The Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District approved a phased permit for the proposed 201-site, 30 cabin Horseshoe Ridge RV Resort. Phase one of the permit will allow for 8.5 acre feet of water per year, phase two will allow for up to 12 acre feet of water per year and phase three will allow for the full 14 acre feet of water, which amounts to around 4.5 million gallons, per year.
“The permit was approved because it was a lawful use of water that fits within the confines of district rules,” Charlie Flatten, general manager of the HTGCD, said. “It was approved in the way it was approved to protect the aquifer against an over allocation of water for an unbuilt asset. We didn’t want to allocate the water if the project was never going to be completed. We are trying to be conservative about how we allocate our water.”
The permit was approved after a settlement was reached between two potential protestants and the resort.
“The applicant came in with requests that most people would not consider realistic, and through a long process of negotiation we were able to get the amount of requested water down to some thing that the district feels was responsible and adequate for what the developer wanted,” Flatten said. “I was really happy with the amount of collaboration that the applicant and the protestants were able to have with each other. They came to a settlement agreement that everyone agreed was respectful of the resource, and we had a developer that was very receptive to the community’s concerns and was willing to do what was possible to mitigate the community’s concerns. The system worked like it should have.”
The first phase of the resort would include 124 slips for RVs as well as welcome center, amenity center, washateria, water pump station and beach-entry swimming pool. Phase two would serve an additional 77 slips and phase three would allow for the construction of an additional 30 yurts or cabins.
“I took a hardline approach in the pre-construction and design phase to make sure that we did every possible thing we could in terms of water conservation,” Billy Rhyne, owner of Horseshoe Ridge said. “We are really embracing water conservation and implementing various rainwater collection systems.… We’ve done our utmost to ensure we are here to conserve water. We are the first ones (under the new Jacob’s Well Groundwater Management Zone) in the Lower Trinity as a public water system. The data showed what the data showed, and the district staff agreed and they recommended the permit based on the data.”
Because of the creation of the Jacob’s Well Groundwater Management Zone, the water is required to be pulled from the Lower Trinity Aquifer instead of the Middle Trinity. The intent of the zone was to protect the wells and drinking water from the Middle Trinity that is used by all but the entire Wimberley Valley. Flatten said that there is not much data on the Lower Trinity aquifer, but he is hoping that the district’s agreement with Horseshoe Ridge to use the wells as monitoring wells will help with that.
“We required the permittee to drill a Middle Trinity observation well, and we required the permittee to run the aquifer test on both the Lower Trinity wells to see if there was any impact on his monitoring well, which is directly in between the two Lower Trinity wells... At maximum pumping, we found zero effect on the Middle Trinity well during the duration of that aquifer test. So the science that is available to us shows that there is no immediate effect on the Middle Trinity aquifer. We do have monitor wells in place, including the one we required the applicant to drill, and we will be watching those wells closely to see if there are any odd decreases in the aquifer that could be explained by that Lower Trinity pumping.”
Flatten also said that if that data shows there are issues in the future, HTGCD has options.
“The district has recourse if a permit that has an intended purpose in a specific aquifer is damaging an aquifer it was not intended to influence,” Flatten said. “That recourse would have to be tailor made to whatever the negative impact is.”
The 30-acre property is located near the intersection of Ranch Road 12 and Old Oaks Ranch Road north of Woodcreek. Following the approval of the water permit, Rhyne said that he had the necessary permits for construction from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality and the Texas Department of Transportation to begin construction, but that he is still working with Hays County Development Services. He estimated that construction could begin on the property as early as a month away and would take around a year to complete. A county official said that the RV resort still had to determine how they would handle wastewater on site and it could be a county system or a state permitted system.
Beyond the use of water, there are other environmental factors with the proposal that have raised concern.
“If that site was to be built out on county subdivision rules there would only be five homes built on it and approximately 50 gallons of water per acre,” David Baker with the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association said. “What Horseshoe Ridge will do will be over 600 gallons per acre, so the district needs to look at their rules in terms of keeping equity in water use. There are other concerns with the wastewater treatment and stormwater and the density of that development. They are above the springs there that feed the spring that is right below the site as well as the traffic and the intensity of land use is a concern there for the neighbors that are downstream.”
“I hope that Billy (Rhyne) will continue to work with the neighbors and the watershed association to try and minimize the impacts of that development and take seriously the concerns that have been brought up by the watershed and the neighbors in the area and engage with us to try and continue to mitigate those. It is a very high density project and will set a precedent.”
Rhyne stated he knew that he would have to show his commitment to developing the property with the environment in mind during the construction process but that he was willing to continue to do so.
