These are some of the reasons people have moved here for generations and stayed to raise families, start businesses and hunker down for the long haul. People who move here often do so at the expense of making as much money as one might be able to in the Big City. Folks just decide the trade-off is worth the trouble or they leave and return to the hustle-bustle of Gotham.
These days, I really wonder why the realtors and bankers are still encouraging folks to move to our parched part of the world since, unless we face our water crisis and solve some serious water-related problems very soon, many of these investments will not be worth much. I wish there was more honesty about the serious nature of our current water crisis in the real estate world, but I guess that is the nature of the beast.
Build It, They Will Come, Sell It Quick and Run off with the Money Before the Buyer Realizes What They Bought? I sure hope this isn’t how anyone thinks, but if you look at the activity along our local highways, all the signs for the different subdivisions, well, somebody may not be telling their customers the whole story of just where they are trying to talk them into moving.
I was pondering the other day why so many people move to this area when it can be really difficult to find a job out here and when you have to travel pretty far to buy groceries or clothing or just the right hinge for your screen door. I was wondering why this land attracts people in ways that the more fertile, water-rich land east of here seems not to and I have not come up with any universal reasons, but a friend remarked to me that people have done this around here for a long time.
The relatively-recent European settlers whose descendants came to dominate this territory thought that this was going to be prime farm and ranch land and yet found they were in a land plagued by alternating droughts and floods, torrid summers, unpredictably chilly winters and then, just when you thought Spring was finally here, along with warmer weather, came hordes of grasshoppers to devour your crops and your rose garden and work your last good nerve. The Texas Hill Country is not exactly The Land of Milk and Honey.
My friend said that people often live in places that are not exactly the smartest places to live, like on the slopes of active volcanoes, near the sea or along rivers that routinely become treacherous. Why do Californians continue to live where they are one mudslide away from being a downhill disaster and why do people rebuild along the Guadalupe over and over again, knowing that another devastating flood is only a few years away?
Our land is, in the words of my friend, “deceptive in some way”, luring people to settle where water resources are not reliable and where the soil, rather than being fertile and plentiful is only skin deep, a black or red scratch atop yet another limestone outcropping.
I ponder all this things anew these days as we face yet another devastating drought. All around me people are talking water. We talk about how to plan for the future with legislation about how groundwater can or cannot be used here, we talk about new subdivision regulations that would mandate that new wells cannot be punched into the aquifer unless you have enough land around that will allow rainwater to replenish what you and your family have pumped out.
We talk about granting our local governmental bodies the authority to use scientific research to limit growth over the aquifer and we see sharp contrasts between what developers and large landowners who would maybe someday like to become developers want and what the average landowner or resident of this area would like to see allowed.
We talk about common sense and we talk about self-restraint. We talk about sustainability and we talk about an uncertain future for our children, for our economy, for our Earth.
I hear more questions than answers, but what I do hear and see is a growing consensus among people here that Business as Usual is Not an Option and that we all need to come together and make the necessary changes in our behavior that just might save us all from living in a desert community.
I hear people talk about rainwater harvesting and it seems to me that is pretty good sense. I hear people talk about transitioning from those large swaths of St. Augustine grass to maybe smaller lawns and perhaps allow those lawns to become Bermuda or Buffalo grass. I hear all these things and I read about ways these changes can happen among us, but paradigms do not shift quickly without swift kicks, not usually, and I hope we do not wait for that.
Right now, today, our Hays County Commissioners Court is working out the final touches on a years-long endeavor to upgrade our subdivision regulations to bring more innovative design details to bear on future development, but these regulations as regards our water do not go far enough and unless we encourage our local leaders to enshrine some real teeth into these regulations, this water crisis will not be averted.
Our land will become increasingly parched and uninhabitable. Our floods will get worse, too, because barren land exacerbates destructive run-off.
Our homes and our investments could very well become worth a lot less to us and to the bank if we do not make sure, very sure, that good thinking and good scientific information are welded together in our laws and in our personal behavior.
This is our time to act, to make good choices for ourselves and for our community.
How about it?
susan cook
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