The Texas Water Development Board met on June 16, 2015 to consider their posted agenda. This report focuses only on the following agenda items.
Consider approving by resolution the establishment of a new tax-exempt lending rate scale for the Texas Water Development Fund II Water Financial Assistance Account to be used for the sole purpose of providing state matching funds for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. (Amanda Landry)
- Resolution would be effective upon approval today
- Executive administrator supports the resolution
- Resolution approved by TWDB
Briefing and discussion on the new environmental review process for federally-funded projects. (Kathy Calnan) Board Agenda #16 Document
- Improvements have been made in the environmental review process
- Efficiency for reviewer training has been increased
- There is a new and more efficient Environmental Information Document
- New EID serves both drinking and clean water as opposed to two different guidelines
- Changes do not override any regulatory agency permitting requirements
- EID can be found on website
- The review staff has two new members
Briefing and discussion on the requirement to review and update designations of regional water planning area boundaries. (Temple McKinnon) Board Agenda #18 Document
- Statute requires this to be reviewed every 5 years, but it has been reviewed in different ways throughout the years
- James Murphy Exec. Manager with guad. Blanco river authority
- Look at boundaries for regional planning groups because we’ve had issues with costal basin being scattered through four different regions
- Some of these regions are dominated by urban areas which makes it difficult to prioritize large industrial projects asking for 15 to 30 million gallons of water per day
- No action required
Briefing and discussion on drought conditions in the state of Texas. (Mark Wentzel)
- Record setting month for rain in Texas
- Compares this month to 1957 when draught in 50s ended
- Tremendous improvements on US draught monitor map for Texas
- Regions are either out of draught or moving out of draught – best status since Fall of 2010
- Statewide reservoir storage is also improving, but some regions need another year for individual reservoirs to catch up
- No action required
Briefing and discussion on the Texas Colorado River Mobile Learning Experience. (John Sutton)
- Healthy flowing river provides wellbeing for surrounding areas
- Education programs include outreach to youth groups, mobile river lab, community engagement, environmental outreach etc.
- Sarah Richards (Executive Director) wants to make sure people understand the importance of the river and sources of their drinking water/how to use water efficiently
- Mobile river lab targets 7th grade students and stays in school parking lot for 3-5 days while about 15 students cycle through at a time
- Meant to target this age group to reach students early