141. Why San Antonio Isn’t Running Out of Water — A Conversation with SAWS CEO Robert Puente

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San Antonians might soon hear talk of a possible rate increase from sars. The details are far from finalized, but the discussion raises important questions. Why now? What would it mean for ratepayers? And most importantly, what would that money go toward? I also think there's a bigger story here. San Antonio is a national leader in water conservation. While other fast growing Texas cities are straining their water supplies, some even running short. We've managed to hold water use steady for decades even as our population has surged. That's a remarkable achievement and one that I think should be a point of civic pride.

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San Antonians are smart, effective stewards of their water. In today's conversation, I I sit down with Robert Puente, the CEO of the San Antonio Water System, to talk about what makes SAWS different, how our water system actually works, what residents need to know about the security of our water supply.

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We discuss the potential rate increase. And we as well look ahead. How can San Antonio remain a leader in conservation and in water security in the face of climate change, continued growth, new demands on our system, and what more can we do, both as a utility and as residents, to keep water one of our city's greatest strengths? I'm Corey Ames and this is Big City, Small town. Well, Robert, thank you so much for joining me on Big City Small Town today. You took the post as CEO of SAWS in 2008, 17 year tenure, so congrats first and foremost on that. Thank you.

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I'd love if you could get us started by perhaps contextualizing.

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I'm sure a lot has changed, but you've retained the same position since 2008.

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What's it like to lead SAWS, our city's water utility, in this moment now versus when perhaps you stepped on board?

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Well, when I first stepped on board, the big issue was water supply. It was still, can we meet the needs of our growing city, our growing economy, by having a stable, secure water supply not just for the immediate future, but for the long term future? If you talk about water, immediate future is not next week, next year, it's five, six, 10 years. And then obviously, a water supply or a project needs to be able to really fill gaps that are decades. So that was the initial challenge.

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So back in 2008, those were the initial challenges. Today we are sitting very, very well. I love reading stories about, you know, Texas is running out of water. I wish they would include comma, but not San Antonio, because we have really done a whole lot here in San Antonio. We've secured our water Future into the 2000-70s it's not just a plan. It's actually what they call wet water. In other words, water that we can access as we grow. And so we're very proud of what we've done at SAWS over this last 17 years.

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And I think that that shouldn't be skipped over the great success of saws. I think far too many San Antonio residents aren't aware of that. I mean, infrastructure, like water, is something that you can appreciate not noticing. It's nice to not notice water insecurity or instability in our system. And it seems like that's when infrastructure is working best, is when you don't have anything to complain about, right? What I love to say is, take this for granted. I don't want our public to think about when they get up in the morning and they turn that faucet, that water is going to come out or not. I don't want them to think that after they take a shower or use the washing machine, the dishwasher, that water is going to leave their house, leave their business, and they don't have to worry about it. Take us for granted to that extent, but at the same time, understand what we do. Please appreciate what we do and let us know how we're doing.

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Well, let's talk a little bit more, if you could, about the uniqueness of San Antonio situation, why we might deserve the comma in that expression of the rest of Texas is running out of water. Why have we been successful? What's so unique about San Antonio's water story? And in contrast to neighbors as close as Kyle or Austin area suburbs in. Austin, a lot of it is a lot of planning, a lot of innovation, a lot of hard work by sauce. But admittedly, a lot of it also was initiated by our failures at sauce during the 1980s. 1990s, project after project to bring water into San Antonio failed. It just did not happen. Some of them were projects that should have failed and did fail.

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Applewhite1 Applewhite2 those were two attempts to get some surface water into San Antonio. Those were not successful. There was another project with GBRA and San Antonio River Authority that was on the books for us to do. That project failed, didn't come to fruition. Another project with lcra, Lower Colorado River Authority, where SAW spent millions and millions of dollars. That project fell through. And so these are all failures that told us we have to do something differently. We have to do things that really allow you to control your own destiny, do the things that you can do without having to rely on regional Partners that are not going to be there when you really need them.

