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

Interviewee: Susan Hughes
Date: June 6, 2022
Site: San Antonio, Texas
Reels: 3713-3718
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: Hughes_Susan_NCItem14_SanAntonioTX_20220607_Reel3713-3718_Audio.mp3

[Bracketed numbers refer to the time code of the interview recording.]

Lee Smith [00:00:16] So where did you grow up?

Susan Hughes [00:00:19] Right here in the country of 1100 springs. I was born in Santa Rosa Hospital. And so I’ve spent virtually all my life in Texas. I spent one calendar year outside the state, to the day. I mean, it was out on June 15th and back by June 14th of the following year. So, I’m definitely a central Texas girl, no question about that.

Susan Hughes [00:00:49] Do you go to college here?

Speaker 2 [00:00:52] Oh, yeah. I went to Keystone School and went to Trinity University, and then I got my master’s degree from U.T. Austin so I can qualify as a Longhorn if necessary. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:01:04] Think back. And what’s your, like, earliest recollection of a connection with nature?

Susan Hughes [00:01:11] Well, my dad was an outdoorsman. He was a hunter and a fisherman. And so I went out with him all the time. The weekends when it wasn’t hunting or fishing, I mean, we were going out and just wandering around places where he had leases and so forth. And he was not a schooled outdoorsman nor naturalist, but he loved the outdoors and he was very much aware of things around him and would point out things.

Susan Hughes [00:01:44] He could he could point things out like you wouldn’t believe. You know, you’d take a hillside. He could tell you there’s 14 deer over there. “You see those?” “No.” But he was, you know, he just had a great eye. And I he’s, he was just very a very kind man, very engaged. And so I really thrived on on that.

Susan Hughes [00:02:14] So that’s a kind of a poor girl’s introduction to nature, but it was certainly an effective one, although I did learn a great deal of sympathy for the people who only know birds as those little brown things flying around. We didn’t know species necessarily, but I knew lots of things about about birds, for example, that were over and above their, their names. So but like I say, great sympathy for all those people who say, “What do you mean I have golden-cheeked warblers on my property? What the heck is a golden-cheeked warbler?”

Susan Hughes [00:02:55] You know, so and I think that’s a, it’s an important thing to remember, especially as we’re dealing with landowners and so forth, is that sometimes people who are, you know, conservationists and, you know, dyed-in-the-wool folks say, “Well, gee, guy, you know, you’ve got all these species on your land and, you know, we think you ought to be doing this, that and the other.” And what’s the first response when somebody questions whether or not you know what you’re doing? I think it’s defense.

Susan Hughes [00:03:31] And that’s one of the things that we learned early on in some of our dealings with with landowners and so forth, is that approaching people and relationship building is one of the most important things that a conservationist can do.

Susan Hughes [00:03:49] So I got off on a little side track there. But but I think it’s germane to virtually everything that we’re doing on some of these programs, and maybe all of these programs, is how do you build relationships with people to help you achieve mutual goals? And that’s the most important thing.

Susan Hughes [00:04:10] You know, you don’t want to, you don’t want to make people do things because it’s for you. You know, well, life would be a lot better if you could, you know, just take care of all of the mountain cedar and your juniper on your property and and and make sure that you’ve got mixed hardwoods. Just, you know, watch out for those things while you’re, while you’re taking care of those steep slopes that nobody’s using for anything else.

Susan Hughes [00:04:42] You know, just, you know, we just found out that that didn’t work. Nothing could have been clearer than whenever on page one of the Express-News, the headline was, you know, something like, “21 Texas counties designated critical habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler”. No. But once it’s on page one, a retraction on page six doesn’t mean anything, you know? So that’s.

Lee Smith [00:05:15] Three days later.

Susan Hughes [00:05:16] Yeah. Another lesson is get your data right. You know.

Susan Hughes [00:05:21] So there’s so many, there are so many lessons to be learned, so many lessons that we we learned only because we made the mistakes. You know. But, but with any luck, maybe we did learn some of them.

Susan Hughes [00:05:37] So, but, you know, as far as my early, you know, experiences, I, I had a great aunt who had a property out on Hunter Road in San Marcos and it was just a small farm. And the hand, the ranch hand or the farmhand, would take me out whenever he was collecting eggs or, you know, going someplace out on that property, there was a big mound of of snails, fossil snails, just a great big 100,000 year old, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:06:16] And I would go out there and collect these things, you know, it was just just crazy. I mean, just, you know, I couldn’t carry enough of them back home again, you know? So I’m sure we depleted something about the Cenozoic, you know, bed or something like that. But but I had much, much fun out there and just, you know, just nosing around and, you know, just getting my kind of getting my mental feet wet. So.

Lee Smith [00:06:49] So your dad was a mentor for you?

Susan Hughes [00:06:52] Oh, yes.

Lee Smith [00:06:53] Did you have any teachers that were?

Susan Hughes [00:06:55] Well, I would say particularly as I grew older then, you know, in college and so forth, I started having a little bit more of that sort of mentorship. But one of the things that was very important to me. And it was again, it went back to my dad because he worked down at the Pearl Brewery for 30 years. And a lot of the men who worked down there were property owners around this part of Texas.

Susan Hughes [00:07:29] And he knew the family that owned the Bracken Cave property. And he made arrangements at one point in time to take me and my my best friend and her boyfriend and my boyfriend at the time and all of us out there to watch the emergence.

Susan Hughes [00:07:52] Really probably the only people who knew very much about that at that point in time were the air traffic controllers at Randolph, because that was the that was the majority of of who knew anything about that.

Susan Hughes [00:08:07] And of course, that was you know, that was a mind-numbing, you know, mind-opening experience. And indeed, the the fellow that I was dating at the time has become one of the foremost bat biologists in the world, I would say. You know, there’s not that many of them who actually make a living as a biologist.

Susan Hughes [00:08:34] But anyway, so that that was that was an amazing experience and one that I’ve taken advantage of many times in the past because it’s it’s so, it’s so, it’s so central and it’s so important to this ecosystem to have this wonderful natural resource right in the middle of us.

Susan Hughes [00:09:00] And I keep reminding people from time to time, just think about the mosquito population we would have in the summertime were it not for Bracken Cave and the other caves around the area, many of which were protected by our conservation programs.

