The San Antonio Water System’s board of trustees unanimously approved new drought rules Thursday that may soon see SAWS do away with city-issued citations that require residents and businesses to pay a $137 fee and go to municipal court.
Instead, the municipally owned water utility would charge the violator a fee directly on their SAWS bill, freeing them of the obligation to go to court.
Should the San Antonio City Council sign off on the rule changes next month, SAWS will also change how its Stage 3 and 4 restrictions are triggered; implement a drought surcharge on high-use customers in Stage 3 and beyond; shift its allotted watering hours; and put limits on how often customers are allowed to run their drip irrigation systems.
The board’s vote came after more than two and a half hours of discussion at a special board meeting on Thursday, which was kicked off with roughly 45 minutes of public comments from local residents, irrigators, homeowners associations and environmentalists.
The utility’s board of trustees were first presented with the proposed drought rule changes in August, and were given the option to vote on the matter earlier this month. The seven trustees decided to hold off on a vote, however, until the water utility has taken time to consider the latest trustee and public feedback.
While most of the proposed rule changes remained the same since that regularly scheduled board meeting on May 7, SAWS did “compromise” its proposed changes in regards to drip irrigation — a type of irrigation system where water is run through pipes with small holes in them that are buried or lying slightly above the ground to irrigate grass or crops at the root.
Overall, the trustees voiced support for the drought rule changes prior to their vote Thursday. Trustee Amy Hardberger said that SAWS needs to continue to push for tougher conservation rules. SAWS staff noted earlier this month these changes were spurred on in part by exceptionally high water use in 2022 and 2023, despite the drought.
“The biggest concern to me driving the urgency of this situation is watching water use go up when it should be going down and these hot times,” Hardberger said. “So clearly what we’re doing is no longer working for a myriad of reasons. Maybe this will address it.”
Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who serves as a SAWS trustee in his official capacity, said his comments from the last meeting still apply — these changes are “long overdue.”
“Hopefully we can at least have started the realistic conversations about how our landscaping codes and regulations don’t match up with our drought realities,” he said. “So I’m looking forward to continuing that — or getting that discussion started [at the city level].”
Watered-down drip irrigation restrictions
Today, about 20% of the properties served by SAWS use drip irrigation systems, said Karen Guz, SAWS vice president of conservation. Drip irrigation has often been thought to use less water, however, its name is a misnomer, Guz said.
“People think because it’s called ‘drip’ it doesn’t use much water,” Guz told reporters Thursday. “Well … sometimes those emitters can put out almost a gallon an hour.”
As of the May 7 board meeting, the proposed drought rules included limiting drip irrigation watering to one day a week.
However, under the proposed changes introduced to and approved by the SAWS board Thursday, drip irrigation will be allowed up to three days a week — depending on which drought stage SAWS is in.
Currently, spray irrigation is limited to one day per week but drip irrigation is allowed daily. The new rules looked to close this “loophole,” Guz said. After receiving more public feedback and trustee input SAWS shifted those proposed limitations, Guz said.
“It was a pretty quick switch for people to go from every day of the week to one day of the week, so a compromise was needed,” she said.
Nirenberg said he thinks SAWS needs to spend some time on a public education campaign “not only about proper use of irrigation in general, but specifically drip irrigation systems.”
Hardberger said she is supportive of this compromise, although she would have liked to see a once-a-week watering limit during Stage 3 for drip irrigation. Several of the public commenters who spoke Thursday voiced similar opinions, stating SAWS should have left drip irrigation as once a week, however many others — namely landscapers and irrigators — said they were supportive of the compromise.
“We’ve gone back and forth with people on this a lot, and people were just not ready — a lot of them — to accept going to one day a week in Stage 3,” Guz said.
Headed to council
The City Council will be briefed on these proposed changes during their June 12 B-session, and are tentatively scheduled to vote on the changes on June 20.
The changes could go into effect as soon as mid-July, Guz said, if the council doesn’t delay their vote. SAWS has been in Stage 2 drought restrictions since the spring of 2022. The city has seen some level of drought over the past five years, she noted.
“By no means is it too late to help us this year,” she said. “I do think too, though, that these conversations that we’ve been having about this are driving a lot of people to be very interested in their water use.” She noted the utility has been getting an increased number of calls from residents concerned about their water use and the new Stage 3 surcharge.
In the meantime, SAWS is still enforcing the existing city ordinances, which do still cite citations for watering off hours or excessively, Guz noted.
“It just will flip over to the new system, hopefully sometime in July,” she said.
The mayor reiterated that he is eager to get these conversations started among the city council as San Antonio heads into the summer.
“Needless to say great work, [I’m] ready to support it, [I’m] ready for this to get to council,” he said.
