Remember when Medina Lake was a puddle? It’s getting there again.

“Drought is drought,” Adamek said. “And Medina Lake is always at the center of it.”

This year is a familiar story.

The century-old lake — a reservoir on the Medina River that stretches 18 miles between Medina and Bandera counties just northwest of San Antonio — is going dry again. Its water level has dropped significantly over the past two years, steadily dwindling for months until barely above the lake’s floor.

It is at 25 percent of its capacity, a level not seen since 2015, when the lake was at 3 percent. And it’s on track to decline further, having fallen 14 feet since January 2021. Without rain, the water level is projected to fall about three-tenths of an inch per day.

To conserve the resource, the Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Counties Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, known as the BMA, which owns and operates Medina Lake, will distribute only 6,000 acre-feet of water to farmers for irrigation this year. One acre-foot, or enough to cover an acre with a foot of water, contains 325,851 gallons.

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This year’s allocation, much less than in high-level years, is to be paid for in advance. And there won’t be any more water after that.

Medina Lake’s low level has affected the ecosystem and the community.

Historically, who gets the water and how much has led to contention among stakeholders. Water users and sellers have struggled to find a solution that works for everyone who wants a piece of the lake, including farmers who use it for irrigation and locals and tourists who recreate on its surface. Some have complained that conservation measures have been ineffective. But one thing that people accustomed to Medina’s instability agree on is that there is not enough water to go around during a drought.

While Adamek, who bought some of the BMA’s water this year to augment what he draws from the Edwards Aquifer, feels comfortable that his crops will be OK, farmers who depend solely on the lake may struggle.

“The BMA is a tremendous partner for our farm, but they’ve been seeing more challenges, and we have, too,” Adamek said. “The water is not as steady as I would like it to be, which is really just the nature of the beast.”

What’s keeping lake down

The Medina Valley Irrigation Company — now the BMA — created Medina Lake in the early 1900s to supply water to local farms. The project includes the Medina Dam, meant to hold the water, and the Medina Diversion Dam, which diverts the water to an irrigation canal system for agriculture. The main lake holds 254,823 acre-feet of water.

The lake depends on the Medina River watershed, which is part of the larger San Antonio River Basin. The Medina River fills from springs northwest of Bandera County and flows into the lake before continuing to southern San Antonio and merging with the San Antonio River. The Medina River dries up during droughts.

The area just above Bandera County received 21.9 inches of rain in 2019, 24.5 inches in 2020 and just over 28 inches in 2021; in 2018, that area saw over 50 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

“The biggest problem with the lake right now is we’re in the worst drought we’ve been in in probably the last 10 years,” Bandera County Commissioner Bobby Harris said. “I’ve been here since 1983, seen my fair share of floods and droughts, and the only way you can come back from this is rainfall, which can be hard.”

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And even when it rains a lot, Medina Lake may not reap the full benefits.

Harris said the watershed is configured in a way that enables water to flow to other bodies, such as the Sabinal or Guadalupe Rivers, at the expense of Medina Lake.

Meanwhile, excessively dry soil in the Medina River watershed impairs the lake’s ability to be filled when it rains, said David Mauk, general manager of the Bandera County River Authority and Groundwater District. Last year, the Medina River Basin received 8 inches of rain during one storm, but because the ground was dry and soaked up much of the rain, the lake’s level didn’t rise.

The lake also intersects with the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, depositing some of its water to the aquifer. A 2004 analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that about 3,083 acre-feet of water from the lake, depending on its level, enters the recharge zone each month.

The fluctuation in water levels, Mauk said, makes it difficult for aquatic plant life to survive, resulting in reduced plant and animal life in and around the lake. Without the plants for insects and fish to eat, the entire ecosystem will be impaired. Also, when the levels are low, harmful algae blooms can occur.

But while the ramifications are known, a human-made solution is not. Mauk said the watershed needs several consecutive rains in the spring to refill it. Otherwise, there isn’t much that can be done.

“People don’t always understand why the water doesn’t come up, but it’s just not raining here,” Mauk said. “It’s a whole different lake when it’s not raining.”

Farming with less water

More than 2,000 landowners and farmers have rights to order Medina Lake water for irrigation from the BMA. The water, moved through Diversion Lake 4 miles downstream from Medina, is transported in an irrigation canal system that stretches south past Castroville and into Devine.