Susan Hughes [00:09:18] But but that was that was a really a remarkable experience, you know. And then I had the good fortune of coming out for it. It’s not an emergence. It’s a return?

Lee Smith [00:09:35] Return?

Susan Hughes [00:09:36] Return. I have tried to come up with a word. Reemergence? Now that doesn’t work, but which is an entirely different experience, isn’t it?

Lee Smith [00:09:46] The sound is different.

Susan Hughes [00:09:48] Zoom. Zoom.

Susan Hughes [00:09:51] You know, it’s like, “Oh, my gosh!”

Lee Smith [00:09:53] They don’t come out. I mean, they don’t they don’t return in a vortex.

Susan Hughes [00:09:57] No.

Lee Smith [00:09:57] It’s almost individual.

Susan Hughes [00:09:59] Yes. Return. Exactly.

Lee Smith [00:10:01] As you’re talking about – speed.

Susan Hughes [00:10:03] Yes. Yes. And you’re sitting there watching the hole and they’re coming back from behind you. But it certainly speaks to their capacity for aerodynamics or whatever. They’re amazing.

[00:10:19] I’ve also been lucky enough to see a couple of emergences where there have been albinos in the, you know, the vortex. Which means that you finally can get some sort of a handle on what it means to be in the middle of this, you know, swirling mass of – started to say humanity. Would that it were. But this swirling mass of of of mammals, it’s just just astonishing.

Susan Hughes [00:10:50] We are so, so fortunate to be living in central Texas. You know, just many things to be be grateful for.

Lee Smith [00:10:58] Have you ever been there on a full moon?

Susan Hughes [00:11:02] I don’t know that I have.

Lee Smith [00:11:04] Well, you know, they fly east, so. Yeah, it’s. It’s great because they go.

Susan Hughes [00:11:08] Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:11:08] It looks like they’re going right to the moon.

Susan Hughes [00:11:10] Yes. Yes. That would be. That’d be pretty cool. Yeah. I’ll keep an eye out for one of those.

Lee Smith [00:11:17] July 12th.

Susan Hughes [00:11:17] July 12th. Okay.

Lee Smith [00:11:19] The next one. I think I want to go.

Susan Hughes [00:11:25] Cool.

Lee Smith [00:11:25] So we talked about education. Didn’t we?

Susan Hughes [00:11:27] Yeah. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:11:29] What about popular culture? Was there anything, any book or movie or anything in popular song that.

Susan Hughes [00:11:37] Well, you know one thing I think about is that Walt Disney had a series of of nature documentaries. And I really enjoyed those a great deal. The work of cinematography was, of course, remarkable. And, you know, it was a big screen, you know, excitement.

Susan Hughes [00:12:01] The other thing, on the way far other end of the spectrum, I had a little book called “Wildlife in Color”. It had tiny little pictures in color with little tiny blurbs about the about the animals. And I, I must have read that back and forth, you know, a couple of hundred times.

Susan Hughes [00:12:22] And just in the past couple of months, I passed it along to my granddaughter and I said, “This, this is not much to look at,” I said. “But this was my very favorite book growing up.” And so I, I had already passed along to her almost all of my nature books because she’s a budding naturalist and my naturalist days as a field anything are pretty limited.

Susan Hughes [00:12:53] But any time I want to know anything, I can always ask her, right? You know, that’s that’s why we have, that’s why we have grandchildren.

Susan Hughes [00:13:02] So that was a a transition to pass on Wildlife in Color.

Lee Smith [00:13:11] Is it tattered and.

Susan Hughes [00:13:13] No, not particularly. It was a nicely, you know, hardbound book. So it held up over the years. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:13:23] So what was your first involvement in conservation work?

Susan Hughes [00:13:30] You know, I was, I was reviewing some things yesterday. And, of course, you know, the deeper you get into the weeds, you know, the weedier they get. And so you’re trying to figure out, you know, what what was it, you know, first, you know, sort of pulled me into the actual, you know, something that could be defined as conservation work.

Susan Hughes [00:13:51] And I suppose that it was a sort of more of a need to do something in this area and maybe poorly defined. But I ended up getting involved with Bexar Audubon Society. And that happened accidentally. I happened to know a few people who were in Bexar Audubon. So that was kind of a little bit of a little bit of a home.

Susan Hughes [00:14:22] But in truth, going back to going back to the bats. A couple of years before I got involved with Bexar Audubon, I had, my my friend Susan Rust had convened a group of group of people with various interests, which I think eventually became the San Antonio Environmental Network.

Susan Hughes [00:14:47] And somehow or other, I got invited to that meeting, and as the bat person, you know. Well, after that, I went off to a high, you know, high-pressure job and I dropped out of pretty much everything for a few years. But then I went to another meeting that had been convened. And dear Susan, she looked across the room at me and she said, “You are my Susan”, she said. So.

Susan Hughes [00:15:17] And I think I’ve been her Susan ever since. But, but, but, yes. So that was I was I was definitely entrenched at that point in time. I, I now had my unofficial bat wings, I guess, and got pretty deeply involved in Bexar Audubon.

Susan Hughes [00:15:35] And I started started out volunteering to edit the newsletter, which, you know, of course nobody … it’s an impossible job to fill. So when somebody says, “I’m willing to, I’m willing to edit your newsletter”, it’s like, “I don’t care what you did, you know, one foot in the grave or what. If you’ll edit our newsletter, we love you.”

Susan Hughes [00:15:57] And I’m I am a terribly prolific community communicator under under the circumstances. And so that was just right down my alley. And I could be in charge. I could write anything I wanted to pretty much as long as it was more or less, you know, vested in truth. You know, I was pretty good about that.

Susan Hughes [00:16:19] So anyway, I went through the ranks at Bexar Audubon. I was President of Bexar Audubon, I don’t know, half a dozen times like we all did, you know, just, okay, this is the hat. It’s your hat now. I’ll take the hat back in a couple of years, you know, which is just, you know, that’s the way, that’s the way these small organizations work, you know? But it was a it was a great, it was a great place to be.

Susan Hughes [00:16:45] And I think the most important reason for that was because Bexar Audubon had developed a reputation, and I think earned the reputation, of being folks in the conservation arena who were approachable by a wide range of folks.

