Attending a MUD Meeting in The Woodlands

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As clear as Woodlands Texas MUD?  Attending a MUD (Municipal Utility District) meeting isn’t that bad! Yes, there are some technical parts of the discussions and yes, there are financial parts of the discussions, and yes, it is not the most exciting thing a person could do.  I can say there were very few things I did not understand, but then again I have a background in drilling wells and finance.

Anyone can attend a MUD meeting. It is healthy to experience one, for both the board of directors and you.  Showing interest connects the board to its customers and its customers to the district. I sure don’t advocate going to every meeting, but I do recommend that every resident attends at least one, preferably for the district providing water service to their home.

The MUD #60 meeting I attended this month addressed a resident’s issue with soil erosion and received reports from the various agencies affecting MUD business. Of high interest to us, is the implementation of the San Jacinto River Authority Groundwater Reduction Fee. This will be fully communicated to all Woodlands residents by Jim Stinson and staff in the JPA. Residents will likely incur an additional fee of $0.50/1000 gallons of water used, starting with their October bill. Concurrently, all the MUDs need to develop a higher well contingency fund for replacing a well, should that be needed. The cost of a well has increased substantially since the last raise of contingency fund collections.

An hour spent at a meeting can be an eye opener. Minutes for a Woodlands MUD are not as accessible as those for the county or the township. They are available per the Texas Open Records Act. A copy can be acquired at a meeting or from the district’s secretary. Current agenda is posted at the utility district office near Grogan’s Mill and Lake Robins.

Operations of a MUD

Each MUD has its own budget to manage.  Each has its own assets to manage. Each district has authority over a defined geographic area. Here in The Woodlands, for efficiency purposes, maintenance and financial services are aggregated and shared among the districts. This practice helps them to keep operating costs down. Each MUD is responsible for its entire service process. All MUDs here have an interlocal contract for those shared services to the Joint Powers Agency (JPA), a nonprofit created for this purpose. The district scope of authority is limited to the reclamation, drainage, acquisition, and distribution of water.  It includes the streams and ditches associated with water runoff, as well as the infrastructure required to provide those services.  A MUD has no limit on capital investment. The Board of Directors consist of five elected residents of the district. Every even year (e.g., 2000, 2002, … 2010), there can be an election on the first Saturday of May. If there are no challenging candidates, incumbents are automatically elected and there is no election. Each board elects representatives to serve on the Joint Powers board. Taxation is by the MUD. Those elected represent the tax dollars paid by residents in the MUD district. Taxation is driven by capital expenses, i.e., sewage facilities and wells. Bi-monthly water bills are for sewage, water and cost of operation. Now we head into a new era, where surface water will begin to play an increasing role in our potable water supplies, raising the cost of water to the district. For many people, watering lawns likely will eventually be cost prohibitive.     

Some but not all resident issues with drainage or water supply can be addressed by the board. Sometimes, residents work directly with the JPA to resolve problems. For example, I recently assisted a resident, to resolve a long standing serious problem with sewage flooding in her home. The JPA came up with a solution that should fix that problem.

In 2010, there were no challengers to the board in this district. To challenge an incumbent, one must follow a procedure outlined in the charter. Contact your local MUD representative for timing detail and procedure.

References  

1.    The Woodlands Joint Powers Agency

2.    San Jacinto River Authority

Potable Water in The Woodlands, Texas - declining reserves explained

Over the past few years, we have been able to watch our rapid growing county gradually become water-deprived. That has happened for a number of reasons - high consumption per capita, rapid growth of population, and drought. We are dependent on subsurface reservoirs that are being depleted and not sufficiently recharged. Although the available amount of water is stressed, we are theoretically not short of water, ..... YET. The county is predicted to double in population in just a little over 10 years. That will cause huge problems for us. Therefore, our water utility districts are planning a major project to obtain, transport and replace our MUD wells (which are not even paid for yet) with surface water from Lake Conroe. This will occur only in the five major population areas of the county. Those living outside of those areas will keep their water wells and continue to utilize existing underground supplies.

The primary issue as has been described to me by James Stinson, General Manager of Joint Powers Agency, is the waste. He has publicly stated this several times. Residents are putting millions of gallons of our limited underground water on the street, in gutters. They are also utilizing much more than actually needed to water their lawns. Some lawns are watered even when it is raining. I have neighbors who do that. They are away and have their sprinklers programmed to regularly water the lawn on certain days. Of course they reprogrammed their system for the nighttime to conform to restrictions, but if it rains (which it has not), their water system does the same as when it is dry. Now if that is not waste, I don't know what is. This can be avoided by acquiring a rain monitor device that will shut off the automatic watering system when it rains. The JPA will even help you purchase one by rebating 50% of the cost up to $150. Most residents from what I have been told, measure what they put on the lawn; they simply water it until the ground is soggy. Usually ground is never soggy with proper watering techniques, because one inch delivered evenly will not cause soggy soil unless the soil is composed totally of a soft non-compacted dirt. It usually has plenty of sand and clay making it moderately soft even when moderately wet. I have never seen it "soggy" except when using soft dirt on the surface. So the GM says we waste 40% of our water and I can certainly believe that number! Please measure the water you deliver to your yard and restrict it to about one inch per week.

