
By Anton Caputo - Express-News
New power plants planned along the lower Colorado River could use the same water supply that was denied San Antonio for future growth.
The driving force is simple. Power shortages are forecast for Texas’ future — shortages that power companies are rushing to meet with new plants.
But experts, environmental groups and others are beginning to question whether there is enough water available to serve the massive facilities.
The issue pits two fundamental resources critical to the fast-growing state against each other — water and power.
In an indirect way, it even puts San Antonio’s two largest utilities in competition for water from the lower Colorado River, some 200 miles away.
“You can’t get around the fact that both of these powerful agencies would like to be using the same water,” former Mayor Phil Hardberger said. “The big picture is it really shows the complexity when water gets scarce.”
CPS Energy and the San Antonio Water System are looking to the river to supply water for their biggest proposed projects.
CPS Energy already has secured rights to pull billions of gallons of water a year from the river to cool two new nuclear reactors it wants to build in Bay City. But SAWS seems to have failed in its attempt to pipe water from the same river to San Antonio to help quench the city’s growing thirst.
Such competition for resources only will intensify as water becomes scarcer in Texas, says University of Texas researcher Carey King. It’s one reason he’s among the group calling for more scrutiny of the water demands of proposed power plants.
No sector in the state pulls as much water from its rivers and reservoirs as power plants. They account for nearly half the water withdrawn in Texas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The plants return most of the water to the rivers and reservoirs after they use it for cooling, but they still require a guaranteed flow of literally billions of gallons a year to maintain smooth operations.
Yet the state doesn’t require power companies to prove there will be enough water to meet their needs, or analyze the impact on others who might depend on the water. Instead, they are left to secure water rights from the various agencies and entities that hold them, a process critics say is fraught with politics and sometimes has little to do with how much water will really be available in the future.
King thinks the time is critical for a change. The flip side, he said, could be that the state’s power plants find themselves without enough water to operate, particularly in times of drought.
“The reason why it hasn’t been planned for and the reason why you need to is that energy and water resources are becoming constrained at nearly the same time,” said King, who specializes in energy research. “In Texas, the surface water allocation rights are virtually full.”

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SAWS has invested over $43.2 million on project studies at a current value of nearly $51.9 million. Another $2 billion of investment by San Antonio would have helped provide additional supplies from the Colorado River through the use of enhanced technology and innovative conservation efforts. 




We've been expecting it for a long time, and now a Great Water War has come to Central Texas.
The LCRA called for
This is just the beginning. Too often, the LCRA operates in the dark. The future water resources of San Antonio and Central Texas are at stake. While some environmentalists are skeptical of inter-basin transfers - that is, the transfer of Colorado River Water to San Antonio - the agreement with San Antonio included guarantees that SA's conservation infrastructure would keep Lake Buchanan six feet above average and Lake Travis 18 feet above average. 
The Associated Press 