Susan Hughes [00:17:07] And there were other conservation organizations that had the reputation of being, you know, harder to, harder to deal with. Bexar Audubon was always willing to listen to both sides of the story, make our, you know, assessments and recommendations and try to come up with a solution.

Susan Hughes [00:17:31] I think my famous line from BA days was, if we don’t have a solution that works for everybody, we don’t have a solution that works for anybody. And I think that that I think that’s pretty viable words to live by.

Lee Smith [00:17:52] How can you achieve that, though? Because with with such diverse interests, I’m kind of jumping ahead off the paper.

Susan Hughes [00:18:00] Yeah. It’s okay. Well, what you do is you listen to people. And you try to identify those kernels where we agree. And you can work from there.

Susan Hughes [00:18:17] If you start off saying, “Well, yeah, but you’re this and I’m that.” And never the twain shall meet. Well, guess what? Never the twain shall meet.

Susan Hughes [00:18:28] But if you can find a few kernels that you can agree on and a lot of times that’s long-term goals, then you have the potential to work towards larger things.

Susan Hughes [00:18:47] And once you, once you get to the point where you agree on a few things and all of a sudden you agree on a few more.

Susan Hughes [00:18:56] And one other thing that I learned whenever I went onto the Edwards Aquifer Authority board, where we had really divergent, you know, interests at the table, was that it helps to know people as themselves. Not as positions.

Susan Hughes [00:19:24] And that’s what we had whenever we first started at the Edwards, we had a few people that were, you know, there were people that were farmers, or ranchers. That’s what they cared about. They wanted their, you know, they wanted their water, period. And ideally, it wouldn’t have any restrictions on it at all.

Susan Hughes [00:19:44] We’ve got the springs people over here. They’ve got their interests. They want to keep the springs flowing and they’ve got their recreational interests and well, they also represent downstream.

Susan Hughes [00:19:55] And then we’ve got the 600-pound gorilla in the middle that everybody hates, you know, because San Antonio, you know, is sucking everything dry, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:20:05] So so one of the things that we did early on was to was to do some off-sites, and spend some time, spend a weekend, just getting to know one another. And we had meetings during the daytime, but we had lunches and we had breakfasts and we had dinners. And we happened to be at a at a facility where they actually did sort of have an open bar. That probably wasn’t a bad idea.

Susan Hughes [00:20:39] But one of the things that that happened there was that people got to talking. Sometimes the wives, their husbands came along, sometimes not. But that was another dynamic.

Susan Hughes [00:20:51] And it just enriched the conversations so much. “Oh, my gosh. I know you, you know, your family has well drillers. Well, you know, the only well driller I know is old Mr. Kutcher over in San Marcos.” You know, just just a little. It doesn’t take much.

Susan Hughes [00:21:12] And then those are the kernels that you can build on, and that turns a position into a person. And the person becomes your friend, ultimately.

Susan Hughes [00:21:23] We may not agree on everything. Nobody ever said we were going to agree on everything. But we could, we could, we could honor one another, as, you know, as the people that we are and the experiences that we are, that we have had.

Susan Hughes [00:21:44] That was, that’s the other thing. I mean, everybody’s so, you know, interesting. And if you just, you know, just give them a chance to come talk about what it is that they they like, what they do, what’s your hobbies, you know, where did you come from?

Susan Hughes [00:22:02] And I had the, I had the benefit of having some roots in the West in that my dad had once, once he could afford them, he had hunting leases out in the, you know, the western part of the state.

Susan Hughes [00:22:17] And so I’d spent a lot of time out, you know, around La Pryor and you know in that neck of the woods, kicking around, following my dad around, you know, or actually not following him, walking in front of him looking for arrowheads. Right? Remember the man who could see a flock of deer, you know, someplace? He walks right behind you said, “Here’s one, here’s one.” You know, it’s like, okay, fine. Just rub it in, rub it in. Yeah.

Susan Hughes [00:22:49] But anyway, so I had I had some minimal roots and experience in that part of the country.

Susan Hughes [00:22:57] Well, then other parts of my family were from New Braunfels, you know, that’s the name Warneke. Might ring bells with some folks. Well, I was my family were the Warnerkes, you know. And unfortunately, they didn’t inherit any money that the Warnekes had, hadn’t gotten hold of at some point in time. But but there was you know, there was a connection there, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:23:24] And so I, I have eaten at both both camps. Plus, you know, being, you know, strongly in San Antonio, I mean. So that that helped, you know, as well.

Susan Hughes [00:23:38] But but you just have to you just sort of find those things. And you don’t always know until you really kind of dig down and give people a chance to talk and pay attention to what they’re saying and have enough interest, I guess, in general, to be able to to spin off on some of those things and say, “Oh, yeah, well, how about X?” You know, or whatever.

Susan Hughes [00:24:10] I mean, I grew up swimming at Llano Lake.

Susan Hughes [00:24:12] There’s so many connections that you can make. And they do, they do make so much difference. Yeah, so much difference.

Lee Smith [00:24:25] Well, and it shows a measure of respect for the person that you’re interested in them and that you’re listening to them. And then from respect, you are not suspect.

Susan Hughes [00:24:38] Yeah. Right.

Lee Smith [00:24:39] Any more. And then there’s the chance that some of their hardened positions might be more, they might be more open-minded about certain things.

Susan Hughes [00:24:51] And they may not be what they appeared to you to be in the first place. We have so many suppositions that we wander around with, you know,. They don’t usually do us very much good at all because they’re usually wrong, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:25:09] But, and it’s, I mean, how bad how badly do you want to get along with people? If you don’t care, then you don’t have to put forth the effort to to do any of this.

Susan Hughes [00:25:25] But if you do care and you do have a goal in mind that is bigger than yourself, then chances are much better that you will get there, if you manage to find people to, you know, to cooperate with, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:25:44] Very few of us achieve anything all by ourselves. But if you get a coalition of people together, the chances are probably pretty good that you might be able to at least move the, what do they say, kick the can down the road a ways?

Susan Hughes [00:26:01] And, you know, sometimes that’s all we can hope for. But, you know, the can get bigger and, you know, eventually you might hit a top of the hill and you might be able to just roll with it at that point in time.