I measure mine with little tins from cat and dog food. I put a ruler into the water after watering and adjust my watering technique to make it about one inch everywhere in the sunny part of the yard and a little less in the shady spots.

What happens to the underground reservoirs when we deplete them faster than we recharge them? Down in the depths of the ground, there are producing water zones. These are composed of rock, usually limestone or sand, with a lattice structure to permit the retention and movement of water within them. The rock structure essentially is composed of billions of little cavities held together by lattice rock structures. Water moves into these zones from the surface when it rains, gradually seeping deeper and deeper into the soil until it reaches these underground "homes" for water. It forms an underground water network pulled by gravity. The water acts as a cushioning mechanism, keeping the lattice structure from collapsing. There is tremendous overburden pressure caused by the combination of gravity and the weight of the rocks and soil and everything else above it. When you take the water out of the structure at a faster rate than it is put into it, the water level drops, just like a river. The upper part of the structure then collapses or shrinks until it reaches a pressure equilibrium with the tensile strength of the rock lattices. When the structure collapses, it is gone forever. The space that once existed to hold water is gone. This causes subsidence and lowered capacity of the producing reservoir, just ask people in Harris County what happened in prior decades because of their depletion of the reservoirs! Also when structures collapse, there is no more underground water at that depth, requiring some people and some utility production wells to be deepened in the reservoir to reach the water supply. Thus the vicious cycle continues.

Here in The Woodlands, we have an opportunity to decrease the rate of this self destruct mechanism by not blatantly wasting our water. We utilize more than the rest of the county. We are upstream from Harris County and they produce from what we don't. We are in their recharge zone, which without much rain, has been a very limited or non-existent process in some areas lately, so what we do affects them. Water is a very precious and limited resource. We must invest in tools and time to conserve it. Every human being upon this earth has the responsibility, as custodians, to care for it.

Water - political hotspot

Here in The Woodlands, we are considering a systematic lawn-watering schedule, similar to what we have now in this drought, but not activated by drought conditions. We do need good water management. Who is the target of this possible new action and why? I see responsible people every day acquiescing to the current regulations for good reason – the drought, to conserve water by observing the current restrictions to water only two times a week (one inch). But let's get to some form of reality. Personally, I have been considering this from the moment it was instituted this year. Right now, I have to use more water for the lawn than I did before, to technically comply with the restriction. I have made it known to some of the authorities that this situation exists and why. Although there is no official accommodation in these restrictions for temperature, for soil conditions, nor for work schedules or home direction orientation, there is a means to get an exception. An example of need: Most of my lawn can go six days without water if I give it one inch and supplement the watering in a couple of small places. There are a few places facing west that cannot survive a week without water. Now it would seem that I have to water twice a week to comply with the drought restrictions. Technically yes, but actually no. There is good news, the Joint Powers Authority can and will accommodate case-by-case situations. It is recommended by the same authority to water once a week with a one-inch application. That is possible in my yard at a 95-degree maximum ambient temperature. It is impossible at 101. Our current restrictions are not inflexible. All that the Joint Powers Agency (JPA) actually asks us to do is to not waste water and help them keep the pressure up for fire safety. The current restrictions are good to help us to do that, but they need to be regarded as somewhat flexible. Try to follow them if practical. Neighbor-to-neighbor, no one wants to be seen breaking the rules. If there is an issue and you can minimize waste in some other way, tell the authority and get an exception. Then tell your neighbors why it is better for you, if watering in a different manner than prescribed embarrasses you. It might even help neighborly relations by being outside talking to your neighbor on watering days.

To accommodate my situation, I have to call the JPA and seek an exception. That I have not yet done, but when it is in place, I may be watering some days that are not mandated for my address. I seek to minimize my water usage on my lawn. That is my objective and that is the authority’s objective. The authority understands that goal and certainly supports it.

So look at the possibility of a “permanent” schedule. A schedule is not a permanent restriction; it is a model of usage. It should be thought of as a predictive model where everyone falls into a pattern of use, under a guideline of watering a maximum of twice a week, in all seasons. Then the water district should not face huge aberrations in consumption or water availability. The JPA should be able to manage the water and sewage systems much more efficiently and effectively. This does make sense!

The proposal is to establish a pattern of usage that distributes consumption as it does right now in this drought. That will probably require a model, similar to what we have now, but not necessarily confine us to that model. All that is needed is that we are consistent and water our lawns judiciously and to do it evenly across the community. Lifestyles may be different among households and homes a bit different, so a household is essentially asked to establish a predictive routine and stay with it. Don’t deviate from the model unless there is good reason to however. Exceptions cost administrative overhead.

