Travis County Commissioners Court
August 11, 2009,
Item 20
We are ready to take up item number 20, receive presentation from dr.
john sharp regarding hydro logical investigation of tecolote farm, manor, Texas, and take appropriate action.
>> good morning.
>> thank you, judge Biscoe and Commissioners.
i want to introduce clint waller, who is a student in my class.
and this is a joint presentation by myself and clint.
this was a class of 15 students, including two ta's, studying tecolote farms.
if we can get that first slide.
can you see the slides, I hope?
okay.
i want to acknowledge help by marcus gary, a student of mine who lives nearby, darrell peculiarham, who is in the audience from thorn hill consulted with us before.
bob ready of the bureau of economic geology who gave the geo probe demonstration.
ben schwartz of Texas state and others.
this was a four-day project.
the students have basically four days in the field.
and a write-up.
and we want to thank the petry's, the gary's, Travis County personnel.
chaicialsburg was out there one morning with us and manville personnel and some of the various landowners.
you have a complete report which was given to you I think a month and a half ago, but I thought we would just outline here our general findings, tell you what we found.
and we would be happy to go into the detail of how we discovered these.
the site, as you know, is the tecolote farms, and it is right between -- I'll make sure to pointer here.
between decker and gillliland creek, right in there.
we focused our studies on the area south and west of -- well, south of decker creek basically and a little bit on the eastern boundary for two reasons.
first of all, the petry's had drilled wells in the northern portion of their farm without much luck.
it's closer to the major pumping areas.
and a preliminary study by dr.
schwartz, and I soon hope he is dr.
gary, we did not find promising.
so we focused on the area basically in the southern portion of their situation.
let's cut right to the chase, the findings.
first a couple -- some general ones.
and the discussions you had earlier, the drop of the water table and the failure of some wells, not just the petry's, is caused by a combination of the drought and increased pump acknowledge.
we can't really allocate that claim one way or the other, but clearly that is the situation.
we concentrated on the southern portion because it was farther from the major production wells, previous field wells and a preliminary study.
we did find that in this area the water table was slightly higher and we hope it means it's isolated from the areas of pumpage.
we found in general in this whole farm the shallow upper five meters, sometimes 10 meters, 15 to 30 feet, was a fine grain low permeability material.
but there are localized high permeability sands below.
and we identified from our study, from the student's study, they identified five promising sites for the wells.
and if you would go to the next one, clint.
and they are shown on here, the first two sites are in the field out there, and these are located with a combination of electromagnetics and earth recess tifty.
they are not unique, but what we are looking for is the zones that did not conduct electricity well.
the clays conduct electricity very well.
the sands of the freshwater not quite as well.
we looked for earth recesstivity yes in two sites and in two sites we ground tested with a geo probe, which is a machine that actually punches a pipe down into the ground and we could see that in these two cases there was sand with water.
and sites one and three.
and our preliminary evaluation, these are the five sites that look promising, and if I may paraphrase darrell peckham, we are cautiously optimistic that you could find water at these sites.
these are our findings.
and being a professor or a promising student, we would be happy to elaborate at great length on how we came to these.
>> may I ask -- I'm sorry, go ahead, mr.
davis.
>> no.
i just wanted to -- I'll yield to you.
i just had a few things.
i just wanted to maybe make them aware of, and that's just some -- I think some very viable programs that are available.
if any of you have been watching the news lately, looking at the drought that's not only affecting central Texas area, but the far reaching areas, we are -- state of Texas is in a terrible drought situation.
and by saying that, a lot of folks are selling cattle.
some folks are not even able to har theft their -- that harvest their crops, so tear taking a substantial hit as attributed to the drought.
however, there has been money that's been set aside by the federal government, allocated and really haven't really been claimed substantially by persons that would qualify for money money, for federal dollars.
and that also is applicable to I guess the ranchers, but also to the farmers in the area, in the eastern part of Travis County.
and the organizations that is under the united states farm bureau, and of course they have extensions within that particular bureau.
and for example, the environmental quality for incentive program, which is really an extension of that, but they allow monies to be made available to those that are in need of assistance.
their location is on clayton lane, 210 clayton lane, which is not too far from the capital plaza area, I think.
in that general area somewhere off of maybe berkman, I think it intersects berkman drive.
so there is a place where a person can go if they need assistance.
and there are farming disasters I guess that has occurred.
so I just want to relay that information to you.
in fact, they even have I think money maybe set aside I think for maybe not the possibly drilling of wells, but also the farmers that may need access to water by wells, but also irrigation.