Susan Hughes [00:26:14] So there’s been so many, so many things that we that we learn that are useful to us as conservationists are just common sense, you know, really just common sense and common courtesy, frankly.

Susan Hughes [00:26:30] Which is not always so common these days. Common is often, often, often mentioned. But it can, it can exist. It does, it does matter. And there are people who are willing to practice those, you know, those little principles and and projects and so forth, trying to get ahead.

Lee Smith [00:27:00] So now tell me about the Edwards Aquifer Protection program. What was your involvement with that?

Susan Hughes [00:27:08] Well, why wouldn’t you, you know? This kind of falls in the in the under the under the big umbrella of of no-brainers. You know. I know, I know it seems seems funny, but a lot of people don’t necessarily believe that. But but it is it’s, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:27:31] Why on earth would you have a remarkable resource like the Edwards Aquifer and not want to protect it for the future? I mean, you just have to stop and think about what it what it does. And and even more so if you if …

Susan Hughes [00:27:53] You know, I’ve been preaching for years, people are tired of listening. I think we have to think about the Edwards aquifer as a as a greater ecosystem. You know, we can’t think of it as just the recharge zone or we can’t think of it as just the wells that, you know, pop up here and there.

Susan Hughes [00:28:13] We really have to think about it as a as an ecosystem that goes all the way from Kinney County, despite the fact that they don’t want to be part of it, you know, all the way to the bays and estuaries. You can’t think about one piece of it without thinking about all of it. Or you are definitely shooting yourself in the foot in the long term.

Susan Hughes [00:28:36] So that’s been my, you know, my my soapbox for for how long?

Susan Hughes [00:28:41] And then we pick and choose the things that we want to about about the aquifer and about, you know, how many people, you know, depend on it for drinking water. And that’s just in the San Antonio city limits, you know. What about the people who live in the New Braunfels? Okay? They depend on it, too. And the people in Uvalde depend on it.

Susan Hughes [00:29:05] So let’s start looking at this as a this is a system that functions well, if it’s treated as a coherent ecological system.

Susan Hughes [00:29:24] Now, if if you don’t want to treat it that way and you want to, you know, pick and choose, well, chances are pretty good, you know, you will fail eventually because it’s like a you know, it’s like a puzzle. You know, you have these, all these pieces. And if you if you take all the pieces and put them all together, then they make sense.

Susan Hughes [00:29:44] And if you take a few pieces out maybe got a piece of something in some old puzzle over here, then maybe I could shove this into the mix over here and chances are it won’t fit very well. You can trim the corners off of it. You know, you can be creative. But if, you know, if you try to if you try to do that, then ultimately, you’re not dealing with not dealing with a full deck, as they say. Right?

Susan Hughes [00:30:21] And we could we could we could say that about, you know, any number of people, places or things.

Susan Hughes [00:30:29] But I guess that’s that’s my one of my, what, biggest preaching points or whatever. Is that how important it is to look at this as as a as a functioning system.

Susan Hughes [00:30:49] One of the and one of the things whenever we (I’m bouncing around here) but one of the things whenever we first formed the Edwards Aquifer Authority, which of course was, you know, its own judges and courts and, you know, lawsuits and one thing and another and people pulling numbers out of the air and, you know, trying to come up with something that, you know, wouldn’t get us in the in the hands of the the feds, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:31:20] But, you know, we ended up with a real hodgepodge of of quote “data” where we tried to try to (I say, we, not me personally) tried to tried to cram into this into this into this puzzle. You know, and as with anything that is that highly manufactured, it didn’t work real well.

Susan Hughes [00:31:49] But whenever we started the EAA, one of the early things that that that we did was to take a serious look at the springs, and the fact that, you know what had come up, you know, as say, the flow levels, I think it was 125 CFS, you know, 24-7. Right? You know, morning, morning, night. You know, whatever. Thanksgiving doesn’t matter. Easter, you know, 125.

Susan Hughes [00:32:27] Well, some of us know that natural systems really don’t work that way. But that was good enough for, you know, that was good enough for the courts at that point in time. And and so that’s what they we were living with was this 125. And how in the world are you going to achieve that?

Susan Hughes [00:32:47] Well, okay, you’re not. You don’t want to. It’s counterproductive. Don’t even think about it.

Susan Hughes [00:32:56] So what we set about doing was hiring some good biologists and setting them to task to come up with some ideas about how these spring systems worked. And we were fortunate to, you know, hire really top-notch scientists to work on it who are still on the job today, 25 years later.

Susan Hughes [00:33:23] And and we started gathering data and putting together a picture of how, you know, how this part of the springs have functioned versus, say, San Marcos or New Braunfels, how those how those things differed, how, what kind of what kind of water plants does this species need and what type of, you know, what type of substrate does this one need?

Susan Hughes [00:33:55] And, you know, I mean, do they have to have periodic flushes of water? If if they don’t and they get one, where do they hide?

Susan Hughes [00:34:04] I mean, just you know, there’s a myriad questions to be answered. You discover things like, or I guess maybe it wasn’t discovery, but things like riffle beetles, you know, who knew? The big riffle beetles are about the size of a strawberry seed. And they you know, there are colonies of them. They used to, at one point, think that once they initially found them that they were only extant in one location in the, not in the Spring Lake, but in the in the in the canal of the Springs area.

Susan Hughes [00:34:48] Well, over the years. Okay. And just for many years, lots of riffle beetles collected. And they’ve learned that, well, first of all, there’s riffle beetles in San Marcos, too, and there’s riffle beetles in, you know, a dozen different other places and Spring Lake and that environment.

Susan Hughes [00:35:09] And, you know, how did they survive during the drought of the ’50s? They live in, you know, these these places where there’s flushes of fresh, you know, fresh spring water. Those weren’t happening then.

Susan Hughes [00:35:26] Well, seems like apparently, don’t quote me on this, but, you know, they burrowed down so far into the aquifer that they managed to survive and be able to recover whenever, you know, the system recovered.

Susan Hughes [00:35:43] So, I mean, that’s just one example. And a lot of people, I’m sure I mean, a lot of people diss, you know, salamanders, you know, even more undoubtedly diss, you know, riffle beetles, you know, but they’re all part of the system and they’re all part. Somebody eats them. Okay. Somebody eats them.