There is more to this. 40% of our water in the summer is wasted, according to studies. It flows into gutters and into the sewage system. 80% of our consumption right now is estimated to be in irrigating our yards. A huge amount of our precious resource is wasted every day. Unfortunately, there are just a few residents who waste it in large amounts. There is waste in every household, but the bottom line volume consumption rests with a fairly small percentage of homeowners. I know I have some waste. I would say that perhaps 1% of the water applied goes down the street. If we were truly required to save every gallon, I would need to have my automatic system redesigned or just abandon using the system. I trigger it manually when my day comes around, so I can have two back-2-back cycles and get maximum penetration from the application. Managing the edges to zero runoff would be a serious challenge but may be a next step down the road, should water become so scarce that we have to regulate it by the gallon instead of by the tens of gallons.

Managing a drought is different than managing annual consumption, but what we learn in a drought can be applied to the management of the area resources in all seasons.

Isn't part of the problem the St Augustine grass that we use throughout the state? Where is A&M's solution to this problem? I do not support having a program at the spigot if we don’t have a long-range plan to deal with the root of the problem. There are two roots to the problem - people and landscape material or devices.

People are wasteful. Those who significantly overuse water should be interviewed and ways found to lessen their use of water. How do we know they are out of line in usage? There is a way to measure it. Abnormalities could be identified through an index method, which I will describe later. Maybe there is also a technology gap. I don’t assume that rain controllers, mulch and St Augustine are the solutions, and perhaps the technology used is not what is available now for the problems we have. For example, is there a better way to water the edges of the lawn to deliver water but not waste any water? Or can we use native or native-modified grasses, instead of St Augustine? For some families’ style of life, such an index may not be seem practical, but everyone can treat the limited water resource in a judicious manner. Where there is serious concern, there is always a practical solution. It is well known that misuse of water by some residents is the probable cause of our current issue, but must everyone suffer on their behalf? If it is true that 40% of our water is wasted, then why not find that 40% and find workable remedies to that problem? To me, this is a different issue than distributing the use of the water over days of the week.

St Augustine grass has always demanded considerable water to survive, although it will take a beating and usually grow back when the water is more available. Nonetheless it is susceptible to disease and drought. Is it time we change? This is a problem for Texas A&M. It is an issue all along the Gulf Coast. Grass helps to control flooding and is very useful, not just an aesthetic component of landscape. As water becomes more and more precious by short supply, shouldn't we begin to abandon our love for St Augustine and replace our grass with something requiring less water? . I am told “no’ by the GM of JPA. ¹Maybe Texas A&M could research a better St Augustine that survives drought better. Drought is a Texas normality. St Augustine is not a water-inefficient grass. As I stated in another article, there are issues with the other grasses but at the same time, there are alternatives and opportunities.

Our wells are not producing what they once did. We have to drill deeper into the reservoirs sometimes to make them produce at the required rates. I have never heard of any water wells in this general area that have maintained production without intervention. Population growth here has been tremendous, but we have not had an apparent water pressure issue, mostly because of drought interventions in the summer. I have witnessed serious urban water pressure issues elsewhere and that was not pretty! It was downright annoying, frustrating and dangerous. If we have to regulate the water, then let's regulate the volume of water used. That is the real issue here, not whether we are watering on given days of the week, but nonetheless, it is good to have a systematic scheduled watering schedule just to eliminate or reduce the threat of lowered water pressure.

So is it such a bad thing to ask residents to have the same water schedule we currently have throughout the year? That seems a bit of an over-kill to me. Austin² has a set schedule every year from May 1st through September 30th. Maybe we should have it from June 1st to October 30th. I am concerned about watering at night during October however. That will cause fungus. Maybe we can end at the end of September also. Face it any time outside of that window has no watering issues, at least from my meandering around The Woodlands.

Why not regulate growth? This would certainly be a politically explosive strategy. New housing could take on more of the issue, instead of existing residents. If we don’t have enough water, why do we grow? But the point is, we have enough. It is just being wasted.

Personally, I like using educational means to get people to judiciously consume water and when that doesn’t work, slap those who are causing the problem on the wrist. So here is a suggestion – since we know the volume of water used in every household and business, and we know the appraised square feet of each home and the lot size, would it be better to start using a meaningful measure to identify those misusing our resources? If I use 1000 gallons and a huge multi-million home uses 100,000 gallons, which one is over using water? Both have to maintain their homes and their landscape. You use a normalization technique. Say my home site is 3000 sq feet and the big home is on 20000 sq feet. Now who is using more than their share of water? Then I use 3000/8000 or .35 gallons per sq foot per month while the other homeowner is using 5 gallons per square foot. So is the large home wasting water? Not necessarily. However, what is reasonable and not reasonable can be determined from looking at the population of homes in the community and this usage index. I would say that anyone having more than twice the median index of the total population might be overusing water (just a shot in the dark). This may not be very close to an answer, but something like this is what we need to be doing.

Performance indices are one of my favorite subjects. The JPA has not publicized any yet and probably do not have one in the works. It would be worthwhile to contract an effort to assess a better way to manage this precious resource in our community. I know this can be done and it should not cost us an arm and a leg. Then metaphorically we could slap those who abuse the resource on the wrist and even break an arm if it comes to that.

This article was rewritten and published on July 22nd.

Resources
¹ Joint Powers Agency - Mr. James Stintson, P.E., General Manager
² Austin water regulations