and my understanding of the program is that they have 70 to 90% reimbursement rate for those that have fallen on hard times.
so they -- this particular situation is readily available and I would encourage anyone who is out there that are dealing with situations because of the drought, whether you be farmers with cattle, persons that -- cattle/farmers that have problems.
i would suggest that you maybe get in touch with these folks.
and the number is 459-1632.
so -- I'm sorry, 1623.
so again -- it's under the united states farm bureau and it's environmental quality incentive program.
i think that's exactly the program that you have to come up under to actually get this -- the federal dollars that have been sent to this area for those that are experiencing hardships under this dreadful disaster situation here in Travis County.
i wanted to share that information with you.
>> Commissioner Eckhardt?
>> I had a couple of -- this is a pretty steep learning curve, I have to confess.
when you all speak of the geo physical characteristics of I think you were saying about 25 to 30 feet, initial 25 to 30 feet from the surface as a low permeability, but then under that are pockets of water.
is that like -- in layman's language, does that mean the first 25 or 30 feet is just really I am permeable, hard clay type stuff.
>> even though there's water there, you could not produce it from a well.
>> but under 30 feet --
>> there are places.
>> there are spots.
>> and that is -- those are the sweet spots.
so if I may be a professor for a second, every place on the land's surface there is water, we can find water, but what we have to find is permeability and a big enough body of material that can produce that water to the wells.
and the student findings I think are promising, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
you never know until you punch the well down what you get.
>> and then the study also mentions that y'all looked at decker creek as a possible recharge of those pockets of water and found that it's not a likely recharge of the pockets of water?
>> I should let the students do some of the talking.
>> [ laughter ]
>> I guess to the first question I would just add that through the geo physical surveys that a lot of these channels, which are old creek beds that have gravel and sand deposits, they're not necessarily all connected.
from the limited grid that we had time to build, we weren't able to determine exactly how interconnected these things are.
so while we did find large pockets of what was sand and gravel that had water, we can't say for sure if they're interconnected and how long they'll produce.
and then I guess for the second question --
>> well, what we did was -- what I had the students do was they actually gauged waller creek and they gauged at the upstream and several places --
>> decker creek.
>> decker creek.
was it gaining flow, was it losing flow.
and from the time we gauged it, it was pretty much constant.
we thought since the water table is lower than the creek, the creek could have been leaking in.
but we didn't find any evidence of that.
and that's because the low permeability, shallow material.
>> is that -- again, this is a really steep learning curve and I may be throwing out completely ridiculous questions, but what the heck.
along a creek bed like decker creek and gillliland creek, and I take this only from my own personal experience.
i have -- my house is on what was probably the creek course for shoal creek, which has a pretty dense clay deposit.
what do they call it, creeping del rio.
is that a similar circumstance with decker creek and gillliland creek, that there would be a tighter soil around these creeks than in other portions?
>> it's not as tight as the del rio clay.
>> I hear del rio is really bad.
>> that is very, very low in permeability.
this has more permeability.
and I suspect if they had rains it could actually get some recharge to the aquifers underneath.
>> but is it likely -- I'm just throwing this out there.
is is it likely that along -- tecolote is located directly on decker creek.
and almost in the croch of decker and gillliland.
is is it likely that the soil permeability is denser at that point than in other places or not?
>> we've not done the study on the soil permeability, but it looks -- if you look at the soil conservation service maps -- it's the natural resources conservation commission.
those are relatively uniform soils.
what happens is when the colorado river would go up and flood before the dams, you would get all the fine grain materials.
those are the ones that settled out relatively uniform in the whole floodplain.
>> that's good.
do we know how deep the original hand dug well was and then the subsequent 2005 well?
>> clint, do you remember those?
i wanted to say they're about 30 feet.
>> 30?
>> I think one was 28 feet, one was -- they're both right at 30 feet.
and when we looked at the water table this we niewnd the water table was just underneath that, maybe at 32, 33 feet.
>> so is it safe to say that the previous wells were possibly just shy of the higher probability of water?
>> it's a possibility.
>> you mention in the report that -- and you also mention in this powerpoint that you provided that the drop in water table and the failure of the wells was caused by a combination of continuing driewt and increase -- of drought and increased pumping.
is it possible -- was it possible through the way y'all conducted the study to determine whose pumping?
>> no.
there's many wells and it's kind of a co-mingled effect.
there's just not sufficient detail to really determine that.
>> okay.
