Commentary

SAWS policies often conflict with COSA's

Many factors drive growth and development and what we generally think of as sprawl. These many factors can be aggregated into three large groups.

One is public policy; like zoning, subdivision and building codes, utility extension rules, support (or lack thereof) for mass transit, funding for roadway improvements, etc.

Another broad grouping is consumer demand. Those that criticize suburban sprawl often forget that if people were not buying the product it wouldn’t exist.

The third broad group is developers. Developers are the point of interface between public policy and consumer demand. With sprawl developments they use their expertise and willingness to assume financial risk to turn land into a product that can be consumed by the masses. Some like to demonize developers but I think it is important to remember that if someone wasn’t buying their product they wouldn’t be developing it.

I agree with Nelson Wolff and Robert Rivard that San Antonio’s sprawl is a “nightmare” and that the metropolitan area is “growing in all the wrong places”. Many people and most public officials probably agree with them too, at least to some degree.

If that is the case, why the sprawl?

I think the short answer is that there are many disconnects. There is a disconnect between what policy makers say they want and what the policies they enact actually accomplish. There is a disconnect among the various agencies the policy makers represent, the so-called "silo" syndrome, And there is a disconnect among the public at-large, which complains about the downsides of sprawl even as they are buying new tract homes on the urban fringe.

SAWS participation in the Western Canyon pipeline project is illustrative of the first two disconnects, which in turn feeds the third.

When I asked Calvin Finch why SAWS ratepayers are subsidizing a water pipeline to Boerne he gave two reasons.

Finch said the SAWS Board of Directors has a policy to partner with smaller utilities to help them develop alternative water resources; and he said SAWS needs water from a source other than the Edwards Aquifer.

In regard to the first reason; why in the hell does a utility owned by the City of San Antonio want to partner with any of the entities served by the Western Canyon pipeline? That's crazy. SAWS is not a charity, it’s a city-owned utility and its policies ought to mesh with the city's goals and best interests, not contradict them.

I definitely believe it is in the best interest of the City of San Antonio – which, the last time I checked, owns SAWS – to discourage suburban development and to promote inner-city development/re-development.

Generally speaking, I think most elected city officials share these beliefs (or at least say they do). For example, in the 1980s San Antonio raced to annex a strip of land inside Camp Bullis/Camp Stanley in an unsuccessful attempt to extend its extra-territorial jurisdiction to prevent the incorporation of the City of Fair Oaks Ranch.

Now, two decades later, SAWS has essentially written Fair Oaks Ranch a check that bailed this overgrown-homeowners-association-masquerading-as-a-city out of a water crisis that would almost certainly have curtailed the city's growth. Flush with water, Fair Oaks Ranch is now growing, expanding and annexing – in essence becoming a small engine of sprawl with the water they could not have gotten without SAWS help. It is a similar dynamic for every other entity that has hooked up to the Western Canyon pipeline; Boerne, Cordillera Ranch, etc.

There may be instances where SAWS could “partner” with a small utility to develop alternative waters sources and not undermine the goals and policies and best interests of its owner.

The Western Canyon pipeline is not one of them.

Finch's statement is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing. He is locked in the SAWS silo. We have met the enemy and he is us.

The logic of Finch’s second reason for SAW’s participation in Western Canyon – because SAWS needs water from a source other than the Edwards Aquifer – is more nuanced.

As I discuss in the article headlined “GBRA, SAWS put differences aside for the sake of necessity” SAWS has long sought water from Canyon Lake and the Western Canyon pipeline presented a chance for San Antonio to finally get access to some of that water.

While the downsides clearly outweigh the upsides and Western Canyon is obviously at cross-purposes with the interests of the City of San Antonio; at least there is room for debate on Finch's second reason.

My purpose in creating this blog and posting this information is simply to shine a light into this dimly-lit corner and to suggest to policy makers that if they want the 2020 census report to look any different than the 2010 report something – actually a lot of somethings – needs to change. Another motivation is to encourage the Express-News to use its own flashlight more often, both on the news side and the op-ed page.

SAWS’s utility extension policies might be a good place to start.

I’ve lived in San Antonio since the mid-1970s. Over that time I have observed the ongoing debate about growth and development and the disconnect between what policy makers say they want and what actually happens.

Even after these many years of observation I am still not certain if the disconnect is due to purposeful disingenuousness, breathtaking ignorance, deeply entrenched bureaucratic silos - or something less flattering.