In August 1956, during the sixth year of the drought of record, Dr. H. R. Gaddy read a resolution to the Georgetown City Council stating that “the present water supply in Georgetown is not adequate,” and “future rainfall cannot be depended upon to supply our needs.”  It was time to build a reservoir.

 

 Lakes

During the drought of record in the 1950s, the leaders of Williamson County realized that they could no longer rely on aquifers for water during prolonged dry spells.  It was time to take matters into their own hands and build some reservoirs.

Williamson County has two man-made lakes.  Lake Georgetown was completed in 1979, and Lake Granger in 1980.  Both were built to control devastating flooding on the San Gabriel River, and also to provide reliable water during times of drought.  Lake Georgetown supplies 65% of Georgetown’s municipal water supply, as well as water to Round Rock, and Chisholm Trail and Brushy Creek utility districts.

But here’s the catch.  Lake Georgetown can only supply its customers with water from the San Gabriel River if there is plenty of rain, as there was in 2010.  During a drought, not only do the municipal customers begin to use more water, but the river stops refilling the reservoir.  The lake starts dropping and has to be filled with water pumped from Stillhouse Hollow Lake on the Lampasas River near Belton.  Every day since July 2011, when Lake Georgetown dropped to a trigger level of 781.5 feet above sea level, 42 million gallons per day have been piped in from Stillhouse to keep our lake at a safe level, and it is still not full.  That water is purchased from the Brazos River Authority and costs $3,000,000 per year, plus the cost of the electricity required to pump it, which is about $1,000,000 per year.  And that is just the cost of the raw water, sitting in the lake.  It still has to be purified and pumped to our houses.  By the way, that $3,000,000 per year has to be paid whether we need the water or not.

Mary Condon, mayor of Florence, would love to get her hands on some of that Lake Stillhouse water.  Florence is completely reliant on well water.  For the past four years the city has been paying $30,000 a year for rights to 500 acre-feet of water (163 million gallons) from Lake Stillhouse, but the citizens of Florence have yet to receive a single drop.  They have not been able to secure the funds (about a million dollars) necessary to build a pipeline and storage capacity.  There are 80 acres of prime undeveloped real estate within Florence city limits, but until adequate water arrives from the lake, no developers will invest.  Condon states that if they hadn’t reserved the rights four years ago, those rights would not be available today.

Even though Stillhouse is six times larger than Lake Georgetown, at some point in the next 10-20 years it will not be large enough to meet the demand.  Lake Stillhouse will have to be filled with another pipeline bringing water from Lake Belton.  This is not just speculation.  Glenn Dishong, utilities director for the city of Georgetown, states that Georgetown has already reserved rights to 10,000 acre-feet of Lake Belton water per year, and has been paying $625,000 a year for those rights for the last three years.

Lakes may be more reliable than groundwater, but they have one big disadvantage:  evaporation.  During a hot, dry, windy summer such as 2011, evaporation rates can be astronomical.  Brad Brunett of the Water Services Management Department, Brazos River Authority, calculated this past summer that the eleven BRA reservoirs, which include Lakes Georgetown and Granger, were being depleted by 4000 acre-feet per day.  Half of that amount was going to customers.  The other 2000 acre-feet were evaporating into thin air.

Another issue with man-made reservoirs is sedimentation.  When a river is dammed, sediment washes into the river during rain events and settles out behind the dam, diminishing the capacity of the lake.  When Lake Granger was first built, its capacity was 62,000 acre-feet.  By 2008 sedimentation had decreased its volume to 50,779 acre-feet, a loss of 18%.  Studies over the last three decades demonstrate that the rate of sedimentation is actually increasing.  The volume loss was 129 acre-feet per year when the dam was new.  The loss has now accelerated to 304 acre-feet/year.  Lake Stillhouse Hollow has only lost about 3.5% of its volume since 1967.  Fortunately, sedimentation has not been a problem for Lake Georgetown.

Published in the Sun March 18, 2012 

While the population of Williamson County is projected to increase by more than 100 percent during the next 50 years, groundwater supplies will remain unchanged.  Dr. Robert Mace of the Texas Water Development Board explains there is “only so much blood you can squeeze out of a turnip.”

 
Where Does Our Water Come From?

