R
ANCH OWNER JULE RICHMOND, CHAIRMAN OF THE PECAN Bayou Soil and Water Conservation District, and his family shared their central Texas ranch
with visitors in June to show what years of participa- tion in the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board (TSSWCB) Water Supply Enhancement Program have accomplished. The Lake Brownwood Water Sup- ply Enhancement Project started in 2008. To date, it involves 46 landowners who have received $1,258,543 in a 70:30 cost share program (30 percent provided by the landowner) to enhance the water supply to Lake Brownwood by managing brush encroachment on 6,260 acres. TSSWCB’s water supply enhancement program
evolved out of a brush control program that was in- troduced in the 1985 session of the Texas Legislature. In the 1999 session funding was initially allocated for a pilot project near San Angelo. Johnny Oswald supervises the TSSWCB water sup-
ply enhancement program. A project starts with a fea- sibility study, he says. “Second, a local soil and water conservation district has to be one of the sponsoring entities. Third, we narrow the project to 1 sub-basin in a watershed. Then we conduct a spatial analysis on that sub-basin before we begin any brush control work. So, one of the key pieces is the Soil and Water Conserva- tion (SWC) district board helping to fi nd landowners in those sub-basins to participate. The agency relies on Dr. Ken Rainwater (at Texas Tech University) to provide the spatial analysis and on the SWC district leaders to provide us with names of landowners to talk with about participating in the program.” Aaron Wendt, TSSWCB natural resources policy ana-
lyst, says “The Lake Brownwood project brush control feasibility study was conducted in 2002 by scientists at the Texas A&M University Blackland Research and Extension Center, the USDA Natural Resources Con- servation Services Water Resources Assessment team and the LCRA.” The Pecan Bayou watershed starts near Abilene, in-
Jule Richmond says, “When we were in the height of the most recent drought, one of the best decisions the legisla- tors made was to not take dollars away from the state water supply enhancement program and to focus those dollars to maximize water yield. The work that we’ve done keeps these bodies of water in better condition over a long period of time.”
92 The Cattleman November 2016
cludes Cross Plains, Coleman, Brownwood and extends almost to Goldthwaite. It covers more than 97,000 acres. In the best of all worlds — which would include unani- mous landowner participation and complete funding to cost-share with the landowners — the brush control program that was modeled on 460,000 acres of brush in the Pecan Bayou area would generate a potential of nearly 180,000 acre-feet of water a year. “That’s quite a bit of water if we were able to imple- ment brush control as the computer model described
thecattlemanmagazine.com
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