>> and just as a point to that, it's my understanding that there are nine wells within -- nine wells within 3,000 feet of tecolote.
two of which are Travis County's, which represent less than 11% of the pumping capacity in the three thousand foot radius.
is that y'all's understanding too?
>> I think that's correct, yes.
>> and since we have the benefit of your expertise, both of you, we clearly have an issue with the distribution of groundwater resources on the colorado, (indiscernible) aquifer.
do you have any suggestions for us as policymakers of tools that we could pursue in a cheefg a better distribution and a sustainable distribution of the colorado aliewfian aquifer since we are seeing an increased pumping?
>> let me start off and clint, feel free to jump in at any point.
it's the lack of detailed information is always the problem.
of course, any scientist is going to say we need more information.
and that is basically it.
>> most policy litions would say that -- politicians would say that too.
>> I would encourage the county to make a groundwater district in that area as a mechanism to gather the data that you will need to make decisions in coming decades and to maintain a place to actually store and keep those data so they're available to those who need it.
i think that would be a good first step.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> so you found five promising wells?
>> yes, sir.
>> and when you say promising, you mean.
>> we mean from the geo physical data that we ran, we saw anomalies that suggest that there were gravels and sand, other coarse grain materials that were saturated with freshwater.
and on two of those sites we were able to use the geo probe, which as dr.
sharp mentioned before, sends a coring mechanism into the ground to bring a solid piece of the ground that you can see what exactly is underneath the soil.
once we got down to -- it mentions exactly where per location in the report, but I believe one of them was at seven meters.
when we got down tow that point, the coring mechanism started bringing up sand and gravels that once we got the core to the surface, water was pouring out of them.
so we saw the anomaly with the geo physical data and we found what we were looking for, which suggested even for the sites that we weren't able to run the ground truth data, which there I believe are three on here that we weren't able to, we saw the same anomalies so that leads us to believe that in those same places there's a good chance that there's water in those locations as well.
>> clint, would you show the profile for that?
and we'll show you what these things look like.
these data are non-unique.
in fact, -- there we are.
>> what I'm bringing up right now is for the first prospective drilling location.
and we're looking at site one where the yellow arrow is pointing.
and right here this is an example.
run along that tran secretary 1, which you can see on the map, this is an example of what er data output looks like.
and the color code along the right is a way of -- it's showing the electrical resistivity.
and the higher the electrical resistivity is, that means the more likely chance there is of coarse grain materials that has freshwater because those don't conduct electricity.
so they're more resistive.
and then these lighter blue colors down towards the bottom --
>> and on the top.
>> yeah.
and on the top.
the blue is showing places that are less resistive.
so those places are able to conduct electricity.
those are your clays.
so the image is a way of guessing what the the surface looks like, interpolating what it looks like, and the greener spots and then the yellow, those would be the most resistive spots.
as you can see, they sort of look like channels that have been cut.
and what those most likely were at some point were old creek beds that have run back and forth through this area.
so if we click on the next one, it shows tran sect five, which was ran perpendicular to tran sect one.
and the place that it was run here, this shows these two black arrows show where they -- this intersection was.
and I believe this arrow here actually -- this intersection point was actually here.
this arrow is misplaced.
so if you look at that 36 to 38 feet is where we saw the biggest anomaly here, and that coincide where it crossed this tran sect right here.
so by seeing this anomaly on both tran sects, it led us to believe that there was definitely a large bed of gravel and sands here.
and if you look at the scale, that's around 9.5, 9.8-meters in-depths there.
so we're looking close to 30 feet in-depth.
and if you look across here, this is going from around 18 to, I don't know, somewhere around 60-meters going across here.
so it's a fairly wide band of gravel and sands that we found here.
and from these pictures that we put together from each tran sect we're able to tell that they're large gravel beds.
this is one spot where we actually did run the geo probe right over where this black arrow here is.
and that location from this spot is where we pulled up quite a bit of sand and gravel that had water just pouring out of t.
>> so when I hear you say sand and gravel and gravel pit, I should think water probability.
>> yes, sir.
those areas there are parts of past creek beds where the heavier deposit things were deposited when the creek was flowing faster there, so your lighter materials like clays and silts had been washed away.
and what that leaves is a large amount of high permeability materials because there's no clay blocking the flow through this.
as dr.
sharp mentioned, we're not only looking for places that will store water, but places where water can flow through easily.
and these sands and gravel that we're looking for with low amounts of clay -- that can only be done
>> [ inaudible ].
>> the five promising areas that you identified, you have numbered.
>> yes, sir.
that's a prioritizing.