Aquifers

Jennifer McKnight has a low opinion of raindances.  “I tried them and they didn’t work.”  As general manager of the Chisholm Trail Special Utility District, McKnight is responsible for supplying water to a huge service area that extends from the west part of Georgetown all the way into Burnet and Bell Counties.  Forty percent of her water comes from two wells into the Edwards Aquifer.  One of those wells went dry during the drought this summer, and the other was pumping less than expected.  In McKnight’s experienced opinion, groundwater is just not as reliable as surface water.  Next summer she plans on getting 80 percent of her water from Lake Georgetown.

Mary Condon, mayor of Florence, has also had her share of nailbiting experiences involving wells.  Florence gets all its water from four wells into the Trinity Aquifer, but one of them stopped flowing last summer.  After $19,000 in repairs, it would still pump dry in about three minutes.  She has been told by her consultants that groundwater is just not a viable source of water in this part of the country any more.

The city of Georgetown pumps about 35% of its water from the Edwards Aquifer, 9 million gallons a day.  Under normal circumstances most of Georgetown east of IH 35 is supplied with well water.  During the dry summer of 2009 those essential wells came perilously close to failing, and were at risk again this past summer.  Fortunately it was discovered that water from the San Gabriel River can partially recharge the aquifer as it flows through town, slowly seeping into sinkholes in the riverbed.  During the summer of 2011 when the San Gabriel ceased to flow naturally, an intentional release of water from Lake Georgetown kept the wells pumping.

From a human perspective, an aquifer is like a huge rain barrel, storing clean water collected during rainy seasons in an underground honeycomb of rock.  Before 1940, Texans got almost all of our water from aquifers and the springs that flowed from aquifers, but the entire demand was less than 1 million acre-feet per year.  (An acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover one acre of land with water to a depth of one foot.  An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons.)  Population growth has increased the demand on Texas aquifers by a factor of ten, but even that increased amount satisfies only 60 percent of our needs.  The rest of our water comes from lakes and reservoirs which have been constructed since the 1950s in response to increased demand and water shortages during droughts.

Although the state government clearly controls usage of all the surface water in Texas’ reservoirs through agencies such as the Brazos River Authority and the Lower Colorado River Authority, once the water seeps into the aquifers its ownership is murkier.  Groundwater usage is governed by the “Rule of Capture,” otherwise known as the rule of the biggest pump.  This rule, adopted by the Texas Supreme Court in 1904, states that if a landowner has a well, he is entitled to pump as much water out of that well as he wants.  In other words, if your well goes dry because your neighbor is pumping large amounts of water, too bad for you.  Your only recourse is to dig a deeper well.  Texas is the only western state that still uses the Rule of Capture.  Groundwater conservation districts in some counties try to regulate how much water can be pumped from underlying aquifers, but that control may be diminished by a Texas Supreme Court ruling last month.  In Edwards Aquifer Authority vs. Day, the court reaffirmed the 1904 ruling that landowners own the water beneath their land and access to that water may not be restricted without just compensation.  Groundwater conservation districts will be hesitant to restrict a landowner’s access to the water beneath his property if the landowner has to be compensated.  The question is moot in this county because Williamson County has never had a groundwater conservation district.

Williamson County has three important aquifers: the Trinity, the Edwards, and in the far eastern corner of the county, the Carrizo-Wilcox.  Fortunately, after periods of drought or overpumping, all three can be easily recharged when normal rainfall resumes.   Even after 6 years of drought in the 1950s, two years of normal rainfall restored the springs of the Edwards Aquifer to normal flows.  The prompt recharge of the Edwards is in marked contrast to the enormous Ogallala Aquifer which extends from the Texas Panhandle to Nebraska and is heavily used for irrigation.  The Ogallala recharges at an almost insignificant rate.  The water in that aquifer is “paleowater,” unchanged since the last ice age.  If the Ogallala is depleted by overpumping, which at current usage rates could happen in 25-50 years, it will take 6000 years to refill.

Since 2002, two NASA satellites orbiting 300 miles above the earth have been measuring tiny changes in the earth’s gravity based on the quantity of water stored in underground aquifers.  These satellites are part of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE).  Every week, maps are produced by the Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and University of Texas Center for Space Research in Austin.  The maps compare the current status of the aquifers to historical data since 1948.  Like a gas gauge, the maps tell if our “tanks” of water are full or empty.  The week of December 5, 2011, the central Texas aquifers measured at a lower volume than at almost any other time since 1948.  The rain during the winter has improved the situation in our area, but the Ogallala Aquifer continues to show a major deficit.

