While some Brazos River water rights holders could see their supplies curtailed if the drought continues, Richmond and Rosenberg should be insulated from such action.
Officials from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said Monday that Brazos water rights holders – even municipalities – could see their rights suspended in favor of senior water rights holders as the Texas drought worsens.
The issue came to light after TCEQ published a letter on its web site, dated July 7 and directed to Brazos water rights holders.
“This letter is to alert you of potential diversion curtailments or possible suspensions of state surface water from the Brazos River Basin,” TCEQ Executive Director Mark Vickery said in the letter. “The lack of significant rainfall in the area and the declining flow of the Brazos River may require action by the TCEQ to further curtail surface water diversions for the proection of senior water rights…”
“The TCEQ has received a priority call on surface water from senior water rights downstream of your diversion point,” Vickery’s letter states. “At this time, the senior call has been met by suspension of surface water rights junior to yours, however, should drought conditions continue to persist, additional suspensions may be necessary.”
The letter doesn’t specify what “senior water rights” made the “priority call.” But TCEQ officials said the legal concept of “priority doctrine” dictates that senior Brazos water rights holders “will be served first during times of drought,” regardless of how the water is used.
Richmond and Rosenberg negotiated 50-year contracts for Brazos River water – but only about a year ago, which would make their rights junior to most other entities.
But Brazos River Authority officials say there’s more to the situation than meets the eye.
For starters, there is more than one kind of Brazos River water rights.
The surface water rights Vickery referred to in the letter are “run-of-the-river” rights, said John Hufmann, BRA’s lower/central basin region manager.
However, Rosenberg and Richmond contracted for a set amount of water stored in upstream reservoirs, Hufmann said. That water is all but guaranteed, and not subject to suspension or curtailment by the TCEQ.
Under such a contract, one of the cities could request a portion of the contracted water, and the BRA would arrange for the release of an agreed upon amount of water from one of the reservoirs along the upper Brazos.
Unlike Richmond and Rosenberg, Missouri City and Sugar Land contract for Brazos River water from the Gulf Coast Water Authority. Hufman said the GCWA is a run-of-the-river rights holder.
Whether that puts those cities’ water rights at any additional risk during periods of drought is difficult to determine. For one thing, the GCWA presumably holds fairly senior water rights.
For another, Vickery’s letter notwithstanding, it appears no “priority call on surface water” ever was actually made to the TCEQ.
Both Hofmann and BRA government and customer relations manager Matt Phillips said they have seen correspondence from the senior rights holders to which Vickery’s letter referred. And while those rights holders expressed concern over the severity of the current drought, they never make what’s known as a “priority call.”
“What they said was, we have concerns, it’s very dry,” Hofmann said. “But they stopped short of making a call.”
He likened a water rights holder making a priority call to a citizen calling 911. Essentially, a priority call means a senior water rights holder is saying junior rights holders are using water that belongs to him – and he’s asking the TCEQ to step in and enforce his senior rights.
Hofmann and Phillips say that didn’t happen.
Instead, the two believe the TCEQ used the letter “to get people to voluntarily pay attention” to terms of their water rights agreements, Hofmann said. “They haven’t actually gone in and cut anybody off.”
Meanwhile, although Richmond and Rosenberg enjoy some security in the knowledge that their water is stored in reservoirs under contract, nothing is fool-proof.
Hofmann said BRA analysts decide how much water needs to be stored in reservoirs on behalf of Brazos customers based on a complex set of calculations.
Those calculations are designed to take into account conditions that persisted during the Texas drought of the 1950s – generally considered the worst the state has seen in modern times.
However, localized drought conditions in the 1990s caused water supplies at Proctor Lake to dwindle to a level that was 30% lower than officials had calculated was possible even during a past record drought.
Analysts were forced to recalculate, and adjust their models accordingly. And some water customers had to accept 30% less water than they expected.
The American Canal drains losts of waste waters from Missouri City along the eastside of Ft. Bend. Officials say that the water is already own and sold by the Galveston Gulf Coastal Waters.