Local groups around Medina Lake want the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission to evaluate the...
Brush sticks up from the bottom of Medina Lake on March 2, 2022, as the lake drops to 24.5 percent full.On a pontoon in the middle of Medina Lake, drought surrounds Rachel Mulherin. Looming limestone walls tower nearly 50 feet over the lake’s surface. Long patches of dry rock and dirt stretch from the shoreline to lakeside houses. And dangling ladders hang down to boat docks — the water levels so low that it’s a hike down to the water’s edge.
Mike Mulherin drives his boat on Medina Lake on March 2, 2022, while his wife, Rachel, center, and their friend Michelle Reichle ride. The Melherins and Reichle, members of Save Medina Lake, are advocating for better stewardship of Medina Lake water by the Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Counties Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, known as the BMA. As of March 2, the lake was 24.5 percent full as the BMA was about to begin releasing water from the lake for agricultural irrigation.
Save Medina Lake “thinks that in this area where we live, water is such a scarce resource and such a vital resource that we need to elevate it to a different level,” said Henning Eilert-Olsen, the committee’s chairman. “It’s natural that when changes as large as what we see in here, not just the economy and population, but the amount of rainfall coming in, that you would review what’s happening.
An initial obstacle for Save Medina Lake is that the BMA is not subject to sunset review. But Greg Ellis, an attorney and lobbyist for the Lake Medina Conservation Society, thinks it should be. He said that when the Legislature put Texas river authorities under the Sunset Commission’s purview, it limited which agencies were affected to those with “river authority” in their titles, rather than by the functions they perform.
The Medina Lake dam is seen on March 2, 2022, as the lake sits about 50 feet below normal pool elevation at 24.5 percent full.And it has been tried once before. In 2019, then-state Rep. Leo Pacheco, D-San Antonio, who represented Texas House District 118,to that year’s bill related to the sunset review process that proposed making the BMA subject to sunset review, though not abolishment. But he withdrew the amendment.
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