1.75%.
The Site 10 Rehabilitation Project is a lake located in Hays County near the City of Buda,
which is directly south of Austin. This dam is also listed as “high-hazard” by the TCEQ andsuffered wave action erosion on the face from Hurricane Harvey. The structural integrity was
not compromised, but the dam has reached its 50-year lifespan. The rehabilitation project
was started in August 2021 at a cost of $4.9 million dollars and has a projected completiondate of July 2023. The design of this site will include an RCC spillway, larger principal spillway
pipe, new riser and will decommission the existing auxiliary spillway. The funding for thisproject is provided by both state (TSSWCB) and federal (NRCS) partners. The District is also
responsible for its match of 1.75%.

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2DAM REHABILITATION PROGRESS: FUTURE PROJECTS ON THE
HORIZON (CONTINUED)
The Site 21 Rehabilitation project is located in Caldwell County off Highway 183 and FM1184. This lake, much like the other two projects, is listed as “high-hazard” by the TCEQ
and had significant damage from Hurricane Harvey as well. The structural integrity was notcompromised but the dam has reached its 50-year lifespan. The rehabilitation project wasstarted in April 2022 at a cost of $11.9 million dollars and has a projected completion dateof December 2024. The design of this site will include an RCC spillway, larger principal spillway pipe, new riser and will decommission the existing auxiliary spillway. The funding forthis project is provided by both state (TSSWCB) and federal partners (NRCS). The Districtwill still be responsible forits match of 1.75%.

WATER CONSERVATION TIP
Have you ever consideredrainwater harvesting as anoption for your home’ssource of water? Would
rainwater harvesting be agood source of water for
livestock?
Construction of the coffer dam has been completed on Site

21. Now they can make the V-cut where the RCC will be
Let’s begin with a brief deinstalled.
scription of what rainwater harvesting is:
Rainwater harvesting is the capture, diversion, and storage of rainwater for use in homes,
landscaping, and other purposes.
Next, how is rainwater harvested?
Water is collected by a system of gutters added onto existing roofs of homes, barns or other covered areas and then diverted to storage tanks.
How much water can be collected from rainwater harvesting?
Each square foot of a collection surface footprint generates
about 0.6 gallons of water from every 1’’ rain event. So during a 1 inch rain, a 1500-square foot house could accumulate
900 gallons of water! With rainwater harvesting, there aremany design ideas that need to be considered for your specific application. For example, some items such as gutter
size, gutter placement, water tank size, water tank location
and, of course, what kind of water treatment system will beneeded. More information can be found on this subject on
the Texas Water Development Board website.
Rainwater Storage Tanks.

PCCD WELCOMES NEW STAFF MEMBER

Robert Barron is new to the district, a native Texan, has lived
in Bastrop County since 1999. Robert graduated from Texas
A&M University Corpus Christi with a Bachelor of Science
degree in University Studies with an emphasis in Geographic
Information Science. With over 15 years of experience inGIS and natural resources, we welcome Robert to the team.

Alan and Robert share duties from field work, IT technologies, and GIS to name a few. Combining their education, life skills and experience makes this team an asset for managing thedistrict’s water resources, dams, and the agriculture landscapes. They enjoy working withlandowners and the residents who share the areas around Plum Creek.

PCCD WELCOMES NEWSECRETARYNORA LOPEZ-CASTILLO
Nora Lopez-Castillo has lived inLockhart for the past 26 years with herhusband. She has a Bachelor of Sciencedegree in Health Information
Management from Texas State
University. Nora’s hobbies include
working on her 118-year-old Victorian
home, shopping for antiques, and readingsuspense/mystery novels.

SCAN THIS QR CODE TO ACCESSTHE PCCD WEBISTE!!