>> and 1 and 3 of the five are the best shot, you think.
>> I believe one is the best that we have -- we have the most data on 1.
on 2, we have this same anomaly, the tran sect here -- I'll just bring this up so I can show you.
>> on number 2 we did not have any ground truthing.
we did not geo probe down.
it just looks from the picture promising.
>> so 2 there's more of a question mark than 1 and 3.
>> so this is 2 and this tran sect here runs parallel to the first tran sect I showed you.
and this one is the same tran sect that intersected tran sect one, but it's also intersecting tran sect five or intersecting tran sect 3.
the reason we did that is because we're trying to check on both of those original that ran parallel.
we saw anomaly on both of those and we wanted to see if we could hit it going the opposite direction.
in this case we also found the same.
so right here you can see we -- this gravel bed.
and again this arrow was supposed to be here.
this one we found this anomaly, so we ran it perpendicular at around 48-meters, so it would be somewhere right in here.
and this is where it intersected.
and we also saw another gravel body here.
so that's why we don't have ground truth data for this location, but it's the same anomaly that we saw less than 100-meters away in another spot that we did do ground truth data.
so we thought that this was another very promising area, even though we didn't use the geo probe here.
>> that's all about number 2?
>> this is number 2.
and number 3 would be -- we felt was the next best.
and we did do a geo probe there and we did find saturated gravels and sands down at -- I believe on that one it was the one that was 7.1-meters depth is where we started finding gravels.
on that one we actually -- I believe there's around 10 or 11 feet of gravel.
the problem with the coring machine that we use is it's not built to bring up loose samples.
it's meant to bring up things that are packed like a clay or a solid rock or something.
since these sands are not consolidated, they just kind of pour out of the sample holder.
and when it does that it refills the whole backup.
so we weren't able to send a lien down and say, well, we have 10 feet of hole and it's all saturated with water because what happens is that loose sand just closes back up.
so when we pull the machine out we're able to see two feet of standing water, but had the hole not closed up, it was likely much deeper.
at least 10 more feet than that.
>> so in terms of probability of finding water, should I think one, two, three, or should I think one, three, two?
>> I would think one, two, three; however, section -- site three has proven that there is water there.
we've seen it with our own eyes.
we just don't know -- we're kind of in section 3, the site 3, the problem there is it's at a different location, and we're finding parts there, gravels and such that look like they're from the llano uplift.
so that might actually be deposits.
and if it is, we don't know how well connected that was.
originally we said we chose the site to the southwest because that was more in the watershed for decker creek.
if you get into the further east past decker creek, that stuff may be more effective by the larger wells that are being pumped.
>> so that was something we took into consideration, as well as the anomalies that we saw on the er were not as wide and basically just not as large in the 3-d space that we interpreted.
so though we didn't see water with our own eyes on the second site, it was a much larger anomaly.
>> although, we -- I kind of agree with you, judge nrks this one.
once again, you don't know until you drill.
>> the one on number three seemed to be more resistive, but it may have been smaller, may have not been tapping as big a channel.
we don't know until you drill.
>> we think that two may be larger based on what we know right now.
>> yes.
>> what about four and five?
>> four was one that we hadn't done a whole lot of testing on because thorn hill group helped us locate that one.
they went over the report and the tran sect and I'll bring that up so you can see it.
so this is site four.
and here we didn't do any ground truth data, and the em stuff.
so with these em things, these dips right here are what we're looking for, things that are not very conductive, which would be the same as highly resistive.
and the data just -- it was kind of erratic and part of that might have been that we're running it right along a metal fence.
and so that does interfere with these readings, but the er, however, we ran it there and the thing where the arrow is pointing that looks sort of like -- again, like a creek bed that's been cut in half, that is the area that thorn hill group pointed out to us.
and once noticing it, it is a place that would be at least worth -- if there was time, if you had four places that you could put a hole, this would definitely be one to check because it is a highly resistive anomaly.
it's fairly deep in the ground.
it's a large anomaly.
and it matches the signature of what we're finding in locations that we did do ground truth data and found water.
so it would be a place where if there was time, it would definitely be worth placing a hole there.
a test well there.
>> time or money?
>> both, I guess, time and money.
>> what about number five?
