Located on the grounds of historic Fort Clark in Kinney County, about 30 miles east of Del Rio, Las Moras Springs is the ninth largest group of springs in Texas. In his Springs of Texas, Vol. 1, Gunnar Brune describes how “the springs rise under artesian pressure from the Edwards and associated limestones and pass through a fault in the overlying formation.”
The springs discharge an average of 12 to 14 million gallons per day into a large pond at Fort Clark, which feeds a million-gallon, concrete swimming pool constructed in 1939. These flows pass through the 300-foot-long pool as well as a bypass channel and are released into Las Moras Creek via spillways at the east end of the complex. Some of this water ultimately reaches the Rio Grande about 29 miles to the southeast.
As a scientist working for the state, Brune estimated 51 flow rates between the years 1896 and 1978. According to Brune, the springs “temporarily quit flowing in the summer of 1964, probably because of heavy irrigation pumping from the Edwards limestones, and again in June 1971.” In recent times, the springs have begun to fail more consistently and for longer. Writing on his “So secret, concealed, and occult” website, Dr. Robert Mace of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment states that the springs failed “to flow in 2022 for 85 days, 2023 for 111 days, and 2024 for 118 days.”
The dramatic disappearance of the pond and creek over three consecutive years has prompted anxiety in Kinney County as residents grapple with causes and effects. The resulting conflict has pitted permit holders, who have a right to produce far more groundwater than they are actually pumping, against townspeople and others, who feel that the permitted amounts and actual available groundwater are out of step with reality, as evidenced by a consistent failure of Las Moras that coincides with springtime upticks in irrigation activity.
The authority to “conserve, preserve, and protect the groundwater supplies,” including the flows to Las Moras Springs, rests with the Kinney County Groundwater Conservation District. Its 2023 Groundwater Management Plan, as required by the state, contains two management goals known as desired future conditions (DFCs) aimed at “maintaining, at Las Moras Springs, an annual average flow of 23.9 [cubic feet per second] and a median flow of 24.4 [cubic feet per second]” as well as ensuring that the water level in a certain “threshold well” known as the Tularosa Well “shall not fall below 1,184 feet mean sea level” because this “threshold well … exhibits strong correlation with spring flow on an annual basis.”
The management plan states that if, “at any point, it appears the District will not be able to achieve the adopted Desired Future Conditions the Board of Directors will amend the rules as necessary to ensure the Desired Future Conditions will be achieved.” Toward that end, the district created a rules committee earlier this year that included members on both “sides” of the conflict who eventually settled on several changes that strongly aligned with the recommendations of the district’s hydrogeologist, Dr. Bill Hutchison. But so far the Kinney County GCD board has held five regularly scheduled meetings and a few special ones, where it has failed to review, approve or deny any of these changes, which are ultimately intended to achieve the DFCs. In order to better understand the impasse, I reached out to the Kinney County GCD general manager and two board members. But they all declined or failed to respond to my request for an interview.
Every district is different, with its own local conditions and history. It is not the job of a columnist to question the motives or behavior of the Kinney County GCD. But with the board unable to consider the recommendations of its rules committee or openly discuss how it intends to protect Las Moras Springs, it’s little wonder that a slate of four local candidates has materialized to challenge the status quo.
David Palmer, Perry Menley, Richard Gonzalez and Troy Hibbits are running for the board with the stated goal to “save our springs.” According to Palmer, a civil engineer who spent 20 years as a pilot in the Air Force, “There is much room for improvement regarding all aspects of the GCD mission here.” He and his co-candidates believe “GCDs have been given powers to manage the resource that the current board has not exercised for whatever reason … The district doesn’t even have a drought management plan … Our strategy/solution is to protect the springs with rules and their enforcement within the boundaries established by state law.” He wants to see “way more … done with the available tools, including conservation measures, conservation easements, better science, community education [and] infrastructure improvements” to address the realities of rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. “The main … solution,” said Palmer, is “first of all a board that listens and does what it can. Ours doesn’t.”
Kinney County voters will decide the direction of their groundwater district during early voting, which started on Monday and goes through November 1, and on Election Day, November 5.Trey Gerfers serves as general manager of the Presidio County Underground Water Conservation District and coordinator of Groundwater Management Area 4. A San Antonio native, he has lived in Marfa since 2013 and can be reached at tgerfers@pcuwcd.org.