Conservation History Association of Texas
Texas Legacy Project
Oral History Interview
Nature Conservancy in Texas

Interviewee: Ronald Green
Date: June 6, 2022
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reels: 3694-3699
Executive Producer: Lydia Saldana
Producer: Jeff Weigel
Field Producer / Chief Interviewer: Lee Smith
Videographer: Curtis Craven
Writer / Editor: Ron Kabele
Transcriber: David Todd / Trint
Item: Green_Ronald_NCItem10_SanAntonioTX_20220606_Reel3694-3699_Audio.mp3

[Numbers refer to the interview recording’s time code.]

Ronald Green [00:00:16] Well, I’m a semi-retired groundwater hydrologist. So I worked as a research scientist for the bulk of my career at a not-for-profit research institute, Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. I was there a bit over 30 years. The majority of that time I spent evaluating water resources out in Central and West Texas.

Lee Smith [00:00:46] A nonprofit resource. So where did that research, where did that go and how was it used?

Ronald Green [00:00:53] Well, it was funded by mostly governmental entities, mostly groundwater conservation districts, the state and some private foundations, a number of whom are affiliated with the Nature Conservancy.

Ronald Green [00:01:09] So after I came on the board of the Nature Conservancy, a number of folks became familiar and aware of the work we did. And through their generosity and goodwill, they supported this work.

Lee Smith [00:01:24] Cool. I had no idea.

Lee Smith [00:01:28] So you say you’re kind of, not really a hired gun, but kind of a…

Ronald Green [00:01:36] Well, some people would say I am, because a lot of the science that we do is not appreciated by some. And most of those folks are developers.

Ronald Green [00:01:50] So just about all our work was funded by the regulators. And so the regulators are those folks that are commissioned to protect these resources. And we would go out and evaluate the nature of the resource, you know, what kind of impact it might experience from different changes, mostly due to climate change and to land use change.

Ronald Green [00:02:25] And when I say, “land use change”, what I’m talking about is groundwater pumping. So if you start groundwater pumping and export that water, you’re going to have some sort of an impact on the water resources.

Ronald Green [00:02:38] That’s the kind of work we do because there are a lot of folks that will say, “Well, we’re not going to degrade the the surface water, the springs, the discharge from the springs by pumping.”

Ronald Green [00:02:51] But our work goes in and says, “Yes, you’re going to do it. No, you’re not. And to what degree?”

Ronald Green [00:02:58] So, you know, these resources out in arid and semi-arid landscapes are very fragile. So sometimes it takes just a little bit of pumping to impact those. Other times you can do some pumping and and not significantly impact those those waters, those spring discharges.

Lee Smith [00:03:21] So where did you grow up?

Ronald Green [00:03:23] I grew up in the upper Midwest, in Michigan, suburb of Detroit. So I grew up in the city.

Ronald Green [00:03:31] I did enjoy getting out in the countryside, didn’t have a lot of opportunity because most of the areas were developed. But there were a couple, what we called “woods” back then, and some fields. There were pheasants back then. There aren’t any pheasants anymore. And there aren’t any woods anymore. It’s all developed. But that’s where I grew up.

Lee Smith [00:03:53] How did you come to Texas?

Ronald Green [00:03:54] I came down here for a job in the late ’80s. It was a new research group that was actually what’s called a FFRDC, Federally Funded Research and Development Center, funded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And it was set up by Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

Ronald Green [00:04:16] My Ph.D. dissertation was on the subject matter that they were exploring. So it was a it was a good fit for me to come to South Texas.

Lee Smith [00:04:26] So where’d you get your Ph.D.?

Ronald Green [00:04:28] Well, I got my Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in the early ’80s. And it happened to be the first university to have a Ph.D. or a graduate program in water, in hydrology, in the world. And that was in the late ’60s. So groundwater hydrology is a relatively recent discipline. Prior to that, people would go to school in civil engineering, sometimes geology, to to to get that education.

Ronald Green [00:04:58] But in the late ’60s, the USGS, the United States Geologic Survey, joined with the University of Arizona to set up this graduate program. Now, there are a number of programs in the United States and across the world, but that was the first.

Ronald Green [00:05:15] Well, I was in the Boy Scouts and we would, you know, get out and about. Because of that, I had some relatives that lived in the country that would allow me a little bit of opportunity to get out.

Ronald Green [00:05:27] I guess the biggest opportunity was after I got my first degree, which happened to be in industrial engineering, I joined the Peace Corps and I went to West Africa, Cameroon, for two and a half years. And I was working in a rural water supply project, developing springs as a water source for rural communities.

Ronald Green [00:05:50] And based on that, I came back to the States and retooled and got a second degree in geology, a master’s in geophysics, and then finally a Ph.D. in hydrology. And that was my calling.

Ronald Green [00:06:05] And it allowed me a great opportunity to get out in some rather, you know, strange landscapes. Baffin Island, you know, a lot of desert areas out in the in the US, a few places overseas. And that was my career. And I never looked back.

Lee Smith [00:06:31] Was there anybody like a teacher or a mentor during the education process that was a particular inspiration to you?

Ronald Green [00:06:40] Well, my my mom was. She she liked working outdoors. And I did. We had a, you know, a very small, you know, lot in the city. You know, I was raised by my mom. My brother and I were raised by my mom. And she was a teacher. So we we didn’t have, you know, a country estate, but I enjoyed that.

Ronald Green [00:07:01] So she had a big influence on encouraging me to, you know, keep an open mind on what I wanted to do.

Ronald Green [00:07:10] But if you look back in the ’50s, when I was in elementary, there was no science being taught, not until Sputnik in 1957. And actually at my elementary school, the spelling teacher taught us science.

Ronald Green [00:07:24] And environmental science wasn’t taught in the middle schools until much later. I don’t know when that started.