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Those failures led us to think about doing things differently. One of them was, for example, we wanted to get water from Gonzalez County, Carrizo Aquifer. The cities of Shirts and Seguin already had a project getting water from there. It's about 80 miles away. So they had built their pipeline already. They had oversized it for potential growth. And we were at the same time looking for our own pipeline to bring water in from there. So when I got there, I knew the players, I knew the regional actors in that area and they had excess capacity. So what we're doing is reach an agreement with them where we're renting space in their pipeline. It's our water in Gonzales county that we lease, use their pipeline to bring it over to San Antonio. It's a great partnership with them and us and that allowed us to access that water. So that's one example. Another one was, and at the time, that was the biggest diversification from the Edwards Aquifer. A few years later, we built our desalination plant right here in Bexar County. Right under our feet in Bexar county, there's an ocean of brackish water that's too salty to drink, too salty for livestock, for crops, too expensive for smaller communities to pull out, treat and distribute to their customers. But we have a very large rate base. So we built a state of the art treatment plant in southern Bexar county where we bring up that brackish water, treat it to drinking water standards, put it in our distribution system and supplement what we get from the Edwards Aquifer. That then became the largest diversification of the Edwards Aquifer. That wasn't enough. We were still growing.

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And so the Vista Ridge Project and the Vista Ridge Project came online in 2020. But we originally started working on it in like 2010, 2012, because those projects, they take multiple years. So finally that project came in 50,000 acre feet, which is about one fourth of what the city of San Antonio uses. And so that really has given us some good financial security. Now that is the largest diversification from the Edwards Aquifer. So today as we sit, our portfolio of water is very diverse. We have water coming from multiple different sources, surface water, groundwater, four different aquifers, so that we are insulated from a lot of different things that may happen. So what we've done, what is different here in San Antonio, if you look at the state water plan, they talk about reusing water, they talk about conserving water, they talk about storage of water, underground storage of water, and all of those we've already done. We have the nation's largest direct recycled water system. That's water coming out of your sinks, your commodes, your showers.

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We collect it underground, send it to our wastewater treatment plants, treat it, and a big portion of it goes back to be reused. The lights on in your home in this studio are powered by CPS energy. They are our biggest customer for recycled water. Toyota, Microsoft, Trinity University, usaa, they're all big recycled water customers.

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They talk about water conservation. We have the nation's best water conservation programs. If you look at our growth over the last 20, 30 years, we're essentially using the same amount of water then as we are now. And that's initially these water conservation programs, such as low flow toilets, low flow faucets, those were so successful that we discontinued those projects because you don't have any more guzzling toilets in San Antonio. You have the low flow.

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The makers have seen that there's a demand for them, the toilet makers demand for them. And so we discontinued that program. So water conservation, we're in there also. Underground storage of water, it is very hard to conceptualize, but we essentially take Edwards water that we don't use. There's a certain amount that we can use per year. If we're up to that limit and we know we're not going to use the entire permit allowed through the end of the year, we store it, we send it to another aquifer in southern Bexar county and store it there. Nation's largest groundwater based storage of groundwater. And so those things that the state of Texas is saying we need it for a statewide water plan, we've already been doing it for multiple years here in San Antonio. So that's one of the things that makes saws unique. A couple of things that few of the things that make saws unique, and. I'm curious too, what's so unique about saws in particular or the area in which had us to take action on these things over the course of these decades. I think it's one thing to have the strategies to understand what's possible, but another to garner the investment, public support, et cetera, et cetera, to take action on that. These are things that don't happen in a vacuum and they don't happen from day to day. It's multiple years, multiple actions. So initially we were told by a federal judge, lawsuits by the Sierra Club against the US Fish and Wildlife, that endangered species needed to be protected in the springs of water Coming out of the aquifer, spilling out of the aquifer. SAWS wasn't around then, wasn't created yet. But the city of San Antonio was not doing anything really to protect the aquifer, protect the species.

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And finally the federal judge put out a mandate that he was going to take over the aquifer, put in a monitor that would dictate how much water, not only us, but the farmers in Uvalde, the farmers in Medina county, the springs users, which meant Dow Chemical, dupont, all the way down to Victoria. He was going to mandate how much each individual, each entity, each company could get, each city could get out of the aquifer. So we had to act in, in the legislature. So in 1993, legislation was passed and by the way, I was one of the house authors of that to limit the amount of water that could be withdrawn from the aquifer, set a certain limit and that was 400,000 acre feet. So that that limit was going to be in place in 15 years by 2008.

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So SAWS by then was created in 1993, had 15 years to get its act together. But so did the farmers, so did Hondo, Castroville, all the quarries, everybody else that used water out of there. So saws had a hammer over its head.

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First thing you do is water conservation programs, save what what you have. The next thing that SAWS started to do was building the direct recycled water system, reusing what you have.

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And the other one was starting the underground storage of water.

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When you don't need it, save it. And so those projects started off.

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And by 2007, the year before that legislation was going to reduce the pumping to 400 acre feet, 400,000 acre feet. We passed legislation, I was also involved in that, to increase that permit amount to over 500,000 acre feet for the entire region. So all of that was in place already. That hammer helped out. And so those kinds of things that forced us to do the right thing back at that time gave us the impetus, the head start to be where we are today. And we just had to continue on it. And so the time that I've been there, we've continued on it, pushing that envelope to be as innovative as we can in securing water and taking care of the water that we currently have.