Dr. Robert Mace, deputy executive administrator for water science and conservation at the TWDB, is not convinced that measuring gravity is the best way to evaluate aquifers.  He explains that the GRACE project is experimental and the best way to evaluate aquifers is to measure water levels.  He confirms however that some Texas aquifers are being overpumped.  In the Dallas area the Trinity Aquifer is down 1000 feet and probably won’t recover as long as the present rate of pumping continues.   Last year he told the Texas Tribune that the Ogallala is being pumped at six times the rate of recharge.  He explains that there is “only so much blood you can squeeze out of a turnip.”

The Texas Water Development Board estimates that Williamson and Bell counties can count on 11,200 acre-feet of water per year from the Edwards from now through 2060.  To put this quantity in perspective, currently 47,000 acre-feet per year are being pumped from Stillhouse Hollow to Lake Georgetown for the use of Georgetown, Round Rock, and surrounding communities.  Williamson County is projected to have a municipal water usage of 92,000 acre-feet per year by 2020, so clearly the Edwards Aquifer will fulfill only about 12% of our water needs.  In contrast, the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, third largest aquifer in Texas, is still underutilized and will play a larger role in the future.  Plans are already underway for what the Texas Water Development Board calls the Conjunctive Use Project in which the Carrizo-Wilcox is tapped to augment water in Lake Granger and supply the eastern part of the county and Round Rock.  Capital cost to complete this project is $644 million.

Limited Supply, Endless Thirst - Water Resources in Williamson County

First in series - How We Use Water
Published in the Sun March 11, 2012

“In serious drought conditions, Texas does not and will not have enough water to meet the needs of its people, its businesses, and its agricultural enterprises.”  So writes Edward G. Vaughn, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) on September 23, 2011 in an open letter to the people of Texas introducing the TWDB 2012 State Water Plan.  But Texas is a diverse state and each region has unique water issues.  If the drought continues, is Williamson County at risk for shortages?  Where does our water come from?  As one of the fastest growing counties in the state, how will Williamson County deal with increased demand for this precious resource during future droughts?

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In 1858 there were 3,779 people in Williamson County.  It rained 36 inches that year.  Average annual rainfall hasn’t changed over the years, but now 423,000 people live here with more arriving every day.  Every one of us wants to be able to turn on a tap and get unlimited amounts of clean water, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, winter and summer.  And we want water to be cheap.

Planning for the responsible development of Texas’ water resources is the mission of the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB).  Every five years the TWDB researches and publishes a 50 year plan for each of 16 designated planning areas in the state.  Williamson County is in the Brazos G Regional Water Planning Area, along with 36 other counties in the Brazos River Basin.

Williamson County is the problem child of the Brazos G Region.  The rest of the region has enough water to meet projected demand until about 2045, but according to the 2012 TWDB State Water Plan, Williamson County may see shortages by 2020.

In 2010, the whole state of Texas used 17 million acre-feet of water.  (An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons.)  Sixty percent of Texas’ water was used to irrigate agricultural crops.  Statewide, only 27 percent of water usage was municipal, which includes all things town people do with water:  bathing, flushing, laundry, and cooking.  Municipal use also includes irrigation of lawns, by far the biggest use of water.   

The situation is very different in Williamson County.  Crop irrigation is miniscule.  Ninety-three percent of Williamson County’s 73,532 acre-foot demand is used by municipalities.  By 2060, when the population of the county is expected to exceed 1.1 million, municipal demand will rise to 97 percent of our county’s projected water usage of 211,854 acre-feet.

In view of increased demand and possible shortages, it would seem prudent to consider how we townies are using water and how we might use it more efficiently.  Glenn Dishong, Director of Georgetown Utility Systems, has some insight into the habits of his customers.  In the winter Georgetown customers use about 8 million gallons a day.  In the summer, consumption rockets up to 27 million gallons a day.  Since indoor activities like flushing and cooking can be assumed to continue at roughly the same rates in all seasons, Mr. Dishong calculates that 19 million gallons a day are being used to water grass and landscapes.  That means as much as 70 percent of our summertime water is going directly into the yard; water that has been piped from Lake Stillhouse to Lake Georgetown, treated to drinkable standards, and pumped to our houses at considerable expense.

