AUSTIN, Texas – During the intervening time, the Texas House Committee on Natural Resources was once requested by means of the Speaker to watch the implementation of Senate Bill 2185.
The invoice, authored by means of state Sen. Juan Hinojosa of McAllen, aimed to dissolve Hidalgo County Water Improvement District No. 3. However, the regulation was once amended significantly. HCWID No. 3 was once no longer dissolved however was once requested to hold out more than a few easiest practices.
The herbal sources committee is chaired by means of state Rep. Tracy King, D-Batesville. During the intervening time, King’s committee held a listening to in Weslaco on SB 2185.
Here is the committee’s intervening time report:
ISSUES REGARDING THE HIDALGO COUNTY WATER IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT #3
The Committee was once assigned the duty of tracking the implementation of SB 2185, which as presented, dissolved a selected water keep an eye on and development district, and as handed, mandated sure easiest practices to the similar in lieu of dissolution. Despite this and given the long, fraught historical past of this matter, we felt it essential to believe the historical past of water districts and the Legislature’s function in disputes of this type. From there the 88th legislature is also higher situated to believe holistic approaches to making sure all districts are running at their perfect.
Arising from allegations of mismanagement, value gouging, and political ill-will, SB 2185 was once the newest iteration in a sequence of expenses filed during the last decade that sought to dissolve the Hidalgo County Water Improvement District #3 (District). Like its predecessors, as a part of the dissolution procedure, the invoice only if the District’s belongings, together with infrastructure and water rights, have been to be transferred to the City of McAllen. The District maintains that as a result of they nonetheless supply a essential and statutorily licensed carrier the invoice makes no sense and easily an strive by means of the City to take its belongings.
The House better half to SB 2185 was once referred to the House Natural Resources Committee, however because of a longstanding familiarity with the problem, it was once no longer introduced up for a listening to. After passing the Texas Senate, SB 2185 was once won by means of the House and referred to the Urban Affairs Committee (as a substitute of the Natural Resources Committee) the place it was once summarily reported favorably in a proper assembly with no public listening to. While no longer a demand beneath the House laws, it’s customized {that a} committee cling a public listening to on a invoice for which the topic of has no longer prior to now been thought to be. Even extra so on issues of end result or controversy, which SB 2185 qualifies as each.
While into consideration by means of the overall House, the Chairman of this Committee raised some degree of order on additional attention of SB 2185 on the grounds that the invoice was once drafted opposite to the Texas Constitution’s prohibition on maximum native expenses, a provision very a lot designed to forestall the legislature from enacting regulation meddling in native affairs. In an settlement to withdraw the purpose of order, the dissolution procedures have been changed with easiest follow language and different agreed to phrases. It was once additional promised that this Committee would believe the topic at an intervening time listening to within the McAllen, Texas space.
The Committee met in Weslaco on November 14th, 2022. Both the writer and House sponsor of SB 2185 have been provide and joined the committee in wondering witnesses, which essentially consisted of District or City representatives and their allies. Though very informative, the listening to was once steadily stressful, accusatory, and argumentative. To complement, we totally reviewed paperwork on document with the Public Utility Commission on the subject of the velocity case the City has filed in opposition to the District. That integrated petitions, petition responses, certificate of adjudication, water provide and supply contracts, and a decade-old state audit report. Lengthy wondering all the way through the listening to was once not able to definitively resolve if the District’s charge construction is similar to different identical districts. However, it’s neither the fee of this Committee nor its accountability to audit the District or in a different way have interaction within the charge dispute between the events.
In order to raised perceive the serve as and goal of Hidalgo County Water Improvement District #3, we can supply a temporary historical past of water districts. The following abstract owes a perfect deal to Glenn Jarvis’ essay the Evolution of Water Resources Management in Texas.
In the early 1850s, the state learned the want to expand and arrange floor water sources. Back then the legislature enacted particular regulations granting charters to create non-public irrigation firms. The thought was once that those firms would then lift non-public capital for irrigation initiatives to supply water to farms and the burgeoning cities they surrounded.
Over the following 50 years, the program proved restricted and in large part useless. For a success expansion, there was once a transparent want for publicly financed and arranged water construction.