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And so was it just coincidence that you became CEO in 2008 or was that the plan in 93 all along? No, no, in 2008 I turned 50. You know, you start think, looking around, seeing what, what's next. Had already served in the legislature about 17 years. And I was going to lawyer lobby. I actually had an office in Austin, already had, you know, when, back when people had stationary, I had already had stationary, had a landline, a phone number up in Austin. But Mayor Hartberger at the time, who I knew as a practicing lawyer, and he was now mayor, called me and said, hey, we're about to fire our CEO. Can you serve about four or five months until we find a permanent one? And I said, sure. It was between legislative sessions. I got in, I really liked it, I applied for it, got the job, and that's how I started in that new endeavor. 17 years.

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Well, and that is not an insignificant amount of time.

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And so congrats on that. And I'm curious then, just if you could spell it out. So the Edwards aquifer, that cap on it is unique situation in the entirety of Texas, correct?

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Yes. This is groundwater based. It's the rule of capture.

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The entire state of Texas has laws that, that say if you own the property, you own the water underneath. Drill a hole on your property and however size of a well you have, you can take all the water out that you want. The only restriction is it not be wasted.

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And so that was the city of San Antonio's philosophy at the time. As the city grew, the city just would drill another well. City water board would drill another well, provide water for that area, it grew north, drill another well. And that was the way it was in Texas. So this legislation was the first time that there was actually a restriction on the rule of capture and a limitation on the amount of water that you can withdraw from that aquifer. And at the time, the Edwards aquifer was our sole water source. Correct. And today it's now, today it's now.

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About 50% of our water source. Trinity Aquifer, Wilcox Carriso, surface water from gbra, all these water from Lake Dunlap, all these other sources, desal. All these other sources make up the other 50%.

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And so what's very unique about Saws also is that depending on a variety of things, whether it's energy demand, management, whether it's the weather, whether it's customer demand, we will use a water source from our desal facility or pump more water from the Edwards or more water from the Trinity, we have employees that there are told, for example, there's a heat wave going on, minimize the energy intensive water that you're using, which is mostly the desal, start using the water that, for example, the well here in downtown San Antonio, right here by the Hilton, is artesian. Pressure, no electricity is needed to bring that water out of the ground. And so we maximize that use during the times that we're asked to lower the power demand. So it's a unique way of managing the water supply, not just the varieties you have, but how you actually use them. I think that that transitions us nicely to talk about what's next. And we'll start first with the anticipated rate increase.

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And I want to kick it to you to explain how much that might potentially be, if that's been at all decided or not just yet, when that might be in effect and of course maybe most important, like what that investment will be for. We don't know the exact number yet. We're still developing the budget for 2026. What we do know is that because we have a big change on our board, we have a seven, seven member board, four new board members, including the mayor and we, and because we have a very new council, we felt very uncomfortable immediately going to them asking for a rate increase. So what we're going to do is ask our board to adopt an interim budget with no rate increase for 2026.

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That will be in place during the political time that we get in front of council, get in front of our board and show them the details of what we need and how much we need. And so a week from our next board meeting is this month. In October, our board will be given that briefing. And then in November they're going to hopefully adopt that interim budget.

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And then November, December, January, we will be meeting with city council, public meetings and individual briefings as to what our needs are. So come late January, early February is when we believe council will hear our issues of a rate increase.

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Hopefully we get it. And then if we get it, we go back to our board, I amend the budget to have a fully paid for budget to really meet the needs that we have to pay for the needs that we have. So I guess still a bit of time on that, but thinking about what the next opportunities are, what the most important needs are for our water infrastructure, what is saws looking at now, especially in the context of as you said, you know, we're securing our water with I imagine anticipated growth through the 2000. And 70s, you know, there's only so much that our rate payers can bear at any one time and they have been knowledgeable enough, really resourceful enough, they really need to be commended for allowing us to have rate increases almost 10 years in a row. From like 2010 to 2020, every year we went in front of council asking for A rate increase. And we were giving it to it and our public had accepted it and. But we couldn't ask for more than we, they could bear. And so some other things we couldn't address that we now have to address.

