Roberta’s First Protest: What about dying springs, streams?

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

As representatives of the nine-country Groundwater Management District 9 worked their way around yesterday to saying “so long” to 30 feet of subterranean water for future development, a lone voice of protest peeped.

While the managers haggled over various depletion scenarios, Roberta Shoemaker-Beal squeaked from the back of Boerne’s Champion High School: “How about zero?”

As a representative of the Blanco-Pedernales Groundwater Conservation District agreed to go with the flow and vote for 30 feet, the voice piped up. “What about the springs?”

And as the final tally was taken, it cried out “No!” “No!” with each affirmative vote.

Hays County resident Shoemaker-Beal, a first-time protester with freshly marked sign said she was aghast by the failure of the board members to discuss how recent years of drought had sucked down Jacob’s Well (PDF), dried up Blanco River, and called out the water-delivery trucks again.

In honor of this solitary expression of regional sustainability, the Current extends its unofficial and possibly irrelevant Lone Protester Award to Shoemaker-Beal, GMA-9’s conscience for the day.