Ronald Green [00:07:31] So I was not exposed to any of that until much later on.

Ronald Green [00:07:35] A classmate of mine when I was at the University of Michigan in engineering, took a geology course and he would tell me about it. And unfortunately it was late in my academic career. I couldn’t go back and take geology, but it just, you know, it called to me.

Ronald Green [00:07:53] And so, after I got back from the Peace Corps, it took some time before I decided to bite the bullet and go back to school. But I went into geology and yeah, it was very good. So I have to credit that one friend for, you know, putting that bug in my ear back then.

Ronald Green [00:08:12] And then when I got back and was going to school in geology, almost all my professors were great mentors and role models. They were dedicated to the science for all the right reasons. So I would say they had a profound effect on me.

Ronald Green [00:08:30] But I was, you know, I was a bit older. I was an unconventional student by that time, you know, a little bit older and, you know, a little bit more determined on what I wanted to do.

Lee Smith [00:08:42] Was there something that happened in the Peace Corps, some locations, something that flipped the switch, or was it just the overall experience?

Ronald Green [00:08:50] It was overall. There wasn’t any one instance. But it was learning the importance of water, and clean water. And at the time, I was, well, let me step back a little bit after I got out and became much more familiar with a lot of the technical aspects of groundwater, I realized how unfortunately uninformed we were at the time we were in in that project.

Ronald Green [00:09:24] It was not a well-conceived project. And, you know, when Peace Corps has very good projects they will continue for many generations of volunteers. Ours lasted one and that was it because it just wasn’t well-founded.

Ronald Green [00:09:42] We had no technical training on how to develop these springs. It was sort of we had to learn as we went. And there are some things we did okay, and other things we fell a little bit short.

Ronald Green [00:09:53] And then after I went to school in this, I had a much better appreciation for what needed to be done. And so I’ve used those thoughts and that understanding in my career on how to evaluate these water resources.

Ronald Green [00:10:11] Now, I was in the tropical rainforest in the Peace Corps, but then when I got out, I traveled around West Africa for about 4 or 5 months – you know, Mali, Niger, what was Upper Volta back then, now, Burkina Faso, and across the Sahara, you know, to Algeria and saw these, you know, these communities and these landscapes where there was no water and just saw how dependent these people are on their water resources.

Ronald Green [00:10:43] And so that wasn’t a single instance, but it really was a profound story that that, you know, I experienced during that time.

[00:10:56] And although after I got back from the Peace Corps, it took some time to go back to school when I finally, you know, bit the bullet and took the plunge, you know, I, I knew what I wanted to do.

Lee Smith [00:11:07] Well. And the realization of how key it is to survive. I mean, everybody knows, you know, you got to have water to survive. But it sounds like it was more of a vivid an encounter for you.

Ronald Green [00:11:24] It was. And at the time, I, you know, I don’t know this for a fact, but the people said that they were, that period of time was at the tail end of a seven-year drought.

Ronald Green [00:11:36] So, what it did, it drove a lot of these nomadic folks to the cities. And so they were struggling to get by.

Ronald Green [00:11:44] And I remember meeting some Tuaregs and, you know, visiting with them, you know, drinking tea in their tent and, you know, buying trinkets from them. And there was a fellow that, you know, he was wizened. He looked 70 years old and he was 35.

Ronald Green [00:12:03] So, I mean, being out in that harsh landscape for your whole life really would take its toll. And, you know, the infant mortality rate was well over, you know, 500 per thousand, you know, the kids that would survive to five years old.

Ronald Green [00:12:20] So it was yeah, it yeah, it was it was a stark, you know, impression that I had compared to growing up in a suburb of Detroit.

Lee Smith [00:12:33] So your your first involvement in conservation work was probably in the Peace Corps. Is that right?

Ronald Green [00:12:37] Yes, I would think so. You know, at the time, it was still relatively new, the Peace Corps. Peace Corps started in ’63, ’62-’63, and I joined in ’72. So it was still a relatively new program.

Ronald Green [00:12:54] And people would debate or question themselves whether you’re doing something good for wherever your program is, or if it’s just you that’s getting something out of it. And so you would struggle with that idea.

Ronald Green [00:13:11] And, you know, so did we help the conservation of the area, conserve the resources of the area? Yeah, perhaps in some way. But, you know, once again, it’s sort of I think, you know, I was a recipient of probably more than what, you know, the program was. And it gave me a real good appreciation for what these folks had to deal with as far as resources.

Ronald Green [00:13:43] Just a little side story. When we were preparing to leave the Peace Corps, I was living with a couple other volunteers and we had, you know, stacks of magazines, and it was either Newsweek or Time. So we had all these magazines and we lived across from the market square. And so all these people wanted the stacks of magazines because they would wrap their groundnuts in them, you know, to sell to the people. They just didn’t have, you know, spare newspapers. There were not spare newspapers.

Ronald Green [00:14:17] And everything we had was in demand. And so you didn’t have a throw-away society. You didn’t throw away cans and bottles and well, plastic bags, probably didn’t have plastic bags there at the time either. But still, it was not a throw-away society. So, you know, you understood the value of resources, you know, a whole lot more than that, you know, in that type of of lifestyle.

Lee Smith [00:14:43] So what is important about preserving spring systems in the Hill Country and Texas?

Ronald Green [00:14:49] Well, it’s, springs are oftentimes considered the canary in the mine for water resources because it’s like the upper part of groundwater that gets discharged in a spring. So even though the aquifer could be hundreds or thousands of feet deep, you know, if it just goes down a few feet, that spring may stop flowing.

Ronald Green [00:15:15] So they’re very sensitive to small changes in groundwater elevations. So if you go out into arid and semi-arid environments and just take a little bit of groundwater out, sometimes you can have a profound impact on springs.

