The Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District has scheduled a public hearing for Sept. 14 for citizen input on their proposed water management plan, which they are required to do every five years.

The plan may have to go forward without the highly-anticipated managed available groundwater (MAG) numbers that the district needs from the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) in order to create a legally enforceable management plan projected to the year 2060.

“Our five-year time frame just happens to coincide, within about three months, when the MAG numbers would be coming from TWDB,” said Joe Cooper, general manager of the LPGCD. “We don’t have the MAG numbers yet, so when we receive those we will submit an amended management plan that includes MAG volumes and rules that apply to it.”

LPGCD would prefer to wait for MAG numbers from the TWDB and then proceed with the final plan, but were told they could not do so.

Earlier this month, LPGCD met with the four other water conservation districts that make up the Groundwater Management Area 12 to finalize their desired future conditions (DFC) numbers, which are required by the TWDB and used to determine the MAG  – the benchmarks for acceptable drawdowns for aquifers in the district.

This was the third time that LPGCD, after suggestions by TWDB, revised their numbers.

The DFC for the Simsboro aquifer was set to a 237-foot average drawdown  over the next 50 years.

Also, GMA 12 approved a resolution for a “margin of error” – or about a 5 percent variance or a 10-foot variable drawdown for the areas aquifers. The move allows for variable results when running water-modeling files on the aquifers.

“There has been quite a few exchanges between us and the TWDB over the past few months regarding DFCs,” Cooper said. “We came to the conclusion recently that the plan is good.”

The TWDB has a six-month window to provide MAG data to the district.

Cooper said he likes the staff at TWDB and he feels they can work together to get to a management plan – he just wonders about the mixed signals.

“We are going to take it one step at a time and abide by the prevailing law,” Cooper said. “We will stay in a moratorium state until we get our MAG number issued to us and we get our management plan amended and accepted by the TWDB.”