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The TCEQ Water Rights Advisory Work Group met on April 6th to hear updates on water availability models, the TCEQ legal division, water rights permitting, and the Watermaster program.

This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics taken up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the discussions but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.

Water Availability Model Updates (Kim Nygren)

  • No updates from the last meeting
  • Have heard a lot of thoughts on working on Naturalized Flows and permitting
  • Working on updating the Naturized Flows for the WAMs, hoping to have more of an update at the next quarterly meeting

Legal Update (Ruth Takeda)

  • New Director in the Environmental Law Division, Charmaine Backens from Litigation Division
  • Pape Partners vs. DRR Properties: TCEQ participated as an amicus during the oral arguments stage and waiting for the court decision

Water Rights Permitting and Availability Section Update (Brooke McGregor)

  • Highlights the new application, incl. the admin report, tech report, and instructions; not many major updates, but new applicants must use the new forms
  • Now has a spot for the date of the pre-application meeting, pre-application meetings are now required; have found that the pre-application meetings help both TCEQ and the applicants & lead to much more complete applications
  • Helpful to have a draft of the application for the pre-application; also willing to have more conceptual meetings about what is possible before the pre-application meetings
  • Have 134 applications in house currently, 25 have had a contested case hearing request, almost 1/5th of all applications, much higher than usual
  •  Have been focused on getting backlog of pending uncontested rights applications down, working to keep number below 125
  • In FY22 received 43 apps, completed 36, and 25 have been contested; 71% completed within 90 day timeline target
  • Don’t get many HB 1964 applications, 2 within FY22 so far, 1 within 90 days and 1 unable to be completed within 90 days
  • During first 2 years of HB 1964 being passed, had 10-15 per year, but has dropped off; currently applications have been more complex and haven’t seen the usual number of Fast Track or HB 1964
  • Almost 90% of Fast Track applications are done within 30 days
  • 96% of Change of Ownership requests are within target timeframe; Change of Ownership team is now within Water Rights
  • Water Use Reports were mailed out Jan 1, were due March 1
  • Water Rights is asking for feedback on ease of use of the electronic system for submitting Water Use Reports; also open to give advice on how to utilize the system – wur@tceq.texas.gov or (512)-239-4600 (WUR main line)
  • Alisa Patterson has come on as a Senior Hydrologist, currently 4 hydrologist, 2 aquatic scientist, and 2 project manager vacancies

Watermaster Update (Jose “Pepe” Davila)

  • TCEQ Workforce Plan: maintaining electronic operations, encouraging stakeholders to use electronic platforms & participate remotely in meetings if needed
  • Continuing to work on Watermaster Basin Evaluations, first round of outreach letters were mailed in early March; part of the initial letter is a plan for the meetings for evaluations, incl. 2 virtual meetings and in-person meetings in San Angelo and Abilene
  • Have completed over 40% of required site investigations
  • 35.7% of normal conservation capacity, down from 43% last year
  • 1944 Water Treaty: TCEQ continuing to meet with Mexican Gov Officials and others tasked with creating a water availability delivery model, 424k acre feet since October 2020
  • In process of filling South Texas Watermaster position, also in process of filling admin assistant and Assistant Watermaster position
  • Special Condition schedule in Upper Guadalupe anticipated to begin this week
  • Seeking Concho Assistant Watermaster and Deputy positions, watermaster Deputy in Brazos
  • Drought conditions: have really dry conditions and may start seeing impact on stream flows and reservoir, dipping under long-term median flows but haven’t reached 33rd percentile just yet; at 33rd percentile would be seeing impacts on water users
  • Have 2 areas in the RGV experiencing drought conditions, but used to curtailments; not yet in drought conditions similar to the past, but starting to talk about actions should conditions persist