Nationwide, indoor water usage averages 69 gallons per capita per day (gcd).  Currently Georgetown customers use water at an average rate of 200 gcd for indoor and outdoor needs combined.  At the present rate of consumption, Mr. Dishong estimates that Georgetown’s current water rights will be sufficient for the city until about 2041.  However, to achieve full economic development of the water service area, average consumption will have to drop to 160 gcd by about 2028.  If customers don’t choose to conserve, the only alternative is the purchase of new water rights, and those rights will not be cheap.  Ten years ago, the Brazos River Authority was selling water rights for about $20 an acre-foot.  Now the price is $62.50 per acre-foot.  Mr. Dishong notes, “Over the last eight or nine years the price has gone up every year but one.”  The Brazos River Authority forecasts rates of at least $225 per acre-foot by 2040.

Although Georgetown’s water supply looks fairly good at present, the situation outside of town is a bit more precarious.  Bill Brown is General Manager of Jonah Water Special Utility District, which serves an area of 400 square miles.  Seventy percent of Jonah water customers still depend on the utility’s eight active wells.  In spite of watering restrictions last summer some of the wells dropped as much as 130 feet.  In one well the water was just four feet above the pump.  When asked if the wells have improved with the recent rains, Mr. Brown stated, “There has been some recovery but they are still below normal.”  Mr. Brown says that Jonah Water SUD plans to decrease its reliance on wells by increasing the proportion of its water obtained from Lake Granger, but that requires $5 million of new infrastructure that won’t be ready by summer 2012.

Florence relies on four aging wells for 100 percent of its water.  Last summer one of those wells went dry and another broke down because of aging equipment.  A total ban on outdoor watering was imposed until the broken well came back on line.  Asked what would happen if the drought resumes this summer, Mayor Mary Condon replied, ”I am afraid we will all be in a lot of trouble.”

 

Next week we will look at groundwater usage in Williamson County.

Solar Panels in Georgetown

“It was a no-brainer.”  Marc Mulzer is talking about the bargain he got on a solar array installed on his roof last week.  Mr. Mulzer is from Munich, where solar is a “huge, huge deal.”  The German city has pledged to use only renewable energy by 2025, and Mr. Mulzer estimates that every third house already sports photovoltaic panels.  The solar industry has been very robust in Germany, in spite of a rather unremarkable quantity of sunshine.  Last year almost half of all the solar installations in the world were in Germany.  When Mr. Mulzer came to Texas thirteen years ago he wanted to take advantage of our abundant sunshine but was discouraged by the high cost of panels and lack of financial incentives from the state.  This year he got lucky.

The city of Georgetown received $50,000 for solar incentives from a Department of Energy grant and was able to offer a few fortunate applicants a rebate of $2 per watt of photovoltaic capacity installed.  Mr. Mulzer’s system can produce 4 kilowatts, meaning he received an $8000 discount from the city on the price of his system.  His solar installer, Longhorn Solar, offered him another hefty rebate for being their first customer in the area.  Mr. Mulzer’s out of pocket cost will be only $3000 for a system that will provide almost half of all the electricity he needs for decades.  He also expects to take advantage of a $900 federal tax credit when he pays his income tax next year.  The solar panels will pay for themselves in about four years.

There are sixteen solar panels on the south-facing part of the Mulzer’s roof.  Any time the sun is shining each panel is producing about 250 watts of electricity.  That direct current travels to an inverter box on the side of the house where it is converted to alternating current for household use.  If the panels are generating more electricity than the house is using, the excess feeds into the electric grid where it can be used by other Georgetown customers.  When the panels are feeding the grid, the meter is running backwards.  At night when the sun is not shining, or anytime they are using more electricity than the panels can produce, the Mulzers will get their electricity from the grid like everybody else.  This is called a grid-connected system, and there are no batteries required.  Switching back and forth from solar to the grid is automatic; the Mulzers will never have to think about it.  With no moving parts and hail-resistant glass, the panels will be essentially maintenance free for 25 to 30 years.

