Farms, factories and city water systems that pump from the Edwards Aquifer must cut their withdrawals by 35 percent after the aquifer’s key monitoring well dropped below 640 feet, six weeks after the region had climbed out of the same drought stage. In San Antonio, the heaviest household water users now face a surcharge again.
The Edwards Aquifer Authority, the groundwater district that regulates pumping from the aquifer serving about 2.5 million South Central Texans, declared a return to Stage 3 effective Sept. 20. The trigger was the 10-day average at the J-17 index well in Bexar County, the region’s official gauge, which the authority said reached 639.9 feet above sea level that day.
The cut applies across the aquifer’s San Antonio Pool: Medina and Bexar counties and parts of Atascosa, Caldwell, Guadalupe, Comal and Hays. It reaches every permit holder authorized to pump more than three acre-feet a year, about 977,000 gallons. That includes irrigators, industrial users and water utilities. The reduction is taken from each holder’s annual authorized amount and prorated by the number of days the stage stays in effect. Affected holders must report their pumping monthly.
The authority regulates well owners, not the public. Lawn-watering rules come from each city’s water provider. The San Antonio Water System, which serves the state’s second-largest city, announced its own return to Stage 3 on Sept. 21. Under city ordinance, that stage begins when the J-17 average falls below 640 feet.
For most San Antonio households, little changes day to day. Stage 3 keeps the Stage 2 watering schedule: once a week, on a day set by the last digit of the address, from 5 to 10 a.m. or 9 p.m. to midnight. Hand-watering is allowed any time. The difference falls on heavy users. Residential customers who use 20,000 gallons or more in a month pay a surcharge, which the utility said applies to fewer than 2 percent of households. Commercial customers pay a surcharge on irrigation water based on meter size.
“The return to Stage 3 is not surprising, given the hot, dry weather we’ve been experiencing,” said Martha Wright, the utility’s director of conservation. The utility noted that the Edwards now supplies only about half of San Antonio’s available drinking water, one of nine sources, including a desalination plant and an underground storage facility.
The system’s own daily readings show how the line was crossed. According to its aquifer statistics page, the J-17 well read 641.6 feet on Sept. 8, 640.8 feet on Sept. 14 and 638.1 feet on Sept. 17. After briefly recovering to 640.1 feet on Sept. 20, it fell to 638.4 feet on Sept. 23. Afternoon highs ran between 90 and 101 degrees on every day from Sept. 6 through Sept. 22, and the only measurable rain in that stretch was 0.29 inches on Sept. 18. The utility’s figures also show rainfall for the year above normal, 26.75 inches against 23.82, and a 2026 low for the well of 624.7 feet. This is a late-summer slide, not a record.
The authority’s stage table, posted on its drought management page, shows what comes next. Stage 4 begins when the J-17 average falls below 630 feet and raises the pumping cut to 40 percent. Stage 5, below 625 feet, raises it to 44 percent. Easing is harder than tightening. The region returns to a lighter stage only when the 10-day averages at J-17, Comal Springs and San Marcos Springs all rise above the current stage’s triggers.
The reversal comes as dry conditions spread across much of the state, the backdrop for Texas farmers writing off one in ten dryland acres after the third-driest August on record.
On Sept. 23 the well stood 8.4 feet above the Stage 4 line. The authority recalculates the average every day.