What is the price of water?

dealing with adversity

Hello friends and readers! It’s hot and it’s dry and it’s August. Yup. ‘Bout what you’d expect in Central Texas. As you’ve probably realized by now from reading an essay (or 20) of mine here on “Of a Sober Mind,” my approach isn’t what you might find in a normal—whatever that is—sober newsletter on Substack. Yes, my recovery from drugs and alcohol is central to my life. But you won’t hear me preaching or teaching about “how to” in these pages. Instead, what I like to write about is what interests me—but through my eyes as a man who has survived for six decades on this crazy planet, the last nearly 14 years of it clean and sober. You’ll read about music, and travel, and sports, and business, and politics and culture, and rescue dogs, and whatever else comes to mind. Always—always through the lens of sobriety and recovery, which quite simply makes this exercise possible. If you enjoy what you read, I hope you’ll consider sharing it around, commenting after the post, or sending me an email. I love hearing from you. It literally keeps me going. Please subscribe if you haven’t already. You can do so for free. If you’re so inclined to support my writing financially, a small $50 annual subscription takes care of that. I appreciate you more than you know.

And now—read on to find out what shit hit the fan in my world this week. Thanks again for reading!

Dee

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We lost our water well over the weekend. Gone. Toast. Extended drought here in the Texas Hill Country means a lot of things—mostly obtuse things like no outside watering and dirty cars and crunchy grass and dust everywhere. It’s insult to injury when it’s been over 100 for 63 days this summer. Wahhh. I chose to live here. I moved from the alpine environment of Vail Colorado down to Denver two decades ago to escape having several feet of snow on my roof in late May. I moved from the booming city of Denver 8 years ago to Wimberley to get away from the noise and the traffic and the sheeple. Mission accomplished. But no place is perfect. Other places have gross humidity, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, crime, parking lots and protestors. For the most part, it’s beautiful and peaceful here on our acreage. Hundreds of live oak trees with several acres for the 4 doggies to ply their daily trade of hunting lizards and lounging in the shade canopy.

We love Wimberley. Incredible community of artists and musicians and retirees and young families injected with just enough of that fierce Texas independence. Cypress trees abound along the creeks and rivers, live oak trees spread their welcome shade. Live music on patios throughout the area—you just might walk up on a world-class recording artist or band on any corner. Great restaurants. Over 100 charitable organizations in a town of less than 10,000 people. It’s a truly magical vortex within Texas.

We live in the country outside of town on a few acres. We have a well and we have a septic. The good news is that we don’t pay any water or wastewater fees to some municipality. The bad news is what happened today.

To be clear, we do have water flowing in the taps thanks to a rather prescient (for me) decision over a year ago to invest in the buildout out of a rain harvesting system. We guttered the roof of our detached garage which stands a couple hundred feet away from the main house. We finished out this 800 sq. ft. space a couple years ago when Ann and I bought the place. It is my writing cave, my gym, my gallery, my solitary space.

And it holds all the well pump and water filtration equipment in that closet you see in the photo. Out back of my cave we have a polypropylene tank that holds a few thousand gallons of rainwater. Thank God it rained a bit last fall and this spring, and the tank was full. We had been using some of it—the rainwater is really nice and soft and wonderful compared to the hard stuff that comes from deep within the limestone crevices in the Edwards artesian aquifer that sits below this part of Central Texas. We do have some left in the tank. We’re not out of water. Not yet. We’re also 16 inches down from our annual normal rainfall—for the second consecutive year.

The weather history of this part of Texas—hell of Texas as a whole—is long droughts interrupted by occasional floods.

Back to the well. I can switch back and forth from the well to the rain system and over the weekend I switched back to the well and like an Anthony Davis jump shot I got nothing but air. Yeah, I said it Laker fans. First thing I do is run through a mental checklist which is the equivalent of a guy opening the hood of his car and staring at it. Nothing obvious.