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Just like as long as you can, you repair your house, you do the little things that need to get done, eventually you have to replace, replace the roof. The big need for us now is our wastewater treatment plants as opposed to water supply. Now it's the other side of what we do, the sewer side, the wastewater treatment plants. The newest plant, we have three of them. The newest plant was built in 1988, so it's very old. And we have to do some major, major upgrades to that plant, multimillion dollar upgrades. That plant and the two other plants are older, the two other plants are older. So those also need upgrades. So the needs for the next few years are going to be directed toward our wastewater system. And then 1B but very, also important is our non revenue water or lost water, water that's coming out of our pipes, broken pipes, unaccounted for water. The number is very big.

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But every, unfortunately, every utility suffers from that.

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The best way I can explain it is you'll never ever fill ever, every pothole in the city. As soon as you fill 30, 20 of them, more come into existence, you know, on the other side of town. So this is something. If you, if you take our monthly agenda and you just throw a dart on it anytime between now and the last 20 years and you pick out that month on that agenda, you will see that there's expenditures to be made for water line replacement. So every month we spend more and more money replacing our water lines. We have 7,000 miles of assets under the ground, pipes under the ground. At any time, any one of them can break and start leaking. And unfortunately they tend to break more often during a drought because the earth shifts, the soils contract, and there's a lot of pressure in the pipes because we're moving a whole lot more water. So at the worst time is when they break. And we did see back in 2023, our inability to respond to these leaks in inadequate time. Sometimes it would take us up to three months. We'd get a call, we'd go out there, assess, triage the break. If there was something where it's just flowing down the street that, you know, maybe would evaporate to two blocks down, but it was still water, it would have to go on the list to be addressed later because we had other leaks that were really flowing.

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So what we did the last few years was hire more employees, work crews, hire more crews that go out looking for leaks, leak detection, where they actually have stethoscopes, listening, walking down the sidewalk, listening for leaks. And so we're being more proactive, looking for those leaks. So since 2023, we've seen the rate of lost water go down, and we're confident that's going to be continuing metric that we follow that will show that we're addressing the problem. It'll never flatten out because it's just not possible because you have 7,000 miles. At any one time a certain segment of pipe becomes aged. The average age of a pipe we put. The average use of a pipe we put in now is 50 plus years. When they were put in 30 years ago, it was maybe 20 years. So those are coming time to replace them.

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So we have very good data as to what the size of our pipes are, what the material is, how much water goes through them. And so we're changing them out as they become noticeably deteriorated. We have sophisticated systems where we see the lining of the pipe where it's thinning out or they could break. We know where the hot spots are because it's where we have some clay soils or a certain contractor 20 years ago put a certain pipe in. And we notice that contractor's pipes tend to break more often than a different contractor. So it's just a matter of always trying to stay ahead of that game. So those two things are what's driving our rate increase? Well, and then in the spirit of accountability and communication with the community, what would you advise that San Antonio residents watch out for? Whether it's this anticipated rate increase now or something five years from now? What do they look at for saws, for example, to know that those investments are worth their money? What would you advise that they look. After themselves, for one thing is the reliability. Every single second of the day we fail or we succeed, I would say 99.99% of the time, we succeed because you get the water, and when you're done with it, it leaves your home. Reliability is very important.

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What I also want the public to know that we are very good stewards of their money. We haven't had a rate increase since 2020. Not only that, in 2023, we had a rate decrease. We actually reduced our residential rates 8% because of the tremendous amount of growth that was happening in San Antonio. We were getting more customers, therefore we were getting more revenue.

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And we are a public entity. If we make a profit, we're charging too much. So we went in front of city council, asked them to lower the rates in 2023. And. And we did. So a residential ratepayer right now is paying less for their water than they were 10 years ago. And so what has happened in those last five years? We had Covid. So all of the COVID expenses that you can imagine and the subsequent adjustments to those things we paid for out of existing revenue. We tightened our belts. Covid caused tremendous amount of supply chain issues. We buy a lot of stuff. We, whether it's equipment, chemicals, inflation.

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Tremendous amount of inflationary pressure was put on us, especially salaries. We had to keep our employees and we had to not let them leave that great retirement. We needed them to stay on. So we gave raises. That was during that time period. No rate increases during COVID Yuri happened. And so all of the expenses of URI we also met without a rate increase.

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And the Texas legislature is not visionary. Even when I was there, it was not visionary. And they pick on certain segments. And it's easier to tell a public utility what to do than the private power companies on what to do. So one of the bills that was passed was public utilities.

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Water utilities have to have generators on your big water plants. Remember uri, we lost the ability to deliver water because we had no power. Water is very heavy.

