Victoria’s Choice: the nuke, or the Guadalupe and the whooper?
I suppose I can respect why the city of Victoria thinks its water needs are covered by spending millions of dollars on water rights - it’s their job to make sure they’ve secured enough water for the city - at least on paper. But those rights have little value if there is no water in the river.
Gov. Rick Perry has requested federal aid for all 254 counties in Texas because of a statewide drought. It makes zero sense to me why the city continues to contend there is enough water for the proposed nuclear power plant. During a drought, there is simply not enough water in the Guadalupe River to supply a nuclear power plant, local industry, the city of Victoria, the bays and estuaries, along with water for the growth in the Hill Country. If all of those future demands were placed on the Guadalupe River today, I think the river would run dry.
The Guadalupe River, one of Texas’ most pristine rivers, is under siege by industrial and municipal interests. These interests and uses threaten the agricultural and environmental interests - along with entire ecosystem that depends on the Guadalupe and its bays, including the recreational and fishing industry, the blue crab and the federally endangered whooping crane.
Any discussion about the health of the Guadalupe must include groundwater - the two are naturally intertwined. It’s foolish to consider them as two separate systems/sources of water. Rivers continue to flow during dry periods and droughts because of contributions from groundwater also known as base flow. The Guadalupe River’s base flow comes from the Edwards Aquifer.
The Guadalupe River borders my ranch, Rio Vista Bluff, and the Cypress Lake at Rio Vista Bluff is the only naturally occurring cypress forest/water habitat west of the Trinity River. Nearly 400 bird species have been spotted, and the 300-acre lake and wetlands area was listed as a federally protected rookery in 1963.
On my ranch and beyond, the lack of water is forever changing the entire basin. The reduced freshwater inflows from the Guadalupe to the San Antonio Bay system are critically having an impact on ecosystems of the bays and estuaries. Freshwater inflow is required to keep the salinity in a range that supports a healthy environment and prevents the food chain of the bay from collapse.
This brings me to the endangered whooping crane. There are only three populations of whooping cranes left, and of those, the only one that is a natural, self-sustaining flock is here in Texas. This flock numbers less than 250 birds and winters at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas Gulf Coast. More than 50 whooping cranes have died this past year. The drought has created a shortage of blue crabs, which are key to the whoopers’ nourishment for the breeding season. Blue crabs require freshwater from the Guadalupe. If it gets too salty, they leave.
As much as we need water for our municipal and industrial uses, we need to make choices that protect the health of the Guadalupe River and bays and all the species that depend on those irreplaceable ecosystems. We need to be smarter about our water and look at the whole system. Giving our water to the Exelon plant will create a man-made drought, and there’s simply too much at stake. Our river, our groundwater, our land, our agriculture, our wildlife, our fish, our whooping crane and our future is at stake - what could be more important?
Is the city of Victoria along with Exelon and the GBRA ready to kill the Guadalupe and the whooping crane for a misplaced nuke plant? My goodness, I hope not. We need to stop this nonsense.
Jan Wheelis owns the Rio Vista Bluff Ranch where she resides.