Ronald Green [00:15:31] So if you look across the, you know, these desert landscapes in West Texas and beyond, you’ll see where all the communities developed and they’re at the springs. And if you go back to indigenous folks, that’s where they lived. And then when you had the first folks from, you know, the European settlers come over, you know, first you had the explorers and they would go from spring to spring to spring, and then you had, you know, the calvary come in and they would go from spring to spring. Wagon trains, cattle drives, would all go from spring to spring.

Ronald Green [00:16:06] And so that dictated where and how they went. And so that’s sort of the historical perspective.

Ronald Green [00:16:13] But now, those springs still serve as the anchor to communities and to the, you know, the livelihoods of these desert communities. You take their springs away and oftentimes they’re going to be in trouble. They’re going to have to find some other industry. Even though, you know, it may not be the biggest industry around, it is critical to the development and the livelihood of these folks.

Ronald Green [00:16:41] So, you know, it’s very important to understand the impact of excessive development on these springs. You start taking too much water out and they’re going to suffer. It’s going to change their way of life.

Ronald Green [00:16:56] In Texas, there are several hundred named springs that no longer flow. And that’s that’s tragic.

Ronald Green [00:17:05] You know, I work down in south Texas. I worked, well I still do work down there. And there are places like Carrizo Springs. They haven’t flowed for 100 years since the 1920s. And it used to be, you know, these beautiful flowing springs. They would punch a hole in the ground and they would have artesian wells. And this went on for, you know, some several decades. But now they’ve removed enough groundwater that those springs no longer flow, not even, you know, periodically.

Ronald Green [00:17:40] There are other springs out in West Texas. One notable one is Comanche Springs in Fort Stockton. And that quit flowing after World War Two when there was a lot of development for crops. There were a lot of pecan orchards and other crops that were started back then.

Ronald Green [00:17:58] And they depleted that system and the waters quit flowing, I think in about the ’60s.

Ronald Green [00:18:08] Then they start retiring some of those crop lands and then in the late ’90s those springs would start flowing a little bit around Christmas time and the first part of the year. There is now a concerted effort to try to retire more of those, of the pumping, in order to allow those springs to flow more.

Ronald Green [00:18:28] Now that there is, you know, a little bit of technical understanding why Carrizo Springs will never come back. But Fort Stockton will.

Ronald Green [00:18:37] Fort Stockton is in a limestone so it can replenish itself in a very short period of time. Carrizo Springs is in a sandstone. It’s not going to replenish itself until there is a return of an ice age, literally, in order to bring back that water, because water flows so fast through that limestone.

Ronald Green [00:18:59] So the way you treat these different springs systems is going to differ with the type of geology and hydrogeology of each system.

Lee Smith [00:19:10] What is so magical about a spring?

Ronald Green [00:19:16] Well, it’s it’s a source of life. I mean, you’re not going to have these communities without the springs.

Ronald Green [00:19:24] And it’s interesting. You can go out to places where the Nature Conservancy has a number of preserves and they have been developed at some of these iconic springs. And you can go look at the the miles between each of these springs systems, and they would translate that to how many days it would take to take a wagon train or move cattle. And so they could only follow routes where there was water within about three days because cattle just wouldn’t last.

Ronald Green [00:20:01] And so, the headwaters of the Devils Spring, for example, of the Devils River, the headwaters are two springs – Hudspeth Spring and Pecan Spring. And there used to be a lake just north of that called Beaver Lake, and they would water up at Beaver Lake and then they would go about 44 miles up to a place called Howard Springs that is no longer there up near Ozona, in West Texas. And that was one of the longest stretches they had in that area.

Ronald Green [00:20:33] Then there would be about 30 miles to the next spring, which is on Live Oak. And Live Oak is one of the main suppliers to the Pecos.

Ronald Green [00:20:44] The other main supplier to the Pecos River is Caroline Spring on Independence Creek. That’s another Nature Conservancy preserve.

Ronald Green [00:20:55] And those preserves have been developed, or established, in order to ensure that these springs remain, that they’re not depleted by, you know, whatever.

Ronald Green [00:21:09] Now, unfortunately the source area for these springs extends farther than the preserves. So, you know, you could potentially have a, you know, an entity come in and start pumping water upstream from these springs and have a, you know, a negative effect on these springs.

Ronald Green [00:21:30] So the Nature Conservancy has worked with their neighbors in order to to try to develop conservation easements on these lands to prevent that that pumping so that these springs are are around for, you know, the future.

Lee Smith [00:21:48] And that area in particular is so extreme and harsh.

Ronald Green [00:21:55] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:21:55] That to have that water, that cold water coming up…

Ronald Green [00:21:59] Yes.

Lee Smith [00:22:00] I mean I think that’s almost like in the Rule of Capture thing they say it’s it’s it’s a mystical occult thing.

Ronald Green [00:22:10] Yes they do. And unfortunately that term is used almost to this day in Texas. And so they have the Rule of Capture that, you know, you if there’s water under your land, it’s your water and you can do pretty much what you please. And that could have a very negative impact on those people that are downstream.

Ronald Green [00:22:33] Now, the State of Texas has implemented some rules to, you know, make some protection of of that water. But for the most part, you know, Texas is the land of, you know, the Rule of Capture. The biggest pump with the deepest well, wins. And you know that that’s something that, you know, people have to understand and address to the best they can.

Lee Smith [00:23:02] Rule of Capture, though, has existed in other states.

Ronald Green [00:23:06] Yes.

Lee Smith [00:23:06] And one by one, they’ve kind of moved away from it. What do you think? Will Texas ever?

Ronald Green [00:23:12] I don’t know. Texas has a number of problems.

Ronald Green [00:23:16] One is surface water is owned by the state. Groundwater is owned by, you know, private individuals, landowners.

Ronald Green [00:23:23] And so what happens when surface water goes underground? Does it go from state-owned to private property? And then when it comes back up, is it then owned by the state?