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You just cannot move it. And so we were stuck with no power to move the. We have generators our plants, but we needed certain generators at certain plants. So a $200 million initiative to put generators at some of our major production facilities was started. No rate increase. And as a matter of fact, working with CPS energy, we are saws paid for the generators. CPS will operate them, and CPS will then sell that power and there will be a revenue sharing of that power that is generated. Because, you know, Yuri was once in a generational thing. I don't know when we'll have another Yuri, if we'll have another Yuri. With this climate change issue, more likely than not, but not anytime soon, I think. So those generators are not going to be used because we may not have another uri, but state law mandated that we do it. We did it the right way, without a rate increase and having a partner come in and actually run it, because that's what they do for a living. Cps, that's what they do. That's what their business is. And so whatever revenues generated, they share with us. So that was another thing without a rate increase. So I can tell the public, hey, you may not care that we haven't been knocking on your door for the last five years, but these are the things that we've done. So now that we are knocking on your door again and we do need a rate increase, know that it will be well spent. Know where to know what it's going for our wastewater treatment plans, and know that that reliability will be there. Well, and I want to ask you about some maybe challenges or threats to the strategic plan of saws. I'm curious if there's an element of are the neighboring communities, say Austin area up I35, if their successes or their failures are something that are very related to our own water system, say perhaps the boomtowns of Kyle or San Marcos area or what have you, are their struggles an issue of ours or a consideration of ours? Of course there are neighbors and they are Texans as well. But how does that relate to the security of our own water system? It does in the sense that if you have the city of Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, any of the bigger cities fail, in a sense, it'll affect us just because we're all Texans and we're all interrelated with this economy. Smaller cities like Kyle, San Marcos to the north, some of the southern cities, Poteet, Floresville, their economies also need to work and survive and be robust.

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It allows ours to do, all to do. Also, because if they need medical care, they're not going to go to a hospital in Jordanton or Poteed, they're going to come to San Antonio. Their education, they're going to come to San Antonio.

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So it's very interrelated. We buy their agricultural products. They use our facilities here. Very interrelated. But specifically about water, water is very unique. Unlike power, where you can, like Rudy Garza has done at CPS Energy, bought four, four power plants in Houston.

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Okay, you can't do that with water. And so it's very unique. In, for example, the Edwards, which is our big, big supply, we have a permit that allows us to get a certain amount of water out of that aquifer every year. A certain amount. So does Alamo Heights, so does Hondo, so do the quarries, so does the farmers. A certain amount. So that is in state law that. That is dictated. That. That is in state law that is dictated.

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Surface water is controlled by the state. So if you have a permit to get water out of a reservoir or out of a river, you have that right, and you'll always have that right. So the economies of Austin and Lytle and that Hill country area that are booming, they're going to have to rely on finding new sources of water.

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And it cannot be the sources that exist already that we have because we have a contractual right to them under state law or under a private contract like Vista Ridge. And so it's really helping them in the sense that they're our neighbors, as you mentioned, but not that our water, our specific water supply is in jeopardy, that they will somehow get it now. They, they can get, you know, as, as I talked about Carrizo aquifer, we have Carrizo wells in southern Bexar County.

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The water project that I talked about in Gonzalez county, that's the Carrizo aquifer. The Vista Ridge project, which is north of Austin, that's Carrizo and Simsborough aquifer. So the Carrizo aquifer goes from Mexico to Arkansas. A huge aquifer. It's just a question of what are the zones, the areas, geographic areas where water can be produced very easily. And in the hill country they have the Trinity aquifer and the Griso aquifer in that area. So they're going to have to look at those sources before we have to worry if they're looking at our sources. But Armageddon comes, who knows what will happen? That's a big condition. But are those communities asking saws for advice or strategic direction or support in any capacity? Are there things that they're saying like, hey, how did y' all do this? Oh yeah. Especially with the Vista Ridge project. The Vista Ridge project was a very unique project. It was a public, the largest private public partnership in the United States at the time dealing with water.

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It was in Texas, the most expensive water project in 2020. Guess what? It's not the most expensive project anymore.

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The way we did it was very unique in the sense that we put out request for competitive seal proposal. We told the water world we need 50,000 acre feet at our gate at the Bexar county line because we didn't want to deal with the failures that we did before. The project from Church Seguin that I mentioned originally was a 50,000 acre feet project. It ended up being an 11,000 acre feet project just because of a vote in Gonzalez county where they decided instead of permitting the water at 2 acre feet per acre, which just going to do 1 acre feet per acre. So they cut our project in half. Even though he had spent all those millions of dollars trying to get 50,000 acre feet, we didn't want to go through that again. So we put out a request for competitive steel proposals that told anybody that was interested, you Find the water, you secure the water rights, you finance it, you build it, you get all the permits, whether they're endangered species permits, whether they're permits to go over or under a railroad, over or under a river.