Why should the city be interested in helping people buy solar panels?  The answer is peak demand.  On a hot summer afternoon when everybody turns on their air conditioners, wholesale electricity prices get very, very expensive.  During times of near brown-out, the wholesale price can be much higher than the retail price, so the city is losing money to keep the lights on.  If enough houses have solar panels cranking out electricity on those same hot afternoons, it’s like an extra power plant on the rooftops of the city.  This “distributed generation” means a lower peak demand on the coal and gas-fired power plants and less need for the city to shell out exorbitant sums for emergency power.

The grant that funded Mr. Mulzer’s panels has been used up, but Kathy Ragsdale, Conservation Services Director for Georgetown Utility Systems, is developing another in-house program of solar incentives that would not depend on federal grants.  Those new rebates are not yet available to city customers.  However, customers of Oncor can sign up for incentives immediately and be ready to generate their own solar electricity this summer.

Electronic Waste

People, Planet, Profit – the Triple Bottom Line

Behind the Goodwill Store at 3010 Williams Drive, Matt is taking donations.  He takes my old computer and stacks it on top of other discarded computers in a box 4 feet wide and 4 feet tall.  Matt says the Georgetown location fills up three of those boxes every day.

In almost every household in America is a Closet of Digital Purgatory, the place where unwanted computers, keyboards, monitors, and mice languish in neglect.  These things were expensive, and they still work, so we hesitate to discard them.  But it’s time for a new upgrade and the closet is full, so something has to go.

Globally, 20 to 50 million tons of e-waste are discarded every year.  A typical computer monitor contains 4-8 pounds of lead; a flat panel monitor contains mercury.  Electronic waste can also contain other toxic substances such as cadmium, hexavalent chromium, beryllium, phthalates, and polybrominated fire retardants.  Fifteen states have banned landfill disposal of electronic waste.  (Texas is not yet one of them.)  Much e-waste is exported to places like Guiyu, China, which by 2006 had already imported 1.5 million tons for reprocessing, in violation of even Chinese regulations.  Mountains of e-waste also exist in Viet Nam, Ghana, India, and other less developed countries where desperately poor people are willing to melt circuit boards over open flames, exposing themselves and their children to poisonous lead fumes, and then throwing the leftover toxics into the water supply.

Since 2008, by law every computer manufacturer that wants to sell computers in Texas must provide free and convenient recycling for those computers once they are no longer useful.  Dell Computers teamed up with Goodwill Industries of Central Texas back in 2004, well before the law was passed, to keep old computers out of our landfills.  This collaboration is called Dell Reconnect.

All computers collected at any area Goodwill are sent to the Goodwill Computer Works facility at 1015 Norwood Park in north Austin.  Jeff Kendall, manager of the Computer Works program, says they receive 250 tons of equipment every month.  Step one is to sort out the best pieces for resale, which is always the preferred destination.  A skilled technician cleans away the dust and erases the hard drive to Department of Defense standards, so that not even an expert hacker can ever again access any of the previous owners’ photo albums or online purchases.  The technician upgrades the memory, installs a licensed Microsoft operating system, and some free office and antivirus software.  These refurbished computers sell for as low as $80 in the adjacent store with a 90 day warranty.  Flat screen monitors go for $30.  Kendall says they sell about five computers a day.  He would like to sell more because the proceeds help support Goodwill’s community service programs for the disabled and the unemployed.

Only about 20% of donated computers are resold.  The rest are dismantled for recycling, often by enthusiastic volunteers.  Kendall explains that it takes about 5 minutes to instruct a Boy Scout troop of eager 10 year olds to deconstruct a computer with a screwdriver.  Then stand back.  Cases go in one bin, circuit boards in another, copper wire in a third.  All hard drives are immediately turned over to a trained technician in a secure area where they are wiped clean or destroyed before leaving the facility.

After the unwanted computers are dismantled, Dell Computers is responsible for recycling the components.  The actual fate of the recycled materials is in the hands of Dell’s “Environmental Partners.”   Dell maintains a very strict, and public, Environmental Partner Performance Standard for electronics disposition, which mandates environmentally responsible recovery of heavy metals and prohibits dumping of toxic materials in developing countries.  Child and prison labor are also prohibited.  Jeff Kendall could not tell me who Dell’s Environmental Partners are because their identity is protected by a non-disclosure agreement.