Susan Hughes [00:36:07] And it’s been fascinating work. It has given a bunch of scientists pretty good work for a good number of years. But the investigation is a good in and of itself, in my opinion, at least. And we’ve really spawned a number of good scientists along the way who have been able to work on these projects.

Susan Hughes [00:36:35] You know, one of the one of the chief benefits to our commitment to doing this science early on had to do with the fact that we started, you know, pretty much at the beginning and every year whenever it came time to renew the contract. Well, I guess you’ve worked long enough in any kind of scientific arena to know that funding one year is not that hard. Funding two years, maybe. Funding three years, probably not. Funding four years, who’s your uncle, you know. Right.

Susan Hughes [00:37:18] Well, and I will I will claim tap shoes for a number of these years when they’ve come up because I just, you know, I practically jumped up on the on the table and said, “You don’t do science this way. You know, you do not do science this way. If we’re going to do this, we need to continue the work and make it make sense, to have a coherent body of data.”

Susan Hughes [00:37:48] Well, about eight years into this process, we got involved in the Habitat Conservation Planning program, and that was, you know, we had been dabbling in that at the EAA, but it didn’t quite ever gel. But we had other folks come in from Fish and Wildlife and sort of, you know, nurture us along this process. And one of the things that we were able to bring to the table was eight years of longitudinal data. How often does that happen?

Susan Hughes [00:38:27] So whenever the HCP folks started up, I mean, they started off running. They knew so much about those springs ecosystems that, you know, they they didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:38:44] So I think that’s one of the things that we, I don’t know, we achieved. I don’t know exactly where I was going with this except for the fact that that, you know, that it’s, there’s just a lot of good reasons to build – this could be where I was going with this – to build relationships and build connections because of the fact that at least by the time we got to year three, four or five, I had I had established enough credibility on the board that they didn’t completely blow me out of the water, you know. I’m not saying it was easy every time, but every time I was able to make the case for why this was to the benefit of the region, you know.

Susan Hughes [00:39:42] We know that. But a farmer in Uvalde may not know that, you know. There’s a whole lot of people, a whole lot of people in San Antonio City Council, you know, wouldn’t have known that.

Susan Hughes [00:39:59] But those are the kinds of things where having relationships – and it gets me back to that whole deal – pays off because you build credibility and eventually somebody believes that you may know what you’re talking about and you’re at least worth, you’re worth a bit, a bit. You know, you’re worth a bit.

Lee Smith [00:40:28] So how about when it was first getting on the ballot? What were the challenges there?

Susan Hughes [00:40:36] Oh boy. Well, first of all, you have to understand that the first go-round for the Edwards Aquifer Protection program was a 100% grassroots effort. I mean, there was, any organizational support that that was lent was because people came, you know, and gathered, you know, for a beer down, you know, at La Tuna and tried to, you know, strategize as to how this could could happen.

Susan Hughes [00:41:12] And let me back up just a little bit, because a couple of years before we actually actually started and got this on the ballot, a group of us – attorneys, agency people, folks like from Nature Conservancy, you know, just average Americans, you know, average average local citizens and so forth who were interested in these things – had gotten together with, and this was an outgrowth of another another agency, another committee that happened that had made some connections.

Susan Hughes [00:41:56] Anyway, we agreed to get together and talk about what we believed were the one or two or whatever number of things that were absolutely critical to ensure San Antonio’s sustainability into the future. And we met probably, I would say, I think it was over over a year. I can’t remember exactly because I can’t find the files anymore. I probably tossed them. This is old news.

Susan Hughes [00:42:26] But but we met regularly and these were, you know, including people who were at the the crux of the development activities in San Antonio who actually knew what was, you know, what was going on in terms of threats to San Antonio sustainability.

Susan Hughes [00:42:46] So we we met. And what we came up with was one word, and that was “water”. So the question was, how do we sustain water security for San Antonio into the future.

Susan Hughes [00:43:04] And we started looking at, “Okay, where does the water come from?” Right? Back then we thought pretty much the water came in from up north. Swirled around within Medina County, you know, back around this way. We know a lot more now because we’ve done the science, that’s why. And you know, but we knew, you know, that’s the way that’s the way the water was going.

Susan Hughes [00:43:30] And that’s also, happens to be the way development was moving in San Antonio. And so if you want to protect that, that recharge, which is where it all comes from, you got to figure out a way to protect the recharge and and do it within the framework of of what the what the city needed for its, you know, for its developments.

Susan Hughes [00:43:58] There were some restrictions on first efforts and so forth. But ultimately, what we what we came down with was you have to protect the recharge zone. And that’s the way you protect the water resource for the future.

Susan Hughes [00:44:15] Now, we were fortunate to have a couple of folks on our in our group who had some very strong connections in city hall, and were willing to put their feet out there on the fire and make, make some efforts, some serious efforts, to to get the city council to understand why this was important and that they should and could vote for putting it on the ballot and some mechanism for for funding that.

Susan Hughes [00:44:56] God only knows how we got there, how we got, how they got the city council to put it on the ballot, you know. But it was kind of a one-off. You know, it should have been a no-brainer. Probably wasn’t. It was probably there was probably some, you know, political capital exchanged here and there for for this. But it made an awful lot of sense.

Susan Hughes [00:45:13] And it protected areas only in Bexar County at that point in time. So it was very, very limited.

Susan Hughes [00:45:22] And but it was you know, it was, it was very successful. I mean, people came out to vote for for this. It was one of like five propositions. I always forget the number, that were on were on that ballot.

Susan Hughes [00:45:41] And when I was working the polls that day, people were walking up and I was chatting with them and and they would say, “Oh, that’s the reason we came today. That’s that’s the one thing we came to vote for.”

Susan Hughes [00:45:56] And it was, I believe, the only one of the propositions that passed that year. And it was you know, it was remarkably successful. The public, you know, loved it.

Susan Hughes [00:46:08] And they made some strategic purchases. So it got off to a good start.

Susan Hughes [00:46:16] Next next time around, we went to the legislature and got some changes made to allow us to to purchase first of all, to purchase easements rather than be limited to fee simple properties, and secondly, to do that outside of Bexar County.