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You deal with all the county commissioners between here or wherever you're bringing that water. And when you bring it to us, we will guarantee you that we will buy that water. And so we had about eight proposals. We looked at all of them. The best one was the. The Abengoa consortium from Spain.

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And we reached an agreement with them to where whatever.

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If you bring whatever water you bring up to 50,000 acre feet to our gate, we will buy it whether we need it or not, Whether we have a series of wet years or not, whether we stop growing or not, we will pay for it. So they had that certainty that we would, that there's revenue for them. So they were able to sell their bonds, finance the construction, make their profit. And that was a very good relationship between the two of us. We also negotiated to where that water would stay. The price of the water would stay static for this entire 30 years of the project. For 30 years, the price of the water is not going up.

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Even more impressive than that is after that year 31, for the next 30 years, all the way to 60. We have already negotiated the price of that water with the landowners.

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Now the private entity that built the project is out of the way because it's only good for 30 years. All of the infrastructure that they built, the pipes, the pump stations, the easements, all of that reverts to saws. We will now own it.

00:33:29.730 --> 00:33:59.109
So the mortgage is paid. And now all we do is pay for the water with the landowners. And as I've said, we've already negotiated that price and that price is lower than it is right now. So this project actually the price goes down in year 31. So yes, they asked for a lot of advice on how to do that. And so our own security through the the 2000 and 70s. Is it in the strategic plan, dependent on another project, say as ambitious as a Vista Ridge or. I mean, that's a long time obviously, but.

00:33:59.190 --> 00:35:35.389
Well, no, because as I mentioned, we control our own destiny. In southern Bexar county, we have where our wastewater treatment plant is built. It's also the site of our freshwater carrizo wells and is also the site of. Of it's a decel of our ASR of the storage of water. So the only site in the United States that has three water sources on one site. So in the future, if we're growing at whatever pace. We have 6,000 acres there that we can drill more wells into the fresh zone of the Carrizo aquifer. And right now we get about 7,000 acre feet. We can triple it to 21,000 acre feet and still be. Be with our own. It's our property. It's in Bexar County. We have a. The treatment plant is right there. As a matter of fact, we're expanding it. Our board approves some expenditures on that. So we control that if we're still growing at a clip that we need more water. That is exactly where the desal water is. You go through the Carrizo, into the Wilcox, into the brackish zone of the Wilcox and bring that water up and treat it in our plant. As a matter of fact, our waste, our, our desal plant, we overbuilt it in 2016, doubled the size of it to where all we need to do is put in those, the membranes that actually can't clean the water. So we paid for the expansion with $2016. Even though we're probably not going to expand it until the 2000-40s. So that I hope our public appreciates knowing that we, we have that mindset that we think very, very far into the future.

00:35:35.710 --> 00:36:37.610
So we control our destiny in that way. If we continue to grow for the 20s, for the 2000s, 2050s, it will be local Carriso and desal expansion. Those two expansions will meet those needs into the 2000s and 2000s. Where then who knows what the situation is. We do project our per capita use to always go down. We will, we will be using about 85 gallons per person per day as opposed to about 115 today. So that, that'll help out a whole lot too. That is a water source that we rely on is conservation. So that's how we'll meet those needs. Well, I think that's incredible to mention that figure because I caught the one, I think in the 1980s that was at 250 gallons per per day. So that's great. Quite incredible. Water conservation is not just a feel good thing and environmental thing. It's an economic tool for us. The 250 gallons per person per day saws used to have four wastewater treatment plants. We were using so much less water that we closed one down.

00:36:38.010 --> 00:37:47.909
We didn't need to treat that much water because it was just going down per capita use. So we saved ourselves tremendous amount of operating costs, maintenance cost on that plant that we shut down. So now we have three fully utilizing them. The one that I mentioned, the Clous plant, is the one that's going to be, it's the big workhorse, the big daddy of them all. And that's the one that we're really spending a whole lot of money on because we have the ability to expand it if we grow and just be ready for the upgrades that we need to implement at that plant. Well, maybe speaking to conservation, it's important to then maybe talk about the threat of climate change. It seems we're living in a time where we have the paradox of not enough water for a sustained duration of time are droughts, but then too much water all at once with the floods that we've certainly seen acutely here in central Texas and in San Antonio. So how is saws thinking about those challenges? Both the influx of water all, you know, in a four hour period versus sustained periods without rain. We are 2025 Waste Water Management Plan that's updated every five years.

00:37:48.750 --> 00:37:51.789
It's a 50 year water plan, but it's updated every five years.

