How an endangered salamander forced a Texan city to save water
This weekend in San Antonio, a new park is opening in one of the poorer neighbourhoods just south of downtown, at a spot where two spring-fed rivers meet. The $13m, three-acre Confluence Park has huge concrete flower petals that will gather rainwater for reuse, and will house educational facilities about sustainable water consumption.
“This park is the place that you will want to visit when it rains,” says Matthew Driffill, recreation superintendent for the San Antonio River Authority.
Known as the “American Venice” for its River Walk urban canal system, San Antonio is now perhaps more efficient and forward-thinking in its water usage than any city in the US, possibly the world.
It wasn’t always this way. In 1982, San Antonio’s water use per person per day was about 200 gallons – considerably more than the national average of 122, and at the expense of its neighbouring cities. San Marcos, New Braunfels and parts of Austen accused San Antonio of over-tapping the 1,250 sq mi Edwards Aquifer they shared, leading to bad blood, particularly during times of drought.
Fast-forward nearly 40 years and the city’s population has grown from 785,000 to 1.5 million, making it the seventh largest city in the US, and the largest to draw its water exclusively from an underground aquifer rather than a nearby lake. Yet over the same period, water use per person has fallen to 140 gallons: a massive 38% drop.
What happened?
‘The people are very upset about this little critter’
“We’ve a history of being contentious about water for a long time, [but] this city now has gained a deep respect for using our natural resources wisely to see that way of thinking as an investment in our future,” says Julián Castro, who was mayor of San Antonio from 2009 until joining the Obama administration in 2014; many have tipped him to run for president in 2020.
“We’ve gotten to a better place now than most American cities, and that is mainly that we’ve come to grips with an issue that cities all over the world are grappling with.”
There are takeaways from San Antonio’s sustainable consumption for cities everywhere. But it learned its lesson the hard way, and from an unlikely teacher: a salamander.
In 1991, resentment towards San Antonio came to a head when the environmental group Sierra Club launched federal court action against the city, arguing that its overuse of the aquifer water was putting a number of endangered species at risk of extinction. One was the Texas blind salamander, an eyeless amphibian that lives only in the water-filled caves of the aquifer. It became symbolic of the court’s decision to force San Antonio to use less water.
The first ruling, in 1993, said that, during droughts, San Antonio would have to reduce the water it pumped from the aquifer by as much as 60%. At the time, many in the city thought it impossible – and subsequent legislative action served only to prolong debate.