Ronald Green [00:23:35] It’s not a a suitable legal system for the resource. They need to address that. But they haven’t. They haven’t taken that on. They they continue to kick the can down the road on how to handle the resource.

Ronald Green [00:23:52] And Rule of Capture works okay in very humid landscapes that have a lot of rain. It doesn’t work well out in arid and semi-arid environments, of which Texas is, is mostly. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:24:06] I keep deviating. But it’s and you kind of hit some of this, but I’m gonna hit it again. Yeah. So why is the Devils River system important?

Ronald Green [00:24:20] Well, the Devils River watershed and the Devils River remains the most pristine river in Texas. It hasn’t been significantly impacted by either climate change, so far, or land use, which is groundwater extraction and pumping.

Ronald Green [00:24:44] The water quality is is very good because there isn’t much agriculture in the upland areas, so you’re not getting a lot of nutrients and other things discharged into the water. So it’s very, very good quality water and there’s a lot of it.

Ronald Green [00:25:00] Now, it has been impacted a little bit because there’s some development in the upper reaches. It’s not in the area where there’s live water, but it’s around the, you know, the upper reaches of the watershed around the city of Sonora.

Ronald Green [00:25:16] And although there’s been minimal development up in that area, there’s not a lot of agriculture, there’s not a lot of use for water, it has been enough that Beaver Lake, which used to be the waterhole that wagon trains and cattle drives would use before moving west, is no longer there.

Ronald Green [00:25:40] And that’s actually just a little bit upstream by, you know, a half dozen miles or so from the headwaters where the two main springs that that provide for the live water in Devils River, that’s Hudspeth Spring and Pecan Spring. It’s upgradient from there.

Ronald Green [00:25:58] And there are folks that want to take that groundwater even further and export it for either oil and gas activity or other, you know, municipalities out in that area that need water. As those municipalities grow, they’re going to need more water or they’re going to have to impose, you know, rather strict conservation measures in order to to continue to grow.

Ronald Green [00:26:27] So over the past, I’d say 60 to 80 years, there’s been enough development upstream from those springs that it hasn’t really impacted the springs, but it has impacted the springs that would fill Beaver Lake. And because Beaver Lake was right at the top of the groundwater, farthest upstream, you know, that water level only had to go down a little bit, Beaver Lake is no longer there.

Ronald Green [00:26:58] They used to have powerboats on Beaver Lake. And I heard, although I haven’t confirmed it, that people would water ski up there. So I don’t know if they water skied. But I do know that they had powerboats for recreational purposes.

Ronald Green [00:27:14] And that that spring or that lake is is dry and it hasn’t filled up, other than a little bit during a big rainstorm in 60 to 80 years.

Lee Smith [00:27:25] I saw a thing on the news this morning. In California, they’re paying people to rip out their lawns and put in Astroturf.

Ronald Green [00:27:32] Yes. Well, I think that’s great.

Ronald Green [00:27:36] And San Antonio has been pretty good in terms of conservation. And in fact, you know, the population has grown by 50%. But during that same period of time, has not used any additional groundwater. Or the amount of water they’re using has stayed the same.

Ronald Green [00:27:57] Unfortunately, over the past few years, SAWS has become a little more lax in imposing conservation measures. And I would like to see them go back to that more strict philosophy where they encourage people to take out the, you know, the big-leafed trees and the St. Augustine grasses, because those are some of the biggest uses of water. You know, a household can get by much cheaper, cheaper in terms of water, if they don’t have the big lawns and the big leafed trees.

Lee Smith [00:28:34] So how does the Devils fit into the Pecos?

Ronald Green [00:28:39] Well. That’s interesting because you have you have to step back and look at the Rio Grande. And if you look at the Rio Grande, it’s been substantially depleted over, you know, the last 100 years. And there are times when the river doesn’t even get to the Gulf of Mexico. And currently there are places along where there’s a live reach that has no water right now.

Ronald Green [00:29:11] Well, it just happens that if you look at Amistad Reservoir as a focal point, one third of the water in Amistad comes from Val Verde County, and that is the Pecos River. That is the Devils River. Some some minor springs and what used to be the third largest spring in Texas, Goodenough Spring that is now at the bottom of Amistad Reservoir.

Ronald Green [00:29:40] So when they filled the reservoir that spring, it was no longer at the surface. But you can go to where it is and see what’s called a little bit of a bubble, where it’s bubbling up, coming up from a 100-feet depth. And so there’s a lot of water coming up through that area.

Ronald Green [00:30:01] So, you know, the importance of the Devils and the Pecos is is much greater than what it appears. And if you look at the rather modest size of the of the Devils and, just to throw out a number, it provides about 270,000 acre feet per year. The Pecos is only about half that and it goes all the way up to New Mexico.

Ronald Green [00:30:25] And another issue of Pecos is that it is naturally saline upstream from two major springs – Caroline Spring and Live Oak tributary.

Ronald Green [00:30:40] And enough freshwater comes from those two tributaries to improve the water quality of the Pecos that when the Pecos gets to Amistad, it’s pretty good quality. It’s still, you know, about a thousand parts TDS, which is a little bit salty, but it’s much better than what it is upstream, and that’s natural. It just is a naturally poor-quality river because of the salt beds that it goes through.

Lee Smith [00:31:15] And just for our viewers, what does TDS mean?

Ronald Green [00:31:18] Pardon me.

Ronald Green [00:31:18] That’s total dissolved solids, milligrams per liter. So it’s a measure of all the salt that’s in the water. So it’s desirable to have a TDS of about 500. That’s what people like. So you get up around a thousand, it’s it’s not bad but it’s going to be tasty water and that’s about what it is when it gets down to to Amistad.

