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San Antonio Water System: Diversifying San Antonio’s Water Portfolio
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he San Antonio Water System (SAWS) was formed in 1992 to take over the functions of a number of water, wastewater, and water reuse entities in the San Antonio city government. Today, it provides services to 1.86 million people across a 933-square-mile area. Over the last few decades, SAWS has worked to diversify San Antonio’s water supply, which used to rely solely on the local aquifer, so that it includes recycled water, aquifer storage and recharge (ASR), brackish groundwater desalination, and nonlocal groundwater piped in via a 142-mile pipeline. In this interview, Donovan Burton, SAWS’s water resources and intergovernmental relations vice president, tells Municipal Water Leader about the agency’s work diversifying its water portfolio to ensure that it can serve the rapidly growing communities in the San Antonio–Austin corridor. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Donovan Burton: After college, I began working for a San Antonio state representative in the Texas Legislature, focusing on a variety of legislative issues. I enjoyed the legislative and political process, but after 10 years, I was ready to move on. I was able to come on board with SAWS in 2006 as its legislative manager, working in Austin on SAWS’s many legislative and regulatory interests. Eventually, I became the chief of staff to the president and CEO of SAWS and then was promoted to the newly created position of vice president of water resources and government relations. SAWS had previously had distinct government relations and water resources staffs, but in our state, the two are so intertwined that the decision was made to combine them to enhance our overall effectiveness. That is the role I still hold today. In this capacity, I also focus on compliance issues, including regulatory, water quality, and laboratory issues. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about SAWS and its history.
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agencies within the city government, including a water board, a wastewater department, and a water reuse district. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these distinct departments were finding themselves continually at odds with one another over resource allocation and overall policy direction. It got to the point where one department was threatening to sue another. At that point, city leaders convened a meeting of the competing interests to determine how to overcome these divisions and ultimately decided to merge the individual departments into one entity. This led to the creation of SAWS in 1992. SAWS is a hybrid of sorts: It manages itself, but it is charged with serving the needs of San Antonio. To ensure that the city still has a voice in SAWS’s overall direction, the city appoints members to the governing board of trustees and approves our rates and bond offerings. Municipal Water Leader: Is your area heavily urbanized? Donovan Burton: Yes. A lot of the suburbs and exurbs of San Antonio are growing at a phenomenal rate. The I-35 corridor between San Antonio and Austin, which is about 80 miles to the northeast, is one of the fastest-growing regions in the nation. Eventually, the corridor will become one big metropolis. Municipal Water Leader: What can you tell us about the source of your water? Donovan Burton: Our primary supply has always been the Edwards aquifer, which sits right underneath our feet and flows artesian, making it an easy source to access. It is a regional aquifer, so other communities and individuals access it, as does the agricultural sector. Just north of San Antonio lie the municipalwaterleader.com
PHOTO COURTESY OF SAWS.
Donovan Burton: SAWS is one of the largest municipal water utilities in the nation. It serves an area of over 933 square miles with a population of 1.86 million, covering all of Bexar County and portions of Atascosa, Kendall, and Medina Counties. The service areas are established by state regulatory authorities. We have approximately 511,000 connections. Around 94 percent are residential; 6 are general class. SAWS also provides wholesale water to three water retail entities. We focus on drinking water, wastewater, storm water, and reuse, but also manage a chilled water plant in downtown San Antonio. The water utility used to consist of several separate
The Agua Vista station helps distribute the water from the Vista Ridge pipeline.