Susan Hughes [00:46:34] So those were two really crucial things in terms of the overall success for the program. Those two things opened up, you know, opened up wide, wide doors for us. And, you know. The rest is, you know, maybe not history, but.

Lee Smith [00:46:55] Well, it gave you more tools.

Susan Hughes [00:46:57] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Lee Smith [00:47:00] Bonnie was saying that there was a helicopter ride that a bunch of guys took that may have kind of opened up a few eyes and perspectives.

Susan Hughes [00:47:14] I think she’s right. I was not on that on that helicopter ride. I just want to make that perfectly clear. Okay? But I think that was well, you know, I bet you can’t count on, you know, two hands and two feet the number of people who were on city council, for example, who had ever been west of Hondo, certainly, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the county line, you know, but didn’t really have any any kind of concept of what was out there.

Susan Hughes [00:47:50] And, you know, once you see it, you know, the landscape view, you understand. You know, first of all, it’s vast. And secondly, it’s you could see, you could see enough, I’m sure, of the geologic features to see where the recharge zone was, you know, because it’s obvious, you know, of, you know, just little visuals like that, but I think they, you know, undoubtedly made a lot of difference to the the powers-that-be that they were able to take to get that visual stimulation because it did did make a lot of difference. Yeah.

Lee Smith [00:48:36] And it changes your perspective because your perspective has been changed because you’re now.

Susan Hughes [00:48:42] Yeah, right.

Lee Smith [00:48:43] Because you’re in the air, 1000 feet in the air. And that can lead to a perspective in your thinking too.

Susan Hughes [00:48:51] Well, that’s, that’s absolutely true. So it’s, it’s a good thing. We’ve tried from, from time to time, to be able to wrangle another helicopter ride someplace, but so far without success. But you never know.

Lee Smith [00:49:07] So who were some of the other key partners in this.

Susan Hughes [00:49:13] Well, let’s see.

Susan Hughes [00:49:15] Well, in our early meetings, like when we were talking about sustainability, the San Antonio Water Systems, CPS, VIA, all their planning staff, TNC, Bexar Audubon, Sierra Club, the real estate. What is it, real estate? I can’t remember the next name. Anyway, one of the real estate councils, you know. A builder, Gene Dawson. David Earle, another attorney.

Susan Hughes [00:50:00] Just I think, I think there’s probably another half a dozen people that popped in and out from time to time. But it was, you know, that sort of a mix of folks. Not not just not just “conservationists”, quote, you know, although if they were sitting around that table, they were by definition, conservationists in my mind, you know. They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t have a little bit of a conservation bent to them, you know, somehow. So we let them wear the badge. You know, it’s okay. They’re made of cardboard. They’re cheap, but they mean a lot.

Susan Hughes [00:50:39] So, you know, so those were some of the some of the players. You know, whenever it actually came down, time to go out and and and drum up the interest and the support, you know, for the proposition and got people out.

Susan Hughes [00:50:53] I mean we I had some cheap bumper stickers made, said “Water equals, water equals life”. Something like that. Something really, you know, really clever. But oh no, it was green space. “Open space equals clean water”. That’s what it was. Okay. That’s more clever.

Susan Hughes [00:51:18] So anyway, I had lots of bumper stickers made up and and we had some other little signs done and and just, you know, plastered them wherever we wherever we could and got people jazzed up. Told the story every place we possibly could tell the story.

Susan Hughes [00:51:39] And, you know, anybody who doesn’t believe that the populace of San Antonio knows about its water supplies is not paying attention because the San Antonio people know about the aquifer. They know where their water comes from. And that was maybe particularly so even back then. It may have been diluted by now by the other several million people who have come to our doorstep. But but but they were aware and that that played out in the next four efforts that we had for for bringing this proposition back to the to the to the populace and to the voters.

Susan Hughes [00:52:24] Because every time that proposition passed by, you know, very large numbers – last time, even 70, 70, 76%, I think that was the number. A pretty big number anyway.

Susan Hughes [00:52:43] So that’s you know, that speaks for the popularity of it. And I guess one of the frustrating things about the fact that right now we no longer have that funding source that we had for the first four rounds. But we may, there is there is a funding source and and maybe one of these days we’ll revert back to the funding source that we had before.

Susan Hughes [00:53:14] Don’t know. Can’t say. But it is possible.

Susan Hughes [00:53:17] And we believe that it’s important enough to have a a really definite dollars and cents, you know, commitment by the by the people to make it happen. And that’s one thing that the sales tax did.

Susan Hughes [00:53:38] So, I mean, regressive or not regressive or, you know, whatever. I mean, all the arguments for and for and against the sales tax. But it was something that said, “Hey, my eighth of a cent is going to protect my water supply.”

Lee Smith [00:53:53] Well, maybe it’ll have to be another grassroots effort.

Susan Hughes [00:53:57] Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You wouldn’t think that, right?

Susan Hughes [00:54:00] Hey, we’re willing to do a grassroots effort. And I think there are I think there are younger folks than I that would be willing to put a few boots on the ground to make some of these things happen.

Susan Hughes [00:54:16] But because we have, you know, this, there’s this whole other world of land protection that’s just sitting there desperate to be to be implemented, and that’s protection of the contributing zone.

Susan Hughes [00:54:36] We’ve just just touched the recharge zone, and done a reasonably good job of it, but but there’s still a lot more to go. And the contributing zone really hasn’t even been looked at seriously and everything that goes into the recharge zone oddly enough has come from the contributing zone.

Susan Hughes [00:55:02] Who knew? Right?

Susan Hughes [00:55:05] So. So that’s a you know, that’s a major area that we must must focus on.

Susan Hughes [00:55:12] And the other major piece of that, and it is going to be a slightly different wrinkle, is looking at, looking seriously at the costs of not protecting the aquifer. It’s something nobody wants, nobody wants to talk about it. You know, you say, well, you know, it’s this huge, vast (this is the only place they’ll use the system word, OK?). They’ve got all this vast system, you know, that’s going to, you know, solution to dilution is pollution. No, pollution is dilution. Yes, something like that.

Susan Hughes [00:55:51] And, so, so we don’t have to worry about it. Right? So we have a few spills here and there. And, you know, it’s not that big a deal. There have been a few already and, you know, it hasn’t shut down the world for us.

