DEPARTMENT: Finance
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Troy Elliott
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City Wide
SUBJECT: SAWS Impact Fee Waivers for Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA)
SUMMARY:
On October 6, 2015, the San Antonio Water System (SAWS), Board of Trustees approved a resolution in support of a plan to partner with various entities for the development of interconnections for water services to Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA). The interconnections to SAWS water services would require impact fees of $5.6 million. The proposed Ordinance would waive these impact fees for JBSA.
BACKGROUND:
JBSA manages the support functions of Camp Bullis, Fort Sam Houston, Randolph AFB, Lackland AFB, Medina Base (a.k.a. Lackland Training Annex), and Security Hill (a.k.a. Lackland East). Currently, various bases utilize their own pumps and wells to meet their water supply needs, for example: Camp Bullis pumps water from the Trinity aquifer; and, Ft. Sam uses Edwards Aquifer wells. These sole water supply sources mean that bases in San Antonio may face acute water challenges during times of drought.
In addition, the bases have some aging and unreliable water infrastructure as well as a lack of redundancy that is creating an atmosphere of uncertain water resources. These issues have led to, and will continue feeding into, the perceptions of inadequate water availability for these bases. These perceptions may create a vulnerability to future rounds of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), and also may hinder San Antonio from attracting new military missions through the BRAC process which can bring new jobs and economic development.
A lack of water availability could pose a threat to the military value of our military bases. SAWS, the City of San Antonio, and JBSA have been working with other partners over the past year to develop a comprehensive approach to bringing adequate infrastructure and water supplies to the bases and have developed solutions that can ...
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