Robin Schneider, executive director of Texas Campaign for the Environment and Vice Chair for the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, was instrumental in the passage of the law requiring computer companies to provide recycling to their customers.  She believes that Dell is the most environmentally responsible of the computer manufacturers, but she has been trying unsuccessfully since 2004 to find out the identity of the Environmental Partners.  In spite of the secrecy surrounding the Environmental Partners, in July 2011 Michael Dell and Lisa Jackson, administrator of the EPA, cosigned a document promoting the safe management of used electronics using methods that protect both workers and the environment.

Waste Management’s Hutto Recycling Center also collects discarded computers for the Reconnect program.  Texas Disposal Systems prefers that customers take their discarded computers directly to Goodwill collection stations.

Jeff Kendall:  Manager of ComputerWorks

A Wild Ride - Electrifying Even

Published in the Sun January 21,2012

Driving Without Gasoline

Now that I have driven an electric Nissan Leaf every day for a month, I will tell you an adventure story – the story of driving to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  You are probably thinking that driving to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is not an adventure.  You assume it is unremarkable because you can just pump some gasoline into your car and head off, gasoline that you can buy anywhere.  Hah!  That’s like Olympic curling, in which seemingly ordinary people push stones across the ice.  Where’s the sport in that?  But driving an electric car to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is something else entirely, a feat that takes cunning and skill, like rushing down the ski jump and hurtling into the sky.

My daughter Kimberly grew bored with driving the Leaf around Georgetown, a task for which it is perfectly designed.  She wanted to test the limits of its range with a little road trip.  And to make the road trip even more challenging, let’s throw a toddler in the back seat.  So on a bright January morning, armed with only a credit card and some goldfish crackers, we unplug the Leaf and head toward the highway.  My battery charge meter says we can go 96 miles, but I know this is an illusion.  It means we could go 96 miles if we putter around town at 35 mph.  As soon as I accelerate onto IH 35 the meter drops to 80 miles.  It is 82 miles to the Wildflower Center and back.  The Leaf cannot use gasoline; we will make it on electricity or call a tow truck.  I switch into Eco Mode, which means we sacrifice some performance for increased range.  We can’t use the heater, which also burns up electricity.  Luckily it is a warm day.  Our plan is to go straight to Whole Foods Market, on 6^th and Lamar, where there is a free charging station.  We will eat lunch and shop while the car charges.  With a 240 volt charger we can add about 12 miles of range for an hour of charge.  As I drive down Mopac I ponder what to do if somebody else is using the charger.  Fortunately the Leaf’s GPS system knows the locations of all the downtown charging stations.  Maybe we can find a back-up station.  When we arrive at Whole Foods, much to my relief the charging station is available and one of the parking places in front of it, reserved for electric vehicles, is open.  The other reserved spot is taken by a Honda Insight hybrid.  Excuse me, the Insight is not an electric car.

After lunch the Honda Insight is gone, and in its place is another Nissan Leaf, identical to mine.  I wonder if its driver is cursing me for occupying the charger.

After a nice tour of the Wildflower Center, where there is no electricity in the parking lot, we head home.  The meter says I have 48 miles of range for the 40 mile return trip, but my mind starts to conjure up worst-case scenarios.  What if the meter is wrong?  What if I drive too fast and use up the charge?  What if the car slows down to unsafe speeds as it reaches the bottom of the battery?  I never had to think about this stuff before.  There was always a gas station every 100 yards along the highway.

Back on Mopac I am still in Eco Mode.  Every time my speed drifts above 60 mph, Kimberly yells at me to slow down.  The baby however is sleeping peacefully, completely unaffected by charge anxiety.  By Round Rock the cushion of range has shrunk to 4 miles.  Twelve miles home and only 16 miles of charge.  Then it shrinks to a three mile cushion, then two.  When I reach 9 miles of charge the nice GPS lady suggests that I need to find a charging station quickly and offers to direct me to the Georgetown Public Library.  But this is no time to be timid; I’m heading for the finish line of a petroleum-free road trip.  Slowing down as we exit the interstate allows my range to increase a bit.  The Leaf slides victorious into the garage with a full 5 miles of charge left.

Texas Bottle Bill

This is me with the bottles and cans I collected in only 30 minutes at Mankin's Crossing near Jonah, Texas.