00:37:52.030 --> 00:38:01.469
Recognizes that climate change is here. It's not going to happen. It's already here. We see it because we have very concentrated rain events.

00:38:03.070 --> 00:39:20.940
We had a drought in 2011 to about 2015, a very, very intense drought. Very short, but it's very intense and followed by normal wet years. And right now we're in a drought. Especially if you look at the drought maps from the weather forecasters, you'll see that like North Texas is out of drought, but there's a bullseye right over San Antonio. You know, we're being challenged by the water gods that you think you're doing so good so well. We're going to have the bullseye over you. That drought bullseye right over you. So we recognize that's there when it rains a lot. That means we don't have to pump as much water out of the aquifer because there's less of a demand by the public. But we still pump that water out of the aquifer and we move it over to a different aquifer, the Carriso, our underground storage of water. So if you see the amount of water in there, you'll see that it's generally going up, but there's dips in it during those drought years and it goes up. So the management of how we use that is very important. So that's one way we address climate change, is knowing that when it's a wet year, we still draw that water out of the aquifer but store it and so during drought years, we've stored water and we supplement our supply by that savings.

00:39:21.099 --> 00:41:16.030
You know, whether you want to call it a savings account or a certificate of deposit, a cd, it's water there for your long, long term, for an occasional need. You know, it's not a checking account where money goes in and out. It's a savings account where it's saved there until you really need it. You take out a big chunk because you're a drought year, you use it. So climate change is something we recognize and we're addressing. What we also know is that the demand of water is really the demand to irrigate your lawn. Half of our water during a hot summer day is used on the lawns. And so what we've done is we asked city council give us the authority to manage that demand in a way different than it was before. Before, if you were violating the watering rules, you would get a ticket and you'd have to go to municipal court and take care of it that way. And the money stayed with the city of San Antonio. What we asked them to do is let us just charge a surcharge on 20,000 gallons and above. So if you want to irrigate your lawn and you're willing to pay for it, we are going to pay for it. And so that's been in place. If you violate the rules of watering on an off day, you're assessed to fine, and instead of going to municipal court, you just pay it through your water bill. We never restrict the amount of water you can use. We do restrict when you can use it. And so if you want a lush green lawn, you can irrigate in the morning and you can irrigate in the afternoon. On your day, put as much water as you want to on it. We love the revenue, but we do know that if you suppress that demand, and we've seen that the surcharge is working, it creates less revenue for us is working. We have seen that. Then other good things happen. Less water to treat, less wear and tear on your infrastructure.

00:41:16.510 --> 00:41:23.260
All these things come into play to where we feel that that surcharge is also a climate change.

00:41:23.820 --> 00:43:29.130
Addressing climate change is having individuals know that there's a potential limitation. But if you don't want to and you want to use that much water, go right ahead. I want to ask you about water infiltration and collection and maybe this is perhaps the River Authorities Department or the Edwards Aquifer Authority, but. And I know we have some as well as major creek restoration projects going on, but with flood Channels and the massive amounts of impermeable surfaces that we have in concentrated area of San Antonio. Is it not true that we send much of that water, so to speak, in a heavy rain event down into the San Antonio river, which ultimately might end up in the Gulf of Mexico? If we're just talking about how watersheds work, is there not a huge opportunity for us in the San Antonio area, which I know we have, I mean, I can fill. Harbor park is a great one that uses permeable parking lots. Confluence park as well. I'm wondering what kind of opportunity exists for encouraging greater levels of water infiltration and harvesting during rain events for the sake of recharging the aquifer or perhaps watering native vegetation or what have you. Is that something that is Saez's department, so to speak, or is that, you know, what the River Authority may focus on? Yeah, yes and no. What is within our authority are things like, well, a lot of it is we don't have ordinance making power. So it's really a question of us working with the city, letting the city know, hey, we need these types of rules in our utility regulations, but also in your uniform building code to where you either mandate or encourage, incentivize somehow those types of parking lots that you mentioned. So, so we work with the city in that way. We also know that rain harvesting, the biggest rain harvester is the Edwards aquifer. So if we allow for the, for the rain event to recharge the aquifer, that is great. And so we provide the city with 4% of our top of the line revenue. Of our gross revenue, we send 4% of it to the city.

00:43:29.369 --> 00:43:36.889
The city uses it to buy property over the recharge zone to protect it from future development. So we also do that.

00:43:37.530 --> 00:43:44.809
Capturing that runoff is not something that is feasible because it's very, very, very dirty water.

