Jan. 30, 2025
The San Antonio region sits atop a precious resource. Stretching across thousands of acres over several counties in south central Texas, the Edwards Aquifer provides an abundant source of groundwater vital to the livelihood of the region's growing population and expanding economy. However, that rapid growth and development continue to impact the aquifer — San Antonio's primary water resource — reducing and compromising the aquifer's ability to replenish, known as recharge.
This year, San Antonio's Edwards Aquifer Protection Program (EAPP) celebrates its 25th anniversary with more than 187,000 acres of land already protected from development. While rules are in place to regulate development and pollution, the local community understands that the best way to protect the aquifer is to conserve the sensitive and irreplaceable land located over its recharge and contributing zones.
"One of the guiding principles in the City of San Antonio's SA Tomorrow comprehensive plan adopted in 2016 is 'Conserve, protect, and manage San Antonio's natural, cultural, and historic resources, and open space,'" notes Planning Director Bridgett White, AICP. "The EAPP is an important tool in ensuring that growth and development is balanced with protecting natural resources such as the Edwards Aquifer."
Many ranches, like this one in Uvalde County, proudly proclaim that their land is under protection through participation in the EAPP. Photo courtesy of City of San Antonio Edwards Aquifer Protection Program (EAPP).
A model for open space protection
With a national and international reputation for effectiveness, San Antonio's EAPP offers lessons for planners confronting the challenge of open space protection.
1. Know your state law
State laws governing municipal powers, and allowable funding sources, may facilitate or frustrate open space protection. Planners familiar with these codes — and willing to suggest tactical alterations — may find them useful instruments for land acquisition.
The EAPP originated in 2000 with a municipal sales tax increase of one-eighth cent on the dollar (called Proposition 3, for $45 million total), utilizing the state's allowance of a voter approved "venue" tax to fund acquisition of parkland. This was a creative initial step — expanding a tool intended only to create municipal parks to the complementary objective of targeted land preservation.
But state law still frustrated the broader goal, as municipal parks may only be created within the municipality's home county. This initial funding round therefore limited purchases to small, expensive parcels within high-growth Bexar County, which then had to be developed and managed as public parks at an additional cost. That's significant because roughly 70 percent of San Antonio's drinking water originates as recharge occurring west of Bexar County.
In advance of the EAPP reauthorization in 2005, however, local officials successfully lobbied the state legislature to add watershed protection through conservation easements to the venue tax menu. Approved by voters again (as Proposition 1, for $90 million), this innovation enabled acquisition of easements in adjoining counties, allowing for more efficient expenditures, usually at about 50 percent of fair market value, and without the added expense of park management. Most importantly, given the aquifer's interjurisdictional flow, recharge to the San Antonio pool of the Edwards Aquifer occurs mainly in these counties, making them the optimal targets for protection.
The Edwards Aquifer Protection Program expanded in the early 2000s, allowing for the purchase of conservation easements across three counties. Today, nearly 200,000 acres have been protected. Courtesy of EAPP.
2. Execute your land protection policy proactively
As a planning tool, the EAPP provided groundwater protection through land preservation well in advance of predicted growth, providing a boost to the city's sustainability goals, although even its initiators likely did not anticipate that by 2024 San Antonio would be the fastest growing city in the nation. In the intervening years, the EAPP was employed to secure significant recharge land in adjacent counties, before growth spilled into those exurban areas, leading to fragmentation of large ranches and escalating land prices.
Still, one of the challenges with protecting open space proactively is confronting the argument that such outlying land will never be developed anyway. For the EAPP, the growth explosion within and around San Antonio proved those charges wrong, but it is always prudent for planners to prepare projections on population growth and prices in the targeted area.
3. Build an advocacy coalition to foster your conservation program
In promoting the EAPP over the years, the program's pioneers had fostered strong citizen advocacy of the need to protect recharge land. In 2020, when supporters backed the tax for a fourth reauthorization vote (all previous rounds received overwhelming support), the mayor endorsed shifting the tax revenue to an entirely different use. Public outcry against what would amount to the end of EAPP triggered an eventual compromise: City leaders approved a stream of income from the local water utility to the city's general fund as the new funding source.
Another essential coalition came in the form of property owners in outlying counties, typically large-acreage ranchers, who have sold easements to the EAPP. They in turn recruit other landowning friends, family, and neighbors who might otherwise be reluctant to participate.
While advocacy for EAPP's continuation has provided crucial funding, these owners ensure a continued supply of land and easements to purchase. Fueling this dynamic is an ethos of sustainability advocated by rural landowners increasingly challenged by drought and encroaching development.
4. Seek out partnerships for technical and funding support
The EAPP infrastructure includes an external land acquisition team comprised of a national nonprofit, The Nature Conservancy, and the local Green Spaces Alliance, which work directly with potential participants. Relying on their experience in relationship building and negotiating easements is an important efficiency of the program.
The Nature Conservancy, a national group, and a local nonprofit help the EAPP gain efficiencies by working directly with landowners, nurturing relationships, and negotiating easements.
Another crucial strategy is bolstering the primary funding source through grants and collaborations. The EAPP has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense's Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program (REPI) to purchase recharge property that buffers military facilities. "Joint Base San Antonio [JBSA] is very fortunate to have great partnerships with the nexus goals of conservation and protecting the mission through the EAPP and REPI programs," says Richard King, program manager for the JBSA Community Mission Integration Team. "Together everyone accomplishes more."
A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service facilitated acquisition of a particularly expensive easement, and the city's Development Services Department has compensated the EAPP in return for using lands purchased outright by the program for mitigation credits applied to a regional habitat conservation plan.
5. Stick to your conservation mission
Open space protection presents a multitude of benefits, but in the absence of one clearly defined goal it can be vulnerable to mission drift.
Some of the positive externalities to emerge from EAPP's focus on recharge conservation include the sustenance of generational ranching operations, scenic value, habitat protection, and so on. To keep those side benefits from diluting the primary goal of protecting the aquifer's recharge — rather than, say, pursuing a property solely for its scenic beauty — it is vital to nail down and continually advance that foundational mission.
State law may help if it narrowly restricts the use of funds. If it does not, then it is important to codify that mission into the local enabling ordinance. This allows planners to focus on a holistic outcome rather than justify open space protection on a parcel-by-parcel basis.
As drought, development, and other threats to the Edwards Aquifer grow in intensity, the EAPP remains a vital tool in conserving and ensuring the sustainability of groundwater resources for generations to come. Its success over 25 years offers planners and leaders across the country lessons for proactive planning, coalition building, and leveraging state laws to protect important open spaces.
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