>> so number five, this location here, the reason why it's number five is the em and the er data don't exactly match up on this one.
so this is one of the few instances where we ran the er and we found this anomaly here.
and then when we did the er data, we didn't find that same anomaly.
so if I go back one, the anomaly should have showed up right over here somewhere and it just wasn't on there.
so they went ahead, we had time that day to do hand augerring.
this doesn't go as deep as the geo probe, but they got down to 5.1-meters with this, and at that point started finding saturated clays that were starting to have a little bit of sand and pebbles in it.
as they got a little bit deeper into it there seeing more pebbles, more sand, which was an indication that they're starting to get into a sand body.
however, these hand augerring tools are really limited by how strong you are really because you're just twisting it in by human force.
after about 5.2-meters they weren't able to drive it further.
>> but if we had a couple of u.t.
tackles we could have gone down another two feet.
>> [ laughter ]
>> but it looks like, again, if you had time and money, you know -- we wanted to come up with a list of five because we were advised by thornhill group that in a day's worth of drilling, they could -- if they had one day and they could drill as many holes as they could, it would be about five.
so we wanted to pick five in that case.
>> okay.
>> joe, you and your people have any questions?
or the thornhill representative?
>> judge in.
judge?
>> yes, sir.
>> I'll wait until joe finishes, I guess -- anyway.
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic].
on a more general basis, what can you tell us about the alluvium aquifer in this virnt?
how does it behave?
>> it behaves as a semi confined aquifer, which gets into how much the water level drops from pumpage.
i think it's a fascinating area because at this site -- if you go out to this site, this is kind of an elevated area.
and we were wondering if this was the deposited by the colorado river in the early stage, and then decker and gillliland creeks are starting to rework this material.
so I think it's a fascinating history and frankly we don't have enough data to really know.
we know that the paleio colorado river and it's tributaries cut down into that taylor clay.
as the rivers move back and forth they can leave these channels of sand and gravel.
it's not as uniform as you would find in a big river like the missouri or the mississippi where those are whopping big aquifers and you've got 30 feet of saturated sand.
and everywhere you put down a well you will be pumping thousands of gallons a minute.
it is indeed more limited.
one of the things that I think is really fascinating that came through the first court hearing because there was data on both sides.
i think it's the details of the plumbing system.
where are the gravel channels and to which other wells are they connected?
>> they are underground gravel channels smar somehow tied more back to the colorado river than contributing watersheds.
>> we don't know exactly what the paleio flow was, but I would think that decker and gillliland creeks at those times when the colorado river was in sizing would probably also have gravel deposits.
and I think some of the wells -- we didn't test it.
it's not manville and it's not city.
there are some big wells that were farther to the north that I think are pumping in a sand travel from gillliland creek, was deposited by gillliland creek.
but until you have the details of where those things are, you can't see.
>> are those the municipal groundwater solution and manville water supply corporation wells?
>> I think it was groundwater solution sounds familiar.
>> I understand municipal groundwater solutions owns two wells within the 3,000 feet and manville water supply corporation owns one.
>> that's correct.
>> I don't know, but I believe that's true.
>> well, I can elaborate just a little bit.
from what we found in the -- that western field over here, when we looked at the core, the -- just the sediments that were in the core were not things that you would find from the llano uplift, like granites and largefeld spars and stuff like that, which those are the types of things that you would find in colorado river deposits because that erodes -- lant know uplift as it -- the llano uplift as it erodes down it's transported by the colorado river and down to this area.
so the raised area that dr.
sharp talked about right in here, we did find those types of materials that were colorado river, and then to the west and to the east they're not there.
so indicates that at one time this was likely all colorado river deposits, and then decker creek and gillliland creek have gone and worked over those as well as possibly down to taylor clay from -- because there's taylor clay that outcrops on both sides over here.
so these creek channels here from what we found actually do not have colorado -- from the core that we pulled up, the sediments that are in there are not from the colorado river, they're from the surrounding area.
>> the limestone rocks.
>> which you expect as you approach the colorado river that would be different, you would find more alluvium from the colorado?
>> as a general trend that would be true, but there are so many exceptions because that river has been all over that floodplain over geologic time.
so it's probably right at the sites where you're seeing right here, probably at one time the colorado river was there.
>> just to show what --
>> there's the hand augerring, by the way.
>> this will show this geologic map here, and --
>> joe, had you finished?
okay.
>> so this right here is -- this more pink area, that's the taylor clay.
and this map here just shows what out crops on the surface.
so you have these little ridges of taylor clay coming down and then you have decker creek coming out here.
and I believe gillyland creek is this one.
so you have this little point coming down of taylor clay and you have the creeks that have worked -- all of this at one point was mostly taylor clay and it's been reworked by the river here.
and then down here this shows terst deposits.
while it's not noted on the map here, these are more broad trends.
what we believe we found right here on tecolote farms was deposits that hadn't quite been completely worked away.
by these two creek sheds.
but all of this right here, this gal, that's alluvium that has been deposited during --
>> within the last two million years.
