Happy New Year from Hill Country Alliance! We are ringing in 2018 with a buy one get one sale on our 2018 Texas Hill Country Calendar! Now through Sunday, January 7 for each calendar you order online we'll include a second calendar for free! If you purchase 2 calendars you will receive 4 by mail! Don't miss out, HCA Calendars make wonderful gifts for clients, teachers, family, friends and neighbors!
With fish and wildlife populations under increasing pressure in Texas and throughout the country, Texans are hailing a new opportunity to reverse this trend. House bill 4647, known as the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, would provide $1.3 billion annually from existing federal revenues for state-led projects to improve and restore fish and wildlife habitats, without any increase in taxes. This federal legislation represents a once in a generation opportunity to modernize conservation funding, provide more regulatory certainty for business and…
Buda city leaders took another step toward implementing Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) with the approval of a pilot study meant to test the safety of the proposed project. On Dec. 5, the Buda City Council approved, by a 6-0 vote, a professional services agreement with HDR for the pilot study. Councilmember Remy Fallon was not present at the meeting. James Dwyer with HDR gave a short presentation to council members regarding the pilot study, whose funding was included in…
Tony Tucci, BEC | In the dark field, you can barely see the telescopes and the groups of men and women gathered around them. They are amateur astronomers seeking the secrets of the sky. Light is their enemy, and they carefully guard against it. Most of them are members of a “dark-sky movement”—a campaign to convince governments and utilities to reduce their ambient light output. They hold these “star parties” in darkened fields to increase public awareness. Even the light…
Hill Country Family, As we approach the end of 2017, it seems like a fitting time to reflect on what we’ve accomplished, the journey we’ve taken to get where we are today, and the plans for an exciting, bright future for the Hill Country Alliance (HCA). HCA is very special to me and I am grateful to be a part of such an active, caring and impactful community. It is important to me to express how much I appreciate each…
The land agents started working the border between Texas and Mexico in the spring of 2007. Sometimes they were representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Other times they were officers from the U.S. Border Patrol, uniformed in green, guns tucked into side holsters. They visited tumbledown mobile homes and suburban houses with golf course views. They surveyed farms fecund with sugar cane, cotton and sorghum growing by the mud-brown Rio Grande. They delivered their blunt news to ranchers…
Urban floods make the news with alarming regularity. Just in the past few months, Hurricane Harvey submerged Houston, and the seasonal monsoon crippled cities in South Asia. Dramatic floods from increasingly severe storms come with a steep cost, both human and financial, and the problem will only get worse with climate change. One of the biggest culprits for the deadly toll these floods wreak? Urbanization. As cities develop, miles of impervious pavement are laid over forest or wetlands, displacing the natural flood management…
Adam Russell | AgriLife Today | October and November were two of the driest Octobers and Novembers on record, and much of the state appears to be facing a continued dry spell through winter, according to the state climatologist. Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, College Station, said conditions were excessively dry throughout the typically wet fall months, and dry conditions are expected to continue through the next several weeks at least. The lack of rain is causing concerns about fire danger, poorly…
Charles Phillips was in his pasture one day last year when he heard the sound. At 85, Phillips doesn’t hear as well as he used to, but he had no problem picking up the unmistakable squeal of a drill boring through rock. That’s odd, he thought. Why would my neighbor be drilling a water well? He followed the sound west across one of his pastures, where a couple of black Angus cows and quarter horses were grazing, to the neighboring fence…
Texas cities with booming populations are teaming up on a major water pipeline project. “The Alliance Regional Water Authority has obtained permits and financing is underway to start construction next year on a 95-mile pipeline to pump groundwater from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer east of Lockhart,” the Associated Press reported. “The coalition, formed in 2007, includes Hays County's three largest cities and the Canyon Regional Water Authority, which serves parts of Central and South Texas,” the report said... Read more from Water…