During most years, the BMA — which has a state-issued permit to draw up to 66,000 acre-feet per year — will make 6,000 to 8,000 acre-feet for irrigation available to buy in advance in January, while continuing to sell water throughout the year. In a good year, the BMA can sell up to 25,000 acre-feet.

This year, however, farmers must collectively make due on 6,000 acre-feet, unless a significant change in the reservoir’s level prompts the BMA’s board to increase its 2022 allocation.

That’s not much, Adamek said. Produce that needs a lot of water, such as collard greens, mustard greens, cilantro and spinach, could struggle to survive. Corn and beans are among the thirstiest crops, making grain farmers who use BMA water particularly vulnerable during drought.

Grain farmers need to pre-irrigate their land for their upcoming corn crop, which can take a lot of water, and most lack the option to draw water from the Edwards Aquifer.

For Adamek, getting water from the aquifer has provided stability, but it’s more costly. Water from the aquifer is only $2 per acre-foot, compared with $35 per acre-foot for BMA water. But the extra expenses involved — such as drilling a well, buying land and the cost of electricity to pump the water — add up, Adamek said.

Nevertheless, some farmers who can afford transitioning to the Edwards Aquifer are doing so. Chris Heyen, owner of Red Cove Cafe and Marina at Medina Lake, knows several farmers in the last 10 years who have switched from BMA water to the Edwards Aquifer because their crops couldn’t handle the unstable supply.

“I’d say a lot of farmers have shifted over, in part at least, to make up for the drought instability in Medina Lake,” Heyen said. “That water isn’t always there for them, and they know it.”

Today, landowners use more than 46,000 acre-feet on 33,000 acres of land west of San Antonio. Over the last 15 years, because some of that land has been subdivided, the number of farmers using the water has increased by 250, according to the BMA.

Farmers who don’t or can’t tap the Edwards Aquifer but need more than the water they buy from the BMA are hoping for enough rain this spring to raise Medina Lake to a healthy level.

Conservation consternation

Shirlee Crandall, who co-owns Wallys Watersports at Lake Medina, is facing a potentially rough year, as the lake’s low level threatens to deter the shop’s clientele.

Other shops and restaurants around the lake face similar economic effects.

But Crandall said pointing fingers at other water users isn’t productive.

“I would never say that the farmers are taking too much water or we’re taking too much water. We all need the water,” Crandall said. “There’s just this misconception that we’re in a feud when we’re not.”

Besides the need for rain, she said, conservation is critical.

The San Antonio Water System essentially funds much of the BMA’s conservation efforts, thanks to a contract for SAWS to buy BMA water that stems from a deal in 2008 between the BMA and the Bexar Metropolitan Water District.

When BexarMet was dissolved soon after, its assets and liabilities were conveyed to SAWS, including its contractual right to buy 20,000 acre-feet of water from the BMA annually until 2049. Today, SAWS pays the BMA a $225,000 maintenance fee, which has been waived for the past five years, and $3 million for BMA operations, which is about 81 percent of the BMA’s budget.

The BMA said those payments go toward conservation of the lake and canal system. In the past, some farmers and residents around the lake expressed concerns about how the BMA managed the water supply and the need for conservation during dry spells, such as monitoring the lake levels and main dam gates, and how to manage Diversion Lake’s level to boost the main lake’s level.

Commissioner Harris — president of Save Medina Lake, a group led by lakeside residents — said he would like to see meters installed on the main dam to monitor how much water is leaving the lake.

“It’ll be hard to conserve if we don’t know how much we’re losing every day,” Harris said.

The BMA said meters on the main gate wouldn’t necessarily be accurate because unquantifiable amounts of water from the lake are known to recharge the Edwards Aquifer and to flow into the Medina River.

For the past few years, the BMA has also been installing pipelines in the irrigation canal system rather than transporting irrigation water in an open ditch, in which water is lost to evaporation and seepage. The BMA said it has piped over 47 miles of canal and will install more this year.

The latest piece of BMA conservation was reducing the amount of water it will sell for irrigation this year. The last time it did so was 2015. Harris said he’s glad for that, though he understands the stress it puts on farmers.

“Our lake is like a checking account,” Harris said. “If you don’t put money in the checking account, you better quit writing checks.”

Elena Bruess writes for the Express-News through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. elena.bruess@express-news.net