After staring at it for a few more minutes and wishing it were different, I called the experts. They show up with a team at 9 am Monday morning. These guys run their own more qualified checklist. “Pump isn’t working,” says DJ. “Hmm,”says I. After discussing the various alternatives (none) they begin disassembling the head of the well and pulling pipe vertically out of the hole in the ground in 30-foot lengths with a big rolly winchy thing on the back of their truck. “Cool,” I say. DJ says something about how the pump unit ought to be coming up with the pipe at some point from about 500+ feet down and they’ll remove it and send down a shiny new one for the mere price of a few grand. For just the part. We don’t talk about the labor costs yet. A few hours later he comes to me in my writing cave and says “well.” Yeah thanks Captain Obvious I know it’s a well. I didn’t really say that. I was all ears.

Further discussion reveals that the pump didn’t come up with the pipe and they don’t really know where it went. “It usually comes right up.” “Huh,” I say. Drawing on my vast experience in 40 years of business I ask a penetrating question: “what are our uhh options?”

DJ proceeded to tell me that they’ll run a camera down there to see what’s going on. If the pump fell off completely and is floating somewhere in the aquifer, so be it. They’ll be able to sink a new one to an appropriate depth and we should be able to be operational again. If not—if the pump is somehow stuck to the pipe casing or that the casing collapsed somehow, then the well is now a dry hole and we’ll have to dig a brand new one nearby. “What are the percentages?” I asked. “I have no idea,” was his response. Having gotten that far, we pause for a shade and water break.

This part of Texas is certainly accustomed to extended drought. The current one ranks right up there as maybe the most serious in a really long while—or ever. The compounding effects of extended high heat, the archaic water drilling laws that Texas operates under, and the markedly increased demand, are making this one a whopper. Hays County Texas has been one of the fastest growing counties in the US for a decade, particularly in the last 5 years surrounding the pandemic. Thousands upon thousands of new homes have been and are being built in Kyle, Dripping Springs, Buda, and San Marcos along the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio to accommodate the rapidly growing population, who are seeking a country lifestyle with easy access to booming metropolitan areas, no state income tax, and a business growth mentality. Wimberley itself has some built-in geographic insulation from that growth due to being a bit off the beaten path and having a City Council and Mayor who consistently oppose new projects. That said, we’re all pulling the same water from the same underground aquifer in these parts. And we’re pulling too much out—more than Mother Nature can put back.

On my radio show, “The Empowered Community,” which airs each Friday from 7-9 AM CT, on KWVH.org and 94.3 FM, I have had multiple programs with extremely credible expert guests speaking on the water issues. David Baker, Founder and Executive Director of The Wimberley Valley Watershed Association, Patrick Cox, former executive director of the Trinity Edwards Springs Protection Association, Garrett Allen, longtime Director of Wimberley Water Supply Corporation, and Jed Regante, founder of Hill Country Rainwater; have all expressed different aspects of the same theme—there are too many straws poking into the aquifer, and even during times of significant rainfall, the “recharge” isn’t happening the way it used to. The hundreds of monitoring wells in the area indicate a consistent drawdown over time. The situation is not sustainable. Temporary restrictions on development and on new water well drilling must be made permanent. We must attack the demand because the supply is uncertain. Legislation from municipalities, counties, state, and federal authorities and agencies tends to trail behind the problems rather than lead with solutions. This is NOT an issue that we are exclusive in facing. Water supply issues abound in the Southwest and the West. The majority of usage and rights still belongs predominantly to agriculture, but subdivisions with newly laid green lawns are certainly not helping. We need to enforce xeriscaping and usage restrictions immediately.

My own situation is uncertain at this point. I will handle this crisis as I do all others. With respect for the things that are largely outside of my control, and intention for the things within my control. My go-to in my recovery is often the Serenity Prayer. At the risk of sounding trite, it pretty much covers everything in my life that hits me unexpectedly.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage the change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

What part of your life can’t be processed with that simple prayer? We always struggle with control. We’re always shocked by how little of it we actually have. We’re often pissed at external people, places, and things because we feel like we don’t deserve this to be happening to us. “Why’s this always happening to me?” says the victim unwilling to reconcile with the realities of life.

For my part, I can; 1. use less water. 2. I can prepare backups—like the rainwater collection system we put in last year. 3. We can move. No place is perfect. I like our little slice of Hill Country heaven here in Wimberley. I’m not willing to give it up right now. So I will do 1 and 2. And I will recite the Serenity Prayer. Anxiety and fear will not win in that mindset.