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DESALINATION OF GROUNDAWATERBYWILLIAM FEATHERGAIL WILSON PG 21

How much groundwater do we have left under the surface of the ground in the PCCD and Texas?
A huge amount but most of it is not fresh water that can be consumed by humans nor livestock. Humans can only
exist on water that contains less than about 1500 parts of dissolved solids per million parts of water. In other words,fresh water.
Ground water exists down to about 5 miles below the surface of the Earth before it is recirculated to the oceanbasins. Fresh water beneath the PCCD exists to about 900 feet until it becomes too saline to consume.
All groundwater is contained in fractures and very small spaces between sand grains and limestones and ischemically bound to some clays. In some rare places it also exists in cavernous spaces near the surface. The great
bulk of groundwater exists as saline or salt water below the surface. This water is still producible and can beconverted to fresh water through a process known as desalination.
Desalination requires pumping the saline water through a system of special filters encased in pipes which are about
5 to 6 inches in diameter and about 5 to 10 feet long and the process is known as reverse osmosis. A new added anddeveloping technology is Zero Liquid Discharge Reverse Osmosis or ZLD desalination.
The oil industry in Texas is huge as we all know. When oil and gas is produced from depths below the freshwaterzones an enormous amount of saline water is produced with it and must be disposed of in saltwater injection wells
or SWD wells. There are approximately 300,000 active SWD wells in Texas. About 93 of these wells have been drilledin Caldwell County alone. Each injection well pumps approximately 10,000 to 20,000 barrels of saline water into
each one of these SWD wells on a daily basis.
There is movement afoot to treat this enormous amount of daily injection water with ZLD Desalination equipment
to create fresh water for municipal and irrigation use and sell the leftover salt and/or derive certain elements andminerals from the salt.
One of the very useful elements is Lithium which is used to manufacture rechargeable batteries for automobiles andtrucks. Lithium by itself is worth about $1800 per ounce and it is rapidly rising. This is also the average price of gold.
The ZLD Desalination process ends up with a pile of salt and fresh water.
The oil fields in the southern half of Caldwell County were discovered in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They arestill producing small amounts of oil each day and large amounts of salt water from the Edwards Group of limestoneand dolomites. The salt water is transported to the SWD wells and injected back into the lower Edwards Group. This
enormous volume of water could serve almost all of the future needs of fresh water for Caldwell and surrounding
Counties as well as the rapidly growing IH-35 corridor from San Antonio to Austin.
In addition, the northern half of Caldwell County is underlain by the saline portion of the Edwards Group that is
capable of producing large volumes of saline water at relatively shallow depths that could be desalinated with theZLD process. The term “shallow” refers to depths of approximately 1500 to 3000 feet.
The Edwards Water Authority controls the saline Edward’s water west of Hwy 183 and the rest of the county being
controlled by PCCD, Gonzales County Underground Water Conservation District and Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer
Conservation District.
The potential for Edwards saline desalination extends across Atascosa to Lee Counties. A large carbonate platform
was laid down parallel to the IH-35 corridor during the Lower Cretaceous Era about 100 million years ago and later
extensively faulted.
The salinity of this enormous volume of water ranges from about 20,000 parts per million to about 30,000 parts permillion. Sea water averages about 35,000 parts per million.
PCCD is now in the process of reviewing the Edwards saline zone as a new desalination aquifer for the area.

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2022 PCCD GROUNDWATER USE
PCCD permittees reported using 1511.44 acre-feet of groundwater in 2021. This is 8.6% of thetotal permitted 17,504 acre-feet. (Several non-public supply permittees failed to report usage.)
The first two graphs below compare water usage-by category in the last two years. The lowergraph shows the permitted water amounts-by category for 2022. For more information, request
a copy of PCCD’s 2021 Water Use Report.

WATER LEVELS
The table below shows water levels for 7 wells measured between January 1, 2021, and November 21,
2022, along with the corresponding lowest recorded water levels. If you are interested in finding out thewater level in your well and how it compares to other wells in the area, contact us to schedule a time tomeasure your well. Complete water level data can be found on our website at www.pccd.org
Well

2021 Levels

2022 Levels

Lowest Recorded Level

Kosarek-47.5-50.85- 50.8

Steinhardt-20.85-21.34- 22.8

Lipscomb-88.55-96.11- 93.9Lockhart #8-75.95-84- 108.0

McCormick #2-65.7-67.13- 71.0

McCormick #1-69.9-70.53- 71.8Collier-65.65-70.6- 70.6

5

James A. Holt Jr., President, Kyle
Peter Reinecke, Vice-President, Luling
Lucy Knight, , Secretary-Treasurer, Lockhart
Vacant, LulingFred Rothert, Kyle

PO Box 328

Lockhart, Texas 78644

Phone: 512-398-2383

Fax: 512-398-7776

E-mail: info@pccd.org

Lockhart, Texas 78644

PO Box 328

1101 W. San Antonio St.

Plum Creek Conservation District

HereStampPlace

Wm Feathergail Wilson, PG, Consulting Geologist

Robert Wilson, Consulting Attorney

Nora Lopez-Castillo, Secretary

Robert Barron, Staff Member

Alan Burklund, Staff Member

Daniel Meyer, Executive Manager

Staff

The Plum Creek Conservation District’s Newsletter is available via email. If you or someone you know would like toreceive our Newsletter via email rather than US Mail then contact our office at (512) 398-2383.

Web Site: www.pccd.org
Tom Owen, Lockhart

Directors

1101 W. San Antonio St.

Plum Creek Conservation District