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GOLIAD – Florine Davis remembers how the last flood brought down trees along the riverbank.

While still cleaning up that mess, the Goliad landowner wanted to help shape the future of the Lower San Antonio River.

Generations of her family grew up on the land along the river. She leases land for cattle grazing, so she’s concerned about water quality and flooding.

She and other landowners and water users voiced the values they place on the Lower San Antonio River at the Texas Instream Flow Program meeting on Wednesday in Goliad.

State agencies are asking residents to participate in workshops that will help guide the technical study of the river’s instream flows – or springs and tributaries. The Lower San Antonio River is one of several priority areas, said Wendy Gordon with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

It’s the first time the state mandated the study of its rivers with Senate Bill 2 in 2001, she added. As the Texas population grows to double in size over 50 years, so does the competition for the river water and the sources that feed it.

“We need a minimum amount of water in the river a year to maintain its health,” Gordon said.

Residents who attend workgroup meetings over the coming months will form the “backbone of the study process,” she said. They will help guide the technical studies, which will develop recommended flows for the river.

The studies will consider natural variability in flow as well as wet, dry and average years, Gordon said.

Wilson County landowner Tambria Read grew up on Cibolo Creek, a tributary to the Lower San Antonio River. She listed water quality as a priority issue.

“When I was a kid, you could go swimming in the area,” she said. “Now, it’s not suitable to swim in.”

She understands sediment and nutrients need to travel downstream, but seven acres of her land comprise of piles of both urban and natural debris, washed in from Cibolo. She’s worried that the Cibolo will back up and flood, cutting off flow to