Judge Dumps Edwards
Aquifer Pump Limits

SAN ANTONIO —(AP)— A final ruling in a lawsuit brought against the Edwards Aquifer Authority by a catfish farmer strikes down not only water pumping limits but also the agency's regional drouth rules.

State District Judge Joseph Hart of Austin said the authority's board did not follow the state's Administrative Procedure Act because there was no ``reasoned justification'' for the pumping limits or the drouth rules.

Both sets of regulations were adopted last year.

Hart indicated in a December letter to attorneys in the case he was tossing out the permitting rules, which contained formulas to determine how much water each of the aquifer's approximately 1000 pumpers should get.

Hart's final judgment, signed last Thursday by lawyers in the case, also concludes the drouth rules are invalid.

Greg Ellis, general manager of the 30 month-old state authority, said the aquifer region won't be greatly affected by the invalidation of the agency's drouth rules because it doesn't affect drouth management plans adopted by cities across the region.

Those plans are modeled after the authority's rules, Ellis said.

``The only people who really will be left without drouth rules are those in unincorporated areas,'' Ellis was quoted as saying in the San Antonio Express-News.

A natural underground reservoir, the Edwards Aquifer is used by San Antonio for drinking water and by surrounding cities and counties for farming and other businesses.

Hart made the ruling in a lawsuit brought by Ronald Pucek, operator of Living Waters Artesian Springs, formerly a huge catfish-farming enterprise in southwestern Bexar County.

Uvalde County irrigators intervened in the lawsuit.

Ellis said the authority is moving toward repassage of the invalidated permitting and drouth rules.

Pucek, under the invalidated permit rules, was to get only 15 percent of the water he wanted. He said the authority won't get by with passing the same rules.

Under the interim pumping authorization set out by the legislative act creating the authority, pumpers can take up to the maximum amount of water they withdrew in any one year between 1972 and 1993.

That collectively amounts to 792,000 acre-feet of water, although the most ever pumped in one year was an estimated 542,000 acre-feet. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons.

The authority is required to reduce annual aquifer pumping to 450,000 acre-feet. It is trying to limit pumping through economic incentives.