>> so it's better to be in the blue area than the green area.
>> well, better than the pink area.
the pink area you're probably -- you're probably out of luck.
>> so the pink area you would be out of luck.
>> that's the clay.
the pink area is your taylor clay.
and then your green area is your colorado river deposits, the terst deposits where we said you would see the llano uplift.
>> and tecolote farms just barely made it into the good area.
>> yes.
hydro logically.
>> hydro logically speaking they have pink area on either side of it.
>> and when you come into the fields you can see the nose of that hill and that's the clay that comes diewnd it's dipping underneath the land surface.
if you drill down there it would probably be very shallow to hit the taylor clay.
>> so from here as you work down this way, the taylor clay is dipping.
so as you get further down this way, the taylor clay is deep are than right here.
>> and some of those high production wells, can I point out where those are?
they're up in that area, some very nice high production wells there.
>> so the reason we chose to emphasize to the west of decker creek and do our search mostly in this field that's right out here is we believe a lot of these high production wells that are out in this area, and then there's also some out here in the suburbs often the cities back in there there's wells.
this area right here is going to be more dominated by old decker creek deposits that will hopefully not be in as much communication with these wells that are mostly gillliland creek deposits.
because there's a lot of clay in between these deposits, so if there's a large channel over here to the east that's being pumped, they're not going to sense it over here because the clay is not going to allow for water to easily pass horizontally to this.
>> did you all do any analysis of the current well that they had been utilizing?
>> they were dry.
there was nothing in there.
the students did do some water quality, simple water quality testing of these wells and others in the area.
and it's really pretty decent quality water.
>> and in regard to them being dry, since the one in 2005 was not greater than 30 feet, was there any analysis of whether one could drill down further on that well?
>> yes.
there's a little bit.
ben schwartz ran this er tran sect right here.
this is the same one that shows the one that thornhill group suggested.
but the well currently is -- in this anomaly.
so you can see this is another one that looks like a large creek bed.
and when we looked at how deep the well was, it goes -- it's towards the top of this anomaly here and off to the east.
>> so that is a possibility.
>> yes.
>> so it's possible that if the well was offset and put deeper here, that there could still very well be water there.
>> and I would say that if a well is ever drilled here and they produce water from it, we're going to write a technical paper on it and several people have volunteered to help.
>> good.
>> let me ask this question.
for awhile, for months here, we have looked at this particular issue, the tecolote farms.
some of the things that we have done since then as far as the Travis County staff is looking into the possibility of providing sustainable water to that area because there has been a large outcry for water since we have been in this drought situation.
and one thing that we have looked at is underground conservation -- undergroundwater conservation district, whether it be something that's created from scratch or either annexed by an existing water conservation district.
so those are some possibilities that still are being explored.
to those that would like to participate in the future and having a sustainable water source in this particular general area.
so we're looking at that right now.
and it being hopefully -- every person here on the Commissioners court may have already been exposed to this by staff.
if not, they will be exposing them to this as far as that sustainable water source.
and then again, when I mentioned the united states farm bureau and those particular programs that may be readily available for those who would like to apply for some of that money that's there and to make sure that they have an opportunity to explore in ways to get water through those particular programs.
so I just suggested that whoever is listening to this also look into those possibilities.
so it's just kind of a wraparound approach for quick fixes, but in the long-term, how we look at a sustainable water source.
so I wanted to drill that in.
i think you have done a great job on this particular report.
>> I have bright hard working students and I'm a fantastic professor with them.
>> [ laughter ]
>> mr.
reeferseed?
>> it's a minor thing.
i wanted to thank y'all for this great information.
just a suggestion so it would be better in the handout material that you gave us was if you could just use color on some of these geological background things.
i don't know if your machines are capable of doing that.
>> we have -- we have a very conservative budget at the university of Texas.
we have no color copiers.
>> really.
wow.
>> the matter university of Texas.
incredible.
thanks.
>> you're right it, does show up better.
>> we certainly appreciate you and your students helping us in this matter.
>> informative.
>> you remind medicine that I should have spent more time in geology classes when I was in college.
>> it's not too late.
>> [ laughter ]
>> thank you.
>> thank you again.
>> thank you.
>> good luck to you in your trip, also.
>> now, mr.
eckstein has arrived.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Friday, August 7, 2009 3:07 PM