Susan Hughes [00:56:06] But the data, sparse as it may be, on remediation of contamination of aquifers, and in particular karst aquifers, is pretty damning. The cost of of remediating a significant spill dwarfs the cost of protecting it in the first place.

Susan Hughes [00:56:38] And that just makes me crazy. Crazier, crazier because it it’s well, you know, if we raise our kids this way – better to do it right the first time than, you know, to live with the problems that you have later, you know. And I mean just all the sorts of things that we’ve been raised with, all these all this common knowledge, all of this, you know, all of this good advice, you know, and we just, you know, go merrily along with this source of drinking water for umpteen gazillion, you know, million people and, you know, city fathers who are eager to increase the economic development base of the, you know, community as though most industry doesn’t require water.

Susan Hughes [00:57:29] I never knew that. Maybe it’s because most industry really does require water and it’s not going to come here if it doesn’t have it.

Susan Hughes [00:57:39] I mean, we’re we’re like looking back what, 40 years, I guess 40 years, pretty much, whenever the whole deal was that San Antonio couldn’t attract any industry because we didn’t have a firm water supply.

Susan Hughes [00:57:56] And then we developed this water system and water supply and we started attracting industry. And now we don’t care anymore.

Susan Hughes [00:58:09] There is something wrong with this logic. It’s illogical, perhaps.

Susan Hughes [00:58:15] And, and I don’t, you know, I don’t know how to get that back in front of people again because it’s like suddenly blinders and, “Well, we have industry now”, you know. Well, but industry can move. And if we don’t have, you know, reliable water supplies, industry will move.

Susan Hughes [00:58:43] So, trying to get the long view embedded in the minds of the leaders, you know, is is a challenge. But it has to happen if we’re, you know, if we’re going to to do that sustainability into the future.

Susan Hughes [00:59:02] We’re not, we’re not just, you know, designated by, you know, the powers-that-be to be a remarkable, thriving city into the into the future.

Susan Hughes [00:59:20] I mean, we kind of have to step backwards and remember why San Antonio ended up where it is today. And why is that? It’s because we had water. And where did that water come from? It came from the Edwards Aquifer.

Susan Hughes [00:59:37] And all of the things that built along, you know, the missions and all that sort of thing, that was all predicated on having water that they could irrigate their fields with and, you know, and support, you know, the the community building, which cities can always use a little extra community building. Right?

Susan Hughes [01:00:01] But I mean, that’s where we came from. And if we deny our roots, I think we do so at our peril. And we really need to stop every once in a while and say, “Well, you know, let’s remember why. Let’s remember why we’re here, how we got here and, you know, so forth.”

Lee Smith [01:00:22] Well, I think the 900-pound gorilla is that water is a finite resource. And so at some point, there has to be a finite growth. And most politicians, that’s that’s a poisonous concept to even.

Susan Hughes [01:00:45] Yeah. Don’t bring that up.

Lee Smith [01:00:46] To think about in a dark room.

Susan Hughes [01:00:47] Yes.

Lee Smith [01:00:48] But it’s it’s true.

Susan Hughes [01:00:51] Yeah. Sure it is.

Lee Smith [01:00:52] Keep growing. At some point, it’s, there’s there’s going to be a crash. If you.

Susan Hughes [01:01:01] Well. Look at the… Yes, you can keep growing. Now, just look at the at the pie charts that show the resources that San Antonio is drawing on for its water supply, now into 2070 or so.

Susan Hughes [01:01:18] We’ve got the Edwards Aquifer, which is, you know, half or more even into the foreseeable future. And then there’s all these other little slices of pie here and there, and then there’s Vista Ridge. Don’t forget Vista Ridge. That’s going to save us. You know, so we can grow infinitely as long as we’re stealing other people’s… Well, did I say stealing? I’m sorry.

Susan Hughes [01:01:43] As long as. I deny I used that word. Bad word.

Susan Hughes [01:01:48] As long as we’re willing to, you know, to remove the resources from other areas, you know. And, and Vista Ridge is a 60-year contract. Okay. 60 years and it’s over. Then what?

Susan Hughes [01:02:07] In the meantime, they’ve got more water than they need. So the idea was that they were going to sell little bits of water to all these small communities along the pipeline until San Antonio needed it, at which point they would they would recover that water for San Antonio’s benefit.

Susan Hughes [01:02:27] How many little communities are going to say, “Oh, I’ll sign up for that, and you can cut me off any time you want.” Right? “And I’ll have to come up with some new and wonderful idea of where I, where I can get some more water from.”

Susan Hughes [01:02:45] Well, needless to say, I don’t think there was anybody, any community along the pipeline, that signed up for that. You know, it was like, I mean. Why would you?

Susan Hughes [01:03:00] Not only that, but little things like you’ve got your major, you made your major agreement for the water from Vista Ridge and how much this is going to cost per acre foot. And it’s take or pay. Okay? So that’s why they wanted to sell off a little bits of it, you know. So it’s take or pay.

Susan Hughes [01:03:20] And and not only that, but there is a a every day amount of money that is being paid to a pumping company to run the pumps to push the water down toward San Antonio whether it’s used or not. And it’s a very, very large number. Very large number. And it’s 365. Every day. Every day. And that’s not typically accounted for in any of the any of the calculations for what Vista Ridge costs.

Lee Smith [01:04:10] What is Vista Ridge, in a nutshell?

Susan Hughes [01:04:15] Well. It’s a it’s an agreement with water purveyors in Burleson County to divert so and so much water from Burleson County’s water supply into a pipeline that comes to San Antonio.

Lee Smith [01:04:42] And that’s the Wilcox?

Susan Hughes [01:04:45] No. It’s the Simsboro. The Simsboro.

Susan Hughes [01:04:48] Yeah. It’s not, you know, an enormously prolific aquifer. I mean, when you’re comparing it with something like, you know, certainly not the Wilcox or the or the Edwards, certainly.

Susan Hughes [01:05:09] It was, it was put together by a consortium of business people who wanted to get in the water business. And there’s, you know, they went out for basically for bids or for participation in this in this project. So people were lining up to put their nickel in and, you know. And water is big business after all.

