• Tara Bozick •
• Originally published May 21, 2008 at 11:23 p.m., updated May 21, 2008 at 11:23 p.m.

A local biologist loves spending time on the coast, mostly beach combing and watching wildlife. She can’t imagine losing species that rely on our bays and estuaries.

“It would be a huge loss that can’t even be described,” Meridith Byrd from Victoria said.

Byrd, 32, came to the forum on freshwater flows for the San Antonio Bay on Wednesday night at the Victoria Community Center to learn more about the new legislative process that would get water down the Guadalupe River and into the bay.

The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club invited the public to attend and learn more about the environmental flows allocation process created by Senate Bill 3 passed in the Texas Legislature in 2007. The process would create environmental flow standards based on recommendations from both scientists and stakeholders, like commercial fishermen.

“Water just doesn’t have value when it’s in a drinking cup,” Myron Hess, manager of Texas Water Programs for the National Wildlife Federation, told the 78 residents who attended the forum.

Freshwater inflows affect a $2 billion seafood and tourism in the state and even endangered species like the whooping crane. Freshwater flows affect both the economy and ecology of the state, Hess said. No other state in the country has undertaken such an ambitious water conservation project, he said.

With the state population projected to double by mid-century, demands on freshwater increase. Most water rights already sold don’t have environmental flow requirements, Hess said. The state didn’t start including flow conditions when permitting water until 1985.

“It was something people thought about - the possibility you might suck the river dry,” Hess said.

The city of Victoria is in good shape for water, Gary Middleton, secretary of Region-L Water Planning Committee, said. The city has been acquiring water rights, along with groundwater wells, for the last 15 years.

“We have recognized how important water is for our future,” Middleton said. “Our water supply is firm for 75 to 100 years.”

The major ways to keep the rivers flowing is through conservation and wastewater return flows in the Guadalupe River, Middleton said.

“100 percent of our return flows go back into the river,” Middleton said.

Victoria Mayor Will Armstrong, whose father grew up in Seadrift on the San Antonio Bay, wanted to learn how to ensure that bay’s health. Armstrong, his wife and his children and grandchildren all fish along the coast in Calhoun County.

“I’m not opposed to taking care of the bay,” Armstrong said. “I don’t want to cut off the bay.”

Like the mayor, Kenneth Schustereit’s family fishes on the coast. As founder of the Water Research Group, which fought to keep water in the Crossroads area, he knows the importance of water.

“Water for bays and estuaries are important for our economic development,” Schustereit said, noting the millions of dollars spent every year by commercial and recreational industries in Calhoun County.

Hess hopes the state still has enough water to set aside for the environment and he added the process offers no guarantee.

“With this new process, determining what heritage we leave for our children and grandchildren will be determined by the people who show up and participate in this process,” Hess said.

Tara Bozick is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6504 or tbozick@vicad.com, or comment on this story at www.VictoriaAdvocate.com.

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