San Antonio Expected to Okay Continuation of 'Aquifer Sales Tax'

City Council on Thursday will discuss whether to continue the 1/8th cent sales tax which has been collected for the past 15 years to pay for projects to protect the Edwards Aquifer, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports. Annalisa Peace, Executive Director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance and a long time advocate for conservation efforts to protect the Aquifer, says the program has 'absolutely worked' to protect what remains the region's major source of drinking water. "In our opinion, the best thing you can do to protect the recharge zone is to keep it in it's pristine state, and this program does exactly that," Peace said. The sales tax is used mainly for purchasing property over the Recharge Zone to keep the property from being developed, and to prevent ranchers from irrigating the land. "We are assured that those areas will never be developed and that is very very important, because the biggest threat that we see to water quality and quantity is urbanization." The money from the sales tax, which was approved by the voters in 2000 and reauthorized twice since then, has paid for the purchase of what is now the Government Canyon State Wilderness Area, as well as helping pay for preserving the land over the Bracken Bat Cave. Some of the land which is purchased goes into public hands, while money has also been used to buy 'conservative easements.' That land remains privately held, but cannot be developed or irrigated, and is subject to periodic inspection...more

A good example of how a community surrounded by private land protects it's watershed.  Now if it was federal land there'd be a helluva fight, settled in court years later, with some local federal official saying they'd made the right decision since nobody was happy..