HEARING WEDNESDAY ON GROUNDWATER JURISDICTION

  

The 21st District Court in Bastrop will hold a hearing Wednesday that could result in a landmark decision dealing with groundwater issues in Texas.

Carson Campbell, Judge of the 21st District Court, will preside over the hearing at 1:30 Wednesday afternoon in the Bastrop County courthouse.  Residents in Bastrop, Lee and other Central Texas counties have been challenging water marketers who have secured the rights to pump groundwater from those counties to San Antonio and other cities along Interstate 35.  Wednesday’s hearing is part of a legal challenge to a permit granted to water marketer End-Op, now known as Recharge Water LP, by the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District.  The permit allows the company to export up to 46,000 acres feet of water each year to Travis, Williamson and Hays counties from 14 wells in Bastrop and Lee counties.

Three individual landowners and a non-profit called Environmental Stewardship filed suit to stop that permit from going forward.  Before the permit was issued, a judge ruled against allowing the group to be parties to the original hearing.  Wednesday’s hearing in Bastrop will decide the issue of whether the court has jurisdiction to hear the landowners’ appeal from being denied.  If Judge Campbell accepts jurisdiction, he could go further and decide whether the landowners were improperly denied an opportunity to be heard in opposition to the permit.