00:43:44.969 --> 00:43:59.210
It collects all of the grease and oils and grit and animal feces that you can imagine, and it makes its way into the San Antonio River. That's why the San Antonio River Authority always has these cleanups after major rain events.

00:43:59.449 --> 00:44:13.800
So you would have to store that water somewhere and then clean it. So what we think is more cost effective and better for the environment is to protect the aquifer from a development over the recharge area.

00:44:14.119 --> 00:44:58.570
Again, that's a city function, but only within the city of San Antonio limits. You know, they don't have any authority where most of the recharge happens in uvalley and Medina county, but they do have the authority through our revenue Sharing that they can buy property out there in a conservation method and allow the owner to still live on the property and still farm if they want to, but they can't put it up for development. So that's a great interaction we have with the city. Is there anything like invested in green infrastructure which would be the way in which we could potentially clean the very dirty water? Or is that because again, the River Authority is investing in that, The Westside Creek System Restoration Project as an example, Mission reach. Those are all forms of that.

00:44:58.809 --> 00:45:31.460
Yes, those are all good things that actions that the Central River Authority are taking. We don't have that kind of authority. We don't have that kind of mission. Our mission is to provide water, drinking water. And so to collect that water, we would have to treat it to the standards that. To drinking water standards. And cities of Houston, Dallas, that are surface water, they get water from lakes and rivers and they have to treat it. But that generally is a lot cleaner than water coming off the streets.

00:45:33.460 --> 00:45:36.579
There's ways to do it, but I don't know if we're there yet.

00:45:37.380 --> 00:47:32.340
Excellent. Well, Robert, I really appreciate your time. One final question as we wrap up again, I think that saws should be even more so a point of civic pride here in San Antonio. I think the success story is really incredible. And again, it's not necessarily something that people first talk about. Maybe that's for good reason. They don't notice any issue with it. But I think most importantly, how do you see saws avoiding any sense of complacency? How do we continue if we're a leader now, how do we continue to retain and affirm that position for the continued decades into the future? That's a very challenging question. I didn't say it was a very good question. It's very challenging. So I think it's self pride. It's hiring individuals that take pride in their work that really want to be at the cutting edge of what they do. We don't just provide water. We have our legal department, HR department, We have a laboratory, we have accountants, chemists, all kinds of individuals. I think they've seen what our past practices have been and that we are the leading utility in Texas, if not one of the utilities in the United States, and they want to continue to be a part of it. So what I've seen is our employees take a lot of pride in what they do and not just the ones in headquarters. For example, we are undergoing right now the largest change out of meters in the United States. We're going from a very mechanical meter to a digital meter, one that can communicate with your telephone, with your iPhone. Those guys are taking so much pride in putting those meters in the ground. It's a physical act of putting those meters on the ground, of meeting the deadline that originally, because we had to fire an original vendor. And when that happens, a whole lot of crazy things happen. The completion date was pushed out to the fall of 2026.

00:47:33.300 --> 00:47:59.130
They are so proud of themselves that they're going to finish this year, probably in November of this year, changing out 660,000 meters. So they're proud to be a part of this organization and I think they want to continue that. They want to contribute to the past successes and they want to be involved and be part of what people talk about, what great things Sols are doing.

00:47:59.289 --> 00:48:15.010
You know, it's one of those things where if you go outside of 1604 in the water world, we are rock stars. But the closer you are to home, especially City hall, they wonder about us. It's up to me to educate these new council members.

00:48:15.489 --> 00:48:30.610
Continue to communicate with the seasoned veteran council members. I'm very happy that our mayor, who has been at two of our meetings, she has asked very good questions. She's very engaged and she loves data and we are all full of data.

00:48:31.010 --> 00:48:44.210
And so I think she wants to be part of our success, too, and is going to offer her expertise, her leadership in that endeavor, too. So I think it's the human factor of wanting to do a good job.

00:48:45.170 --> 00:48:51.090
Wonderful. Robert, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on to Big City Small Town. All right, thank you.

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Thanks for listening to or watching this episode of Big City Small Town. If you enjoyed it, please send it to a friend. Share it with a colleague, helping us to keep telling San Antonio's most meaningful stories. And if you haven't yet, sign up for the San Antonio Something, my weekly newsletter where I share things to do, places to explore, and people to get to know in the city. Just head to coriames.com to subscribe. Also, be sure to check out Monday Musings, Bob Rivard's weekly newsletter at bigcity small town.com Big City Small Town is brought to you by Weston Urban Urban Building the city Our Children Want to Call Home and by Geekdom, where startups are born and smart ideas become businesses. Thanks again.

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We'll see you next time.