While COVID-19 dominates headlines in 2020, groundwater protection efforts in the Texas Hill Country are set to realize a tremendous success story when the first One Water school in Texas officially opens its doors for classes this fall!  Blue Hole Primary School will serve the growing Hill Country communities of Wimberley and Woodcreek with one of the most water efficient and cost-effective approaches ever envisioned for a school campus in Texas.
One Water is a water planning and management approach that rethinks how water moves through and is used in a community; it brings stakeholders like developers, community leaders, urban planners, water managers and engineers together with the goal of utilizing water as thoughtfully and efficiently as possible. The school’s One Water design acknowledges the importance of protecting Wimberley’s sensitive water resources by managing all the water as a single resource that is sustainable and reusable. The One Water concept for the school, spearheaded by Nick Dornak, Director of Watershed Services for The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, and David Baker, Director of the Wimberley Valley Water Association (WVWA), was ratified by the Wimberley Independent School District (WISD) Board of Trustees in June 2019 with construction beginning shortly after in July.
Read more from the Texas Alliance for Groundwater Districts here.