Ronald Green [00:31:40] Now if something happens to that, the fresh water coming out of Live Oak Creek or Independence Creek from Caroline Springs, that means that you’re not going to have that fresh water to improve the quality of the Pecos. So the water that gets recharged to Amistad, the Rio Grande, is going to be poor quality. And they already have issues with quality of the Rio Grande and quantity. So if you start doing anything to mess with those springs, it’s going to have a profound effect on the downstream users.

Lee Smith [00:32:17] So what does that tell us about the interconnectivity of water systems?

Ronald Green [00:32:23] Well, out in this area, all the water resources, which are the springs and the creeks and the groundwater and the land use around that area, are are highly interconnected.

Ronald Green [00:32:40] You start doing things with the land over the recharge area, it’s going to impact the groundwater. Now, that can be in terms of quantity, where if you start pumping water out for whatever use – industrial use, shipping up to cities, that’s going to lower the water table. That’s going to have a negative impact on spring discharge and creek flow.

Ronald Green [00:33:05] If you start developing, you know, that recharge area in some way, agricultural or industrial usage and you change the quality of the water going into the ground, then you can change the quality of the water coming out as discharge, and the quality of water in the stream.

Ronald Green [00:33:29] And so, everything that you do out in these arid and semi-arid landscapes is interrelated. They’re very fragile. They’re not as forgiving as areas with a lot of rain where you can get away with things that you can’t get away with in desert landscapes.

Lee Smith [00:33:47] And so in Independence Creek Preserve, what’s special about this place and how does it relate to the Nature Conservancy?

Ronald Green [00:33:55] Well, the Nature Conservancy has developed a preserve at Caroline Springs, and it’s a spectacular area. You drive through a desert landscape for hours and then all of a sudden you go around a corner and here are these large ponds. And these ponds have been developed, you know, by, you know, small dams to hold back the water that’s being discharged out of these springs. And it’s very good quality water. And if the two springs and streams that, you know, replenish the Pecos once again aren’t there, then the quality of water is poor.

Ronald Green [00:34:40] So if you look up at the north side of Crockett County (Crockett County is the county that has these two watersheds), if you look just upstream of Crockett County, which is Pecos County, the quality of water coming in is horrid. I mean, it’s several thousand TDS, Total Dissolved Solid, which is a measure of the salts in the water coming in. That water quality is not good.

Ronald Green [00:35:07] And so if you don’t take action to protect those springs and those streams, then the water downstream from where the confluence of those streams are and the Pecos is just not going to be improved.

Ronald Green [00:35:25] And that’s what people rely on, is the that freshwater coming from those two systems.

Ronald Green [00:35:31] Caroline Spring is more spectacular. Live Oak is, there’s actually an old fort, Fort Lancaster, at those springs. And it’s it’s, you know, pretty important but it’s not as spectacular as Caroline Springs.

Lee Smith [00:35:56] And so who are some of the key players that got that protection?

Ronald Green [00:36:02] Well, out in this area, I wouldn’t single out any one resource.

Ronald Green [00:36:11] A number of folks have gone in to protect these iconic springs. And I would say the Nature Conservancy is foremost because they have gone in and established preserves or taken ownership to protect a number of springs.

Ronald Green [00:36:32] So, you have Caroline Springs out on Independence Creek. You have the Dolan Springs on Dolan Creek, which is part of the Devils River watershed system. You have you Euphrasia and Diamond Y, which are part of the, you know, the area over near Fort Stockton.

Ronald Green [00:36:52] You have the Sandia Springs, which is, which are down near Balmorhea, the large swimming pool in West Texas.

Ronald Green [00:37:01] So they’re one of the big players.

Ronald Green [00:37:02] You have Texas Parks and Wildlife that have a role in this.

Ronald Green [00:37:08] A number of these folks are looking at the biological issues. You know, the the type of critters and flora that are in these systems. If those springs are allowed to go dry for some period of time, you run the risk of killing the critters and killing those flora species. So you have to protect those springs so that they protect those those different species, some of which are rare, some are endangered.

Ronald Green [00:37:43] You also have some foundations that have stepped up. You have some NGOs that have taken an interest in these areas. You have some research groups like Southwest Research Institute has done a lot of work out there. The Bureau of Economic Geology has done a lot of work. You know, that’s sort of a research arm to the University of Texas in Austin. And these folks have done a lot to work together.

Ronald Green [00:38:13] More recently, which is the last 10 or 20 years or so, you have groundwater conservation districts that have played a significant role in protecting these springs.

Ronald Green [00:38:24] And these, the situations that work best, is where these these different entities work together.

Lee Smith [00:38:34] And the Nature Conservancy has been kind of the ambassador of the conservation easement, which, and that has seemed to have bridged this public / private kind of divide or or ameliorated it to some degree.

Ronald Green [00:38:53] It has. You know, back, if you go back several decades, people would think that, well, you have to to preserve these these springs and their, you know, source areas. You have to buy the property. Well, they were able to do that to some degree in some areas.

Ronald Green [00:39:14] However, the cost of land, the cost of these resources is is mind-boggling. So the Nature Conservancy has fostered efforts in order to protect these landscapes and these resources by encouraging landowners to put conservation easements on their properties.

Ronald Green [00:39:37] And by doing so, those folks will agree not to develop those properties in certain ways so as not to impact the water by, you know, excessive pumping to impact the water quality by, you know, undesirable land uses, you know, whatever it might be, you know, improper grazing, having too many cattle on, by developing, you know, ranchettes to allow a lot of people with septic systems to be built.

Ronald Green [00:40:11] So by putting conservation easements on these properties, and sometimes very large tracts, it starts to have a very positive impact on those systems.

Ronald Green [00:40:24] And these are for forever. So once they put these conservation easements in place, those watersheds are going to be protected.

Ronald Green [00:40:34] And so it’s a it’s a continuing effort. The Nature Conservancy continues to work with land owners in order to put these easements.

