The Brazos River is inextricably tied to Waco’s identity, yet it hasn’t regularly contributed to Waco’s water supply in almost a century.
Now city officials are moving ahead with plans to tap into the Brazos to supplement its main water source, Lake Waco. Leaders say the lake is vulnerable to drought, and relying on it too heavily could limit the area’s long-term industrial and population growth.
Those concerns led the council four years ago to spend $4.3 million for Smith Bend Ranch, a pecan farm below Lake Whitney that possesses some of the oldest and most secure water rights on the Brazos River.
The purchase gives Waco legal access to up to 2,100 acre feet of additional water a year, or about 684 million gallons. That represents about a 3% increase in the city’s water supply.
“At the time, (buying the pecan farm) was a bit of a leap for the council,” said Waco Mayor Jim Holmes during a recent council meeting. “But in hindsight, it was one of the best investments we’ve ever made.”
The city is exploring ways to overcome practical challenges of pumping and treating that water.
Because Smith Bend is nearly 20 miles upriver from Waco, the city in August filed an application to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for permission to draw water using those rights from a yet-to-be-constructed intake point somewhere within city limits.
City water officials are studying several options for treating the Brazos River’s slightly saline water. One of the options involves mixing it with Lake Waco water at the city’s dissolved air flotation pre-treatment plant on Airport Road.
Others include a pricy reverse osmosis system at the Riverside Water Treatment Plant, or alternatively, mixing river and treated wastewater for landscaping purposes, thus relieving pressure on Lake Waco.
The use of the new water rights is a near certainty over the next 60 years, said Charles Leist, Waco’s director of public utilities. But the need may arrive by the end of the decade, depending on circumstances such as a prolonged drought, the arrival of thirsty new industries such as data centers, or irrigation demands for the downtown redevelopment project.
“Residents not only pay a lot of money for water, they pay for us to consider future water needs, not just for today, but water for tomorrow, and then the day after, and years after that, because it’s an investment,” Leist said.
Hidden treasure
In the emerging competition for Texas water, the 630-acre Smith Bend Ranch was a pair of aces hiding in plain sight.
Wesley Lloyd, a Waco oil and gas attorney and member of the Brazos River Authority board, was involved in the purchase on behalf of the property owner, a client of his.
The owner was struggling to sell the land “because the (real estate agent) didn’t know what they were looking at,” Lloyd said. He recalls telling the property owner, “The water rights are the valuable thing here.”
The farm’s water rights date back to 1921 and have priority over all but 56 of the 1,814 water users on the Brazos River. That has big implications for Waco’s ability to access water during a drought.
Under the Texas legal doctrine of “first in time, first in right,” junior rights holders upstream must relinquish their water if a senior rights holder makes a formal request known as a water call.
Lloyd said it took three phone calls to get the city of Waco on board with purchasing the farm: “
There are not a lot of places that have the foresight to do water planning the way the city of Waco has done it and continues to do it,” he said.
During a prolonged drought in 2013, Waco found itself on the wrong end of a water call. Dow Chemical Co. and its chemical complex in Freeport have Brazos River water rights on the Brazos River dating back to the 1940s and earlier. The company made a call upstream and the state of Texas ordered Waco release water from Lake Waco.
Leist said the city views the water rights acquired with Smith Bend Ranch as a foundation for future growth more than a backup during droughts, “though they could certainly be used that way.”
The farm itself is likely to be sold at market value once the water rights are dissociated from the land, Leist said.
Next steps
The city will need approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to transfer the water intake from the Smith Bend property down to Waco.
“We’re asking to take the water rights we obtained to anywhere within Lake Brazos,” Leist said.
Lake Brazos is the portion of the Brazos River extending from the low-water dam near La Salle Avenue, all the way to the Bosque River just below the Lake Waco dam.
The TCEQ process to transfer the intake site could take 12 to 16 months, giving time for the state to notify and accept responses from other rights holders that might be affected.
By moving the intake site downstream, the city is increasing the number of potential water users who would be subject to a call.
“Someone between the current diversion point and the new downstream diversion point who is now going to be subject to a call could (say), ‘Hang on, we’re not cool with that,’ ” Lloyd said.
The city of Waco has experienced tensions with farmers over Brazos River water in the past. Before 2013, municipalities, unlike farmers, were exempted from priority water calls, meaning farms had to slash their diversions even if their rights were senior to a city’s.
That system prompted the Waco-based Texas Farm Bureau to file a lawsuit a year earlier disputing the exemptions, which the bureau ultimately won.
Jay Bragg, a commodity and regulatory specialist with the Texas Farm Bureau, said none of the organization’s members have expressed concerns about Waco’s purchase at Smith Bend.
“I don’t really see there being any major conflicts,” Bragg said. “You know, if they do call on that water right it’d be disappointing, but I can’t see that happening, because again, that water has been used in the past (by Smith Bend Ranch) anyway.”
He commended the city on planning for its water future and described the move as preferable to the pre-lawsuit status quo, where cities could pass the buck to farmers instead of proactively securing their water access.
“From a water planning standpoint, this is a very shrewd business decision by the city of Waco,” Bragg said.
