A Comal County ranch owner ponders selling his land, setting off another clash between property rights and environmental concerns
When the owner applied for a state permit that could pave the way for a subdivision, neighbors and environmentalists rallied against it in the name of protecting the area’s rivers and the Edwards Aquifer.
“What am I supposed to tell my customers when all of a sudden someone says or posts something that says there are 600,000 gallons of wastewater that flows down towards the Comal [River]?” said Bolstad, who owns Comal Tubes in New Braunfels. “I operate off of tourism. And while it might not seem like a big deal to y’all, New Braunfels is a very tourist-orientated place.”
Bolstad added, “We all live here. We’re going to have to deal with all this no matter what, and you get to go back to your homes. Just keep that in mind.”
“We love it here, we built this house to grow old in. It would be a shame if we couldn’t age here,” said Guckian, 65.
“The Edwards is one of the most prolific water systems in the world,” Peace said, adding that it’s also “incredibly vulnerable to pollution.”
“There are caves there, this is on the contributing zone, it’s very near the recharge zone. A lot of that [waste]water would be going directly into the aquifer through these recharge features with no filtration," Peace said.
“I don’t think developers are thinking about us. They don’t know how much they’re going to affect us,” said Bell, whose family bought the 34-acre ranch in 2012. “I’ve already started fencing my property to protect myself a little bit.”