Published in the Sun December 10, 2011

The historical marker at Mankin’s Crossing near Jonah says the low water bridge is “a popular recreational site for area residents.”  People like to fish there, but the most popular recreation at the site appears to be beer-drinking, or maybe beer-drinking while fishing.  I recently travelled to Mankin’s Crossing to satisfy my curiosity about roadside litter and how it might be affected by the Texas Bottle Bill, otherwise known as the Texas Container Recycling Initiative.  Readers of a certain maturity will remember that long before recycling was a household word, Coca-Cola and other soft drinks used to be sold in glass bottles.  You would drink your six-pack of Cokes and then take the bottles back to the grocery store to be reimbursed a few pennies a bottle for your trouble.  The Coca Cola company would collect the empties and refill the sterilized bottles with another delicious cane sugar beverage.  The bottles would be used over and over again until they were too scuffed to be appetizing.  Beer was sold this way also.

But then in the 1960s aluminum cans and plastic bottles came along.  Now the beverage companies could bottle their wares more cheaply, and not worry about all that nasty collecting and cleaning and trucking back to the factory.  The bottles were labeled “No deposit, no return” to inform the consumer that it was OK to just throw it away.  And throw them away we did.  This year alone, almost 120 billion beverage containers have been littered, landfilled, and incinerated in the United States, about twice as many as have been recycled.  Beverage containers make up about 40 to 60% of all roadside litter.

Bottle bills resurrect the practice of redeeming empty beverage containers for a deposit refund, but these days the used containers are recycled rather than refilled.  All beer, carbonated sodas, sports drinks, and bottled water are covered, whether made of aluminum, plastic, or glass.  Ten states currently have bottle bills.  The bill proposed for Texas would work like this.  Beverage distributors would charge retailers 5 cents per container, a fee the retailer would then pass on to the consumer.  At this point the distributor has an extra 5 cents per beverage, which is contributed to a special fund.  The consumer is out one nickel, but he will get that nickel back if he chooses to return the can or bottle to a neighborhood redemption center.  The redemption center will be reimbursed 5 cents, plus a one and a half cent handling fee by an independent board that is financed by all those nickels collected from the distributors.  It is only fair after all, that since the distributors are the ones making money on all the drinks they sell, they should bear some responsibility for disposing of the waste, rather than shifting the entire burden of clean-up to city and state governments.  Since not all containers will be redeemed there will be enough nickels to cover those handling fees.  The redemption center is also allowed to keep all proceeds from the sale of the recyclable materials.  These proceeds can be significant, especially in the case of aluminum cans, which can fetch 60 or 65 cents a pound.  Redemption centers could be run by independent businesses, retailers, municipalities, or even churches and schools.

Last month the US Senate, in an almost unbelievable moment of bipartisanship, unanimously passed Senate Resolution 251, which “expresses support for improvement in the collection, processing, and consumption of recyclable material throughout the United States in order to create well-paying jobs, foster innovation and investment in the United States recycling infrastrtucture, and stimulate the economy of the United States.”  But this is a resolution; it doesn’t actually do anything.  To do something actual bills are needed.  The Texas Bottle Bill will be introduced to the state legislature in 2013.

States with bottle bills have decreased their container litter by as much as 80% and have increased recycling rates above levels achieved with curbside recycling alone.  Most provinces in Canada have bottle bills, and they achieve remarkable recycling rates with deposits as high as 20 cents.  Michigan’s bottle bill created jobs for 4684 people in the redemption industry, New York added 3800 jobs.

In addition to creating jobs, reducing litter, and saving resources and energy, the adoption of a bottle bill transforms empty beverage containers from trash to treasure.  People with time on their hands will start gathering bottles that others have discarded in order to collect the deposits.  People who do this a lot are called “canners.”  And that brings me back to Mankin’s Crossing.  I wanted to see how many deposits a motivated canner could gather up in a short time.  Armed only with a large trash sack and a pair of gloves, in thirty minutes flat I collected 21 glass beer bottles, 19 plastic bottles, and 52 aluminum cans.  That would be four dollars and sixty cents in deposits, if Texas had a bottle bill.  Had I been willing to wade into the cold water I could have snagged at least ten more cans.

By the way, the fishermen at Mankin’s Crossing prefer Bud Light.