Accordingly, the voters of Texas voted to approve a 1904 modification to Art. III, Sec. 52 of the Texas Constitution. This modification licensed the legislature to determine political subdivisions and districts with bonding authority for sure water development initiatives. Works particularly licensed by means of the 1904 modification integrated the advance of watercourses to forestall flooding, allow navigation, and use for irrigation. It additionally allowed for the development and upkeep of swimming pools, lakes, reservoirs, dams, canals, and waterways for irrigation, drainage, or navigation functions.
During the next Session the legislature handed a sequence of regulations aimed toward selling water construction in gentle of this newly granted constitutional authority. Notably, that is when irrigation districts have been first licensed.
Despite those efforts, construction nonetheless languished. As famous within the Evolution of Water Resource Management in Texas, the 1904 modification was once enacted all the way through a length of fashionable public worry about upper taxes. Consequently, the modification was once drafted in a way that impeded its effectiveness. Limitations reminiscent of a two-thirds majority vote of resident assets homeowners to factor bonds, a conservative debt ceiling, and barring taxation the place towns have been integrated inside a district’s barriers all contributed to the modification’s failure.
Nearly a decade later in 1913, the legislature took every other swing by means of enforcing what was once entitled the Irrigation Act (every now and then known as the Glasscock Act). Not handiest was once this a significant development in codifying floor water legislation, it once more licensed the introduction of irrigation districts, however this time with expanded water construction authority.
Since the times of personal irrigation firms main as much as the Irrigation Act of 1913, irrigation and financial construction have been in lots of regards synonymous. Without irrigation, there have been no farms. Without farming, there was once no financial process. In many areas, irrigation was once very important to the state’s expansion and construction. Understanding that courting, The Chairman of the Irrigation Committee, Rep. D.W. Glasscock from McAllen, Texas, and probably the most main sponsors of the 1913 Irrigation Act addressed the House in enhance of the invoice, pointing out:
“[W]hile known as the ‘Irrigation Bill’ , it is in fact much more extensive in scope than this term would indicate, and is an effort to form a comprehensive system of statutory ‘Water Law’ for this state. It deals, not only with the important question of irrigation, in which millions of capital is now invested in this state, and upon which many thousands of people are dependent; but also with every right to use the water; from the Primary use for drinking and domestic purposes, the supply of cities and towns, the natural use for stock raising, the use for mining, the development power, and other purposes; up to the problem of conservation of this great natural resources, and its control application and use, to the benefit of all people of this state.”
So whilst irrigation can have been a pressure within the modernization of Texas water legislation, the statutes enacted in the ones early days granted districts wide authority essential to expand water sources for causes past irrigation, as articulated by means of Rep. D.W. Glasscock.
Following a sequence of harmful floods and spotting that districts arranged beneath the 1904 modification have been integral to the state’s construction however have been successfully restricted, public sentiment started to shift. The want to expand and keep an eye on water now outweighed fiscal restraint. The Legislature spoke back by means of additional refining and increasing upon the 1913 Irrigation Act to incorporate “water improvement districts.” But extra considerably, they handed a Joint Resolution to amend the Texas Constitution. On August twenty first, 1917, the voters of the state of Texas totally recommended the district-based thought of water control by means of approving what’s referred to as the “Conservation Amendment.”
By authorizing the legislature to create conservation and reclamation districts with wide operational authority and no monetary restrictions, the Conservation Amendment necessarily changed the 1904 modification. In reality, the Legislature reiterated its transparent choice for those new districts the next 12 months in a 1918 particular consultation referred to as to enforce the Conservation Amendment. The Canales Act of 1918 each reaffirmed huge provisions of the 1913 and 1917 Acts and created conservation and reclamation districts with the powers of water development districts however not one of the obstacles imposed by means of the 1904 Amendment. Though the method was once bulky, it additionally licensed current districts to transform to conservation and reclamation districts licensed by means of the Conservation Amendment.
Following some confusion within the courts and the exhausting conversion necessities of the 1918 Act, the 1925 Legislature once more enacted regulation growing a brand new form of district, the water keep an eye on and development district. Following the similar development, those new districts had expanded powers and tasks however misplaced the constraints that hampered the good fortune in their predecessors. This Act allowed any current water development district or irrigation district to transform right into a water keep an eye on and development district by means of a easy motion of its board of administrators. This authority was once prolonged to every other conservation or reclamation district a couple of years later. It has been famous that many districts created previous to this Act ultimately transformed as HCWID #3 did in 1926.
It is right here that lately’s Water Code coping with districts starts to take form. After 1925, amendments to this space of Texas water legislation got here slower and have been extra specific and explicit, and far of what was once enacted up till this level was the root for what Water Code chapters 51 and 55 are lately. It could also be inside this context that we should have a look at Hidalgo County Water Improvement District #3.
The Hidalgo County Water Improvement District #3 was once created in 1921 as a constitutionally licensed conservation and reclamation district to furnish uncooked water for irrigation and to ship water to the City of McAllen for municipal functions. It was once shaped throughout the county petition procedure as set forth normally legislation versus by means of the Legislature throughout the enactment of a distinct legislation. Following the 1925 Act, the District’s board voted affirmatively in 1926 to transform the district right into a water keep an eye on and development district. WCIDs, after all, have been particularly designed to perform extra than simply irrigation.
During the listening to, the District was once again and again known as an irrigation district that has outlived its authentic goal. This characterization disregards the ancient intent of water keep an eye on and development districts. As prior to now illustrated, the Water Code was once purposefully crafted to incorporate WCIDs amongst the most well liked entities given the explicit duty of offering uncooked water for municipal and irrigation customers. Because WCIDs nonetheless satisfy this statutory legal responsibility they’re certainly not a vestige of the previous. Rather, they’re effectively running around the state and their governing statute is continually up to date and tweaked to reply to fresh issues. By design, districts had been in a position to closely put money into water rights acquisition and supply infrastructure in ways in which municipalities won’t have at all times been in a position to.
Unhappy with the charges, disappointed with control, and not able to effectively negotiate a mutually agreeable resolution the City wants to dissolve the District and take over its belongings and operations by means of legislative motion.
After an exhaustive seek of the legislative archives, it’s obvious that regulation like SB 2185 is in large part with out precedent. The Committee discovered just one different example the place a common legislation water district was once dissolved by means of the legislature. Under present statutory dissolution procedures, a district’s water rights revert again to the state. However, within the instance discovered, the district was once voluntarily dissolving and desired regulation to switch its belongings. While untraditional, in gentle of such an settlement, regulation of this kind is comprehensible. However, that isn’t the case between the City of McAllen and the HCWID 3.
While we consider the District has proven in excellent religion that it’s running in opposition to enforcing the necessities of SB 2185, we stay puzzled in regards to the District board elections. We are unimpressed with any rationalization to this point in regard to how and when lists of certified electorate are produced or how certified electorate are made conscious that an election is even going down. If the District needs to proceed running as a WCID, there are issues right here that want to be resolved. The Committee is cautiously open to exploring legislative probabilities, however we need to rigidity that any adjustments made in statute will doubtlessly have an effect on 1000’s of alternative districts for which we’ve heard no court cases.
The Committee has in the end decided that WCIDs nonetheless very a lot serve their meant goal. While there is also issues at Hidalgo County Water Improvement District #3, they aren’t ones for which the Legislature is suited for particularly deal with. It is eventualities like this that Art. III, Sec. 56 of the Texas Constitution is designed to offer protection to in opposition to: “the purpose of Section 56 is to stop the legislature from meddling in local matters” (The Constitution of The State of Texas: An annotated and Comparative Analysis, George Braden). It is opposite to the Constitution and would set a perilous precedent to behave in this sort of model just because we might want one political subdivision over every other. It is our activity to control districts as an entire and no longer on the person degree. Accordingly, there are statutory choices to pursue grievances to be had along with judicial treatments. If the ones choices are inadequate, it’s the Legislature’s prerogative to enact a statutory framework that helps to keep districts truthful, clear, and environment friendly. As at all times we welcome tips on enhancements to the legislation to stay all districts performing at their perfect.
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