Susan Hughes [01:05:45] But Burleson County is just right up north. I mean, it’s still a little ways north of here, but it’s not far off that I-35 corridor where growth is just, you know, exponential. I don’t use that word literally, but it might be. And so I just have to question the overall logic of of engaging in that particular project.

Susan Hughes [01:06:23] They show it to be a fairly good-sized piece of the pie, you know, when you’re when you’re looking at the future prospects. But just because just because it comes out that way on paper doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the way it’s going to play out in the real world. I’m skeptical.

Lee Smith [01:06:47] So getting back to the Edwards Aquifer Protection program, what was the Nature Conservancy’s role in that?

Susan Hughes [01:06:56] Well, you know, I was thinking about that because the TNC was certainly an active player in the in the Aquifer Protection program.

Susan Hughes [01:07:06] But one of the things that I think TNC brought to the brought to the party as much as anything is their reputation, their relationships, because they’ve been out working in those in those fields for a long time, meeting people, you know, buying up bits and pieces of property here and there and I think also setting a setting an example of how good stewardship can happen in the in the umbrella of an organization like TNC.

Susan Hughes [01:07:51] I think those were probably the biggest things that they brought to the table.

Susan Hughes [01:07:55] Now certainly, you know, there’re properties that, you know, they shepherded right on, you know, right on through. And that, you know, contributed greatly to the to the number of acres that have have been protected so far.

Susan Hughes [01:08:06] But but more than that, I think those those other intangibles were probably the biggest contribution that TNC has made to the Aquifer Protection Program.

Lee Smith [01:08:20] So what advice would you have for a young person?

Susan Hughes [01:08:25] Oh boy. You know, as I was browsing through all my, all my history yesterday, one of the things that I ran across was that years ago when I was on the National Audubon Board, well before I was on the board, Ted Eubanks from Austin was on the board. And he was he was our plant for somebody to be really good on that board.

Susan Hughes [01:08:59] And as they were developing their strategic plan, Ted was was tapped to write the preamble for that. And he was working late, late, late, late, late into into the night. And we were communicating back and forth. And he was sending me drafts and so forth, and I’m sure other people as well.

Susan Hughes [01:09:27] But one of the things that was the encapsulating phrase, was, that overshadowed every other word that was was in this document was the “culture of conservation”.

Susan Hughes [01:09:53] And that phrase has been picked up other places subsequently. But that was the first time that I was aware of it. And I think that it might have it might have been an original creation, I would say, because it so encapsulated what indeed we were trying to do is to instill a culture of conservation in our communities. What more could we could we aim for?

Susan Hughes [01:10:32] And I think as young people were coming along. I mean, you know, a lot of the things we talked about today, but but the goal, the goal of creating a culture of conservation, is a wonderful umbrella concept that we can all, we can all relate to. And it’s only three words.

Lee Smith [01:11:03] Well. And if you have a culture, that transcends individual lives, that’s something that’s passed on. And it’s longer than any agreement or…

Susan Hughes [01:11:20] Some pact. You know. Right.

Lee Smith [01:11:27] Right. So that, so would you say that’s the hope for the future of conservation is that culture?

Susan Hughes [01:11:36] I can think of I can think of a lot worse goals than that because that means that whatever you do, that’s the touchstone.

Susan Hughes [01:11:47] It’s, you know when I used to speak from time to time to high school classes and so forth, one of the things that I used to try to tell them was that as you were thinking about going about your day-to-day business, I think we all do lots of things. We go and drive to the store, you know, go pick up the pets. We, you know, we we sit and we decide whether or not we’re going to plant St. Augustine grass.

Susan Hughes [01:12:27] I mean, there’s a million things that we do every day.

Susan Hughes [01:12:32] And each one of them has some upstream and some downstream consequences.

Susan Hughes [01:12:41] I would not ask you to necessarily change the way you live your life. But what I would ask is that you take a moment and consider what was the upstream cost of this decision. What’s the downstream impact of that decision? And then base your base the decision itself on the information that you have gather from your own mind really regarding this activity.

Susan Hughes [01:13:17] Sometimes that may mean that I’m not going to do that and I’m going to wait and do something else, you know, instead. Or, hell, yes, I’m going to do do this and I’m going to I’m going to really enjoy it. And I’m going to do it twice, you know?

Susan Hughes [01:13:32] But an awareness, just to just to have an awareness, of what you’re doing and that there’s upstream costs and downstream costs and you are responsible for those at some level. So, that was the only advice I tended to give.

Susan Hughes [01:13:52] One thing that I think really contributed to our success with the Aquifer Protection Program in the long term was something that Bexar Audubon did, or basically sort of created, which was of what we call the Farm and Range Forum. And what we did with that, we started out by addressing the question of, you know, quail were, you know, in bad shape in Texas. A lot of landowners were really interested in quail, quail numbers, quail as an economic benefit to to their …

Lee Smith [01:14:36] We’re rolling. We’re rolling.

Jeff Weigel [01:14:38] Sorry.

Susan Hughes [01:14:40] As an economic benefit to you know to their operations. So they were really interested in this. So we we pulled together the top quail people in Texas and and had a forum and and backed it up with some general habitat, you know, information and so forth, had a really excellent turnout.

Susan Hughes [01:15:05] And one of the things that that started and we have this I think we successfully had it for four years running is that we we brought together landowners with conservationists. And that was the that was the the the overarching reason for doing this is mixing those groups together.

Susan Hughes [01:15:32] Sadly, we were not very successful in attracting the conservation community from the urban areas, but farmers and ranchers, we couldn’t turn them away. I mean they were, you know, they were there. They were with us.

Susan Hughes [01:15:48] And I think that was one of the early times whenever we started building those kinds of kinds of bridges with farmers and ranchers from the conservation community. And I think some of those some of those same people I know eventually came into the program.

Susan Hughes [01:16:08] And from there, I mean, when I was doing some of the land work, most of the most of the referrals that I had were from prior landowners you know. And what better, you know, what better referral could you get than somebody who’s already been through the, been through the deal?

[01:16:26] But I think the Farm and Range Forum was really it was really a a a good, good thing along those lines. We had a subtext for it which was “Managing to make a living”, which was basically how do you manage, how do you manage your land in order to make a living off of it, which is getting to be harder and harder to do.

Susan Hughes [01:16:45] So anyway, now I shall, I shall end.