Ronald Green [00:40:46] And they’ve, you know, made the Devils River, for example, one of their targeted areas because of the importance of that watershed. And they’ve had considerable success in protecting those properties.

Ronald Green [00:41:02] Conservation easements have changed in terms of their acceptance by these landowners. You know, back 20 years ago or so, a lot of these landowners were very reluctant to even discuss this concept with the Nature Conservancy and others.

Ronald Green [00:41:25] Now, their kids, their grandkids, are embracing this because it’s a way for these heritage ranches to stay in the families. If they agree to some sensible use of the properties, then they can get certain tax breaks, they can get certain moneys in compensation to ensuring that these lands won’t be developed in a in a way that’s not in accordance with protecting these resources.

Ronald Green [00:42:02] So just over the last couple of decades, there has been a notable change in acceptance by the by the folks. You know, I’ve seen that.

Ronald Green [00:42:13] And because of that and the fact that people don’t want to see their properties divided and subdivided, you know, to the you know, their you know, their, the next generations of their families. You know, they can keep these properties intact and in a in a state that they want to keep them and they don’t have to sell off properties for development or, you know, certain rights to those properties.

Ronald Green [00:42:43] And those those agreements that they enter are not onerous. You know, they’re just sensible things that are in in alignment with the sustainability of those resources.

Ronald Green [00:42:59] You can’t go in there and put in too many pumps. You can’t over-develop it in terms of septic systems and housing. You can’t go in there and graze it with impunity and not have a negative impact on those waters. And these conservation easements simply put in common-sense rules.

Ronald Green [00:43:19] And people understand that. And when they enter these agreements, it goes a long way to protecting these resources. And your buck goes a lot further in a conservation easement than it does does in purchasing the land.

Lee Smith [00:43:35] What’s the future hold for water conservation in this area?

Ronald Green [00:43:41] The folks in San Antonio have been very generous with their tax dollar in buying properties and in putting easements on the recharge zone of the Edwards. And the Edwards is the water provider for several million people, you know, in the San Antonio / Austin area and beyond. And that program by San Antonio goes from San Antonio to the west. That’s very good.

Ronald Green [00:44:17] Two, three hundred million dollars have gone into that program. There are plans to continue that.

Ronald Green [00:44:24] They’ve been a little short-sighted, however, that they’ve only focused on the recharge area. The recharge area is where the Edwards is exposed at the surface. And if you’d go just upstream from there, you have actually the Trinity Aquifer more exposed at the surface. You have some Edwards rocks on top of it and then you have a fault zone in between. So it’s a rather complex system where, you know, the recharge of the Edwards is is younger than the rocks to the north that that provide this.

Ronald Green [00:45:09] Sorry.

Lee Smith [00:45:09] No problem. This is where the editor goes.

Ronald Green [00:45:17] So just going back a little bit. So the way the Edwards is situated around the San Antonio / Austin area is that you have an uplifted area to the north called the Edwards Plateau. And then you have the rocks that are a little bit lower south and east of the plateau, separated by what’s called the Balcones Fault zone. So those rocks are a little bit lower, but they’re younger than the rocks to the north, on the Plateau, that provide recharge to this recharge area. So you have this band that’s called the Edwards Recharge Zone, where the Edwards is exposed at the surface.

Ronald Green [00:46:03] Now, the conventional understanding was that the Plateau acted like a tin roof. Rain would come down, flow across that tin roof till it got to the recharge zone and then go underground.

Ronald Green [00:46:17] But that’s not how it works. In reality, that Plateau is a leaky tin roof, so a lot of water goes underground in the Plateau, in the contributing zone, and goes underground and gets to the Edwards.

Ronald Green [00:46:34] So the Edwards Aquifer Protection Plan, which has put easements and bought properties all along the recharge zone, needs to be extended to the contributing zone where the water comes from.

Ronald Green [00:46:51] So if you have development on the contributing zone and you degrade the quality of the water going into the ground in the contributing zone, it’s going to impact the Edwards. If you have development in the contributing zone where you’re pumping water out and exporting it or using it somewhere else in the contributing zone, it’s going to have a negative impact on the Edwards.

Ronald Green [00:47:16] What you do on the contributing zone is is not fully appreciated in the regulations or in these conservation easement programs.

Ronald Green [00:47:29] To protect those areas, you need to protect those areas and the contributing zone to pretty much the same degree that you do in the recharge zone. And they aren’t doing that. And that is something that needs to be done.

Lee Smith [00:47:45] And so what are the communities in that contributing zone that need to kind of be included?

Ronald Green [00:47:53] Well, it’s a it’s all the areas north of Bexar County, even the northern part of Bexar County, Kendall County, Comal Counties, all those areas and beyond.

Lee Smith [00:48:05] San Marcos?

Ronald Green [00:48:06] Yeah. Yes. Well, San Marcos. See, a lot of those major cities are right on the Balcones Fault zone because that’s where the springs were. So you have to go up, up gradient.

Ronald Green [00:48:17] And one of the biggest battles is the discharge of effluent from wastewater treatment facilities. And a preferred way is to dump it into these dry creek beds up on the plateau in the Hill Country and then let it go down these dry creek beds until it gets to the recharge zone. So you are degrading the quality of water going into the subsurface. And that’s one half of it.

Ronald Green [00:48:48] The other half is you just have these degraded creeks because you’re putting all these nutrients – phosphorus and nitrogen – into the creeks. It grows algae. You know, the dissolved oxygen goes down, kills the critters, kills the grasses, you know, the flora. And you just have this stinky mess that used to be a pristine river, surface water body. And so there is a continuing battle going on.

Ronald Green [00:49:21] Unfortunately, the State of Texas does not empower counties to do very much to prohibit this. They under-empower the TCEQ, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to to do much against this. So it is one of the major battlefronts right now on protecting the water resources.

Lee Smith [00:49:46] And where do those nutrients primarily come from? Is it from fertilizing lawns or is it from agriculture or a combination of both?

Ronald Green [00:49:53] Combination and septic systems. All of them. All the above.

Ronald Green [00:49:58] And when you put in a high-density development where there are, you know, three, four, five houses per acre, you cannot use septic systems. So then you have a wastewater facility. You have to do something with that effluent.

Ronald Green [00:50:17] So there’s one option is direct discharge into the creeks. Another is called land application, TLAP, Texas Land Application. And that’s where they spray on the ground. But in reality, you know, once you saturate that ground, it goes right into the subsurface, into the creeks anyway.

Ronald Green [00:50:38] And these things never operate as designed or advertised. You know, they are loading those nutrients into the subsurface and they’re degrading the recharge to the main aquifers, in this case, the Edwards and the Trinity. And they’re degrading the surface water bodies.

Ronald Green [00:50:57] Well, the Nature Conservancy has an active role with the City of San Antonio in identifying and negotiating these conservation easements.

Ronald Green [00:51:10] And they have a weighting system because they can’t conserve all properties. So they’ll say, “Well, you know, if you’re currently if you’re on the recharge zone, you’re going to be weighted more heavily than the contributing zone.” That has to change.

Ronald Green [00:51:26] And as you go farther into contributing zone, the closer to a creek is going to give you more weight. It should give you more weight. And if you’re closer to the recharge zone, you’re going to be given more weight.

Ronald Green [00:51:41] Ideally, that’s not quite the case.

Ronald Green [00:51:44] Nature Conservancy has been very active in promoting this sort of nebulous weighting practice of how to identify those properties to conserve. So they have been quite successful in getting some properties up in the contributing zone protected by conservation easements.

Ronald Green [00:52:06] There is only so much that the Nature Conservancy can do given the current regulatory atmosphere, you know, atmosphere. They they have to change that both at the state level and the local level. Everyone has a role in that. Either or both can do more to protect that resource. And it needs to be done.

Lee Smith [00:52:28] How did you get involved and what is your role with the Nature Conservancy?

Ronald Green [00:52:35] Well, I’m a member of the state board. And I was first asked to come on the board about ten years ago when the board was going through a phase of adding technical people on their state board. And I was on for six years and I rotated off and just recently came back on in a renewed effort to add technical expertise to the board.

Ronald Green [00:53:03] So my role as a researcher has been aligned with a lot of the subject matter we’ve discussed.

Ronald Green [00:53:16] For example, the team I worked with at Southwest Research Institute just completed a study, well it’s been about two years, to look at the relative impact of septic systems, land application and direct discharge of effluent into creeks in the contributing zone.

Ronald Green [00:53:38] And what we found there was that it really doesn’t matter how you put it in the ground. If it’s an individual septic system, if it’s a land application, or if it’s a direct discharge, the amount of stuff that you put into the environment is what carries the day.

Ronald Green [00:53:56] So if you have, you know, large acreage properties, you’re going to put less stuff in the ground. If you have dense properties, no matter how you put it into the watershed, it’s going to have that greater impact just because there’s more stuff going into the environment.

Ronald Green [00:54:15] So, I worked in those areas along with water resource evaluations of of of springs to see how much impact pumping would have on spring discharge as part of my career. I’m now semi-retired, still working part-time, but I bring that expertise to both the staff and and the board of the Nature Conservancy.

Ronald Green [00:54:45] And it’s been a very rewarding experience for me because this agency is very receptive to these important concepts that I feel need to be embraced in terms of appreciating and protecting the water resources, both in terms of quantity and quality.

Lee Smith [00:55:05] Earlier when you were talking about the Peace Corps, you said you kind of questioned who got more out of it. Were you really conserving and helping the people over there? Or was it more inspiring you? It seems like those are now wedded with your experience with the Nature Conservancy.

Ronald Green [00:55:26] Well they are. I mean, it’s a, yeah, it’s highly rewarding to me to be able to to bring something to the table.

Ronald Green [00:55:34] But I would have to think that, you know, the the expertise that that is, you know, I can bring is important to these these issues because, you know, unfortunately, there is, you know, some dated concepts out there.

Ronald Green [00:55:56] You know, one example is, you know, only the recharge zone is important, contributing zone isn’t, you know, that pumping next to a stream is not going to impact the amount of water going into the stream. You know, those things are a bit dated and, you know, recent research has put some science behind that.

Ronald Green [00:56:18] So you’re not just up there pontificating on your opinion. You’re showing, you know, data, you’re showing cause and effect that will allow policymakers to make informed decisions.

Ronald Green [00:56:32] You know, the role of science is not to make those decisions. The role of science is to say, “You do this, this is what’s going to happen. Now, if you want to pump that aquifer down to nothing, then this is what’s going to happen to the spring discharge in the creek.”

Ronald Green [00:56:51] So, you know, we may have some sort of, you know, opinion, you know, being interpreted out of what we say. But the reality is, you know, you do this and this is what happens.

Ronald Green [00:57:09] Unfortunately, there are folks out there that that say that we are just pushing our personal agenda.

Ronald Green [00:57:17] Well, you know, if the if our agenda is you want to continue to sustain this resource, then this is what you have to do. You know, that’s not an agenda. That is science in, you know, how these things are related.

Lee Smith [00:57:40] So I’m going to flip these. So what’s your outlook on the future hold for conservation?

Ronald Green [00:57:49] Well, it’s a, my outlook on these resources is hopeful. I think that there are a lot of folks out in these rural areas that understand the resource.

Ronald Green [00:58:10] You have a minority of folks, however, that are maybe driven a little bit more by their their personal desires of how they want to see things develop.

Ronald Green [00:58:26] But when you have the policy makers informed, then you’re going to be more successful. And there are so many more policy makers out there that are relying on science rather than these, you know, old concepts.

Ronald Green [00:58:43] One other concept that we didn’t mention is the impact of cedar and mesquite in the contributing zone. You know, the old idea was you got to cut the cedar out because you’re going to have more recharge and you’re going to have more spring discharge.

Ronald Green [00:59:01] There has been some outstanding work done by folks down at Texas A&M, in particular, Brad Wilcox. And he has a seminal paper from 2011. And it shows that, you know, in the post-Depression years, they had increased brush growth for watersheds up in the the Hill Country and which include cedar and mesquite. And in those four watersheds, they had increased spring discharge and increased spring flow.

Ronald Green [00:59:41] And that concept, what came out about ten, 12 years ago, was not well accepted by landowners because they were getting federal dollars for brush removal.

Ronald Green [00:59:57] Well, brush removal also has the the added benefit of allowing more grass to grow for grazing. So, you know, they would use the argument that brush removal would, you know, improve the springs and the streams, but it didn’t.

Ronald Green [01:00:18] And so that concept has slowly gained some standing in the technical community, well in the technical community, certainly. But the policymakers are now starting to embrace that.

Ronald Green [01:00:33] So, you know, all these things together, I think, provide a more solid technical foundation on how to sustain these land uses or, you know, these resources and land use in the future. And, you know, I’m hopeful.

Ronald Green [01:00:55] You know, another one of the sort of the things that we couldn’t talk about just a few years ago is climate change.

Ronald Green [01:01:02] Climate change is going to, is happening. And I don’t you know, I, I work in that general area in terms of how will climate change impact recharge? And it will. So if you have reduced precipitation, you’re going to have reduced recharge. And we’ve done some work out in the Plateau to show what that correlation is.

Ronald Green [01:01:28] And so, you know, I’ve made presentations to farmers and I said, “You know, I’m not out here to convince you climate change is going to happen or not. But I’ll tell you, if climate change happens and if that change is affected by reduced precipitation, then your recharge is going to go down. And when your recharge goes down, your spring discharge goes down, and your spring discharge goes down then your stream flow goes down.”

Ronald Green [01:01:58] And there were 80 farmers out there. This was in Sonora. And not one person disputed my, you know, you know, my argument. And that was back in 2011. And since that time, you know, there was a period where, you know, climate change was really not not well received, but it is now.

Ronald Green [01:02:20] And, you know, ranchers know that they are highly dependent upon precipitation. And if you tell them that, you know, they they may dispute whether, you know, what has caused this. But, you know, they know that when precipitation changes, it has a profound effect on them. So that has to be recognized, too.

Ronald Green [01:02:43] So, you know, you ask, “Am I hopeful?” Well, you have, you know, these two big risks to your resources – land use changes, and that could be pumping, agriculture. And you have climate change. And you have to take those into account because it’s not a static environment you’re dealing with. It’s dynamic and it’s going to always change. So, you know, it’s going to keep, you know, the scientists employed for a long period of time.

Ronald Green [01:03:13] But I think, you know, people are starting to accept some of these new concepts. And because of that, I think that there’s hope for the resources.

Lee Smith [01:03:22] What is your advice? What is your advice for somebody that wants to go into conservation?

Ronald Green [01:03:32] My advice to people, if they want to go into the earth sciences and conservation, is follow your passion. Don’t go into it for the money necessarily, because there are other ways to make more money. But you’ll see people in conservation and they they stay active way beyond their careers. And because of the reward that they get out of it and they get reward out of it because it’s working toward society’s best interest, and and, you know, mankind’s best interests.

Ronald Green [01:04:20] And these communities are going to be sustainable if they follow the science and understand, you know, how these things are all interrelated. You just can’t do things with impunity and not expect an impact on your resource.

Ronald Green [01:04:37] So these folks, if they can go into it in many different ways. You know, I went in groundwater hydrology. Biologists go in. They may be freshwater biologists. They may be, you know, landscape-type biologists.

Ronald Green [01:04:55] You can be very impactful if you are a computer scientist, if you’re a astro scientist, you know, astronomy, not astronomy, but atmospheric scientist.

Ronald Green [01:05:14] Whatever you go into, you can have a profound impact.

Ronald Green [01:05:19] You know, I’m at Southwest Research still, sort of as an emeritus status, and I’m in the space science group and they have a world-class organization working with remote sensing. And so, you know, they’re using all these new satellites and these, you know, these small constellation of sensors in order to, you know, just understand, you know, things like soil moisture, you know, rain patterns, precipitation, measurements to a much greater degree than they used to.

Ronald Green [01:06:07] And so, you know, there’s if you’re driven by science and you want to go into conservation, there are just a myriad of opportunities.

Lee Smith [01:06:19] And with the challenges that you’ve just talked about – changing land use and climate change – this is a vocation that that’s needed, not only…

Ronald Green [01:06:33] Well it is. It is.

Ronald Green [01:06:36] You know, you look at the… The demand is increasing. You know, Texas is predicted to have a 50% increase in population over the next generation or so. So, you’re going to have to do things differently if you’re going to sustain development.

Ronald Green [01:06:40] There are some places like up in the Ogallala that they’re de-watering that aquifer. I don’t know what what they’re going to do. Some of those sandstone-type porous-media aquifers like the Carrizo-Wilcox, they’re not going to ever recover for millennia.

Ronald Green [01:06:40] Fortunately, these carbonate aquifers like the Edwards and the Trinity and the Edwards-Trinity are very responsive. And they can go from, you know, record high levels to record low levels in a year, and come back in a similar period of time.

Ronald Green [01:07:40] So, you know, it really bodes well to to plan accordingly so that you can, you know, sustain these resources for generations to come.