Environmental attorney Jim Bradbury said at the Private Property Rights Town Hall, “This is everyone’s drought in this state. There are more people concerned and helping, but there are more people grasping for less and less water.”
Tom Zabel, Zabel Freeman, and Zach Brady, Brady & Hamilton, LLP, were the panelists for the eminent domain discussion at the Private Property Rights Town Hall.
comment that he hoped Texas can do more and better drought planning, and develop systems and approaches that are useful in drought and out of drought. This brought the discussion to the Watermaster program. Shaw explained Texas has 3 Watermaster programs
— on the Lower Rio Grande, the Concho River and in the Nueces River system. The Watermaster program allows local people to make water-use decisions and provides infrastructure such as water meters, instead of a state agency making sure the “priority doctrine” is upheld. Local, informed people determine withdrawals from
a segment of a river or stream. “It gives you a refi ned ability to control the river and more effi cient use of fl ows in the river,” Shaw said. “The Watermaster has modeled the river, monitors
withdrawals and knows the situation of the river and can basically make a determination about allowing or disallowing you to make a withdrawal based on your water right, or if you’ve exceeded your water right or not,” Shaw said. The Watermaster can coordinate withdrawals from
a river or stream, “so you don’t have all the water right holders sticking a straw in the river at the same time and causing issues,” he explained. This seems to be a valuable program in drought. Shaw suggested the program, and similar planning,
tscra.org
needs to be discussed when water is plentiful. “You can’t, at just a moment’s notice, say I wish
we had a Watermaster program and make a call. If the drought breaks in 5 years or later, do you still need a Watermaster? We need to make these deci- sions based on the long-term, and not just based on the drought we’re in,” Shaw said. Bradbury indicated that a program like the Wa-
termaster helps to settle water rights disputes at the very local level. No state agency has the time or resources to fi nd “every landowner and water rights holder. TCEQ doesn’t have the capacity to settle disputes over smaller level rights, so we have to have a mechanism to settle disputes at smaller level. If we don’t, then smaller landowners will get shoved to the side.” Malewitz asked the panelists what this historic
drought has taught us. “Planning is critical,” Shaw answered immediately. “The sooner you start plan- ning for municipal or agriculture use, the more options you have.” Bradbury added, “We’re just getting started in
solving these problems. Agriculture hasn’t had to sit across from cities and decide what we’re going to do. We‘ve got that ahead of us even if the rain starts next week.”
More Convention Coverage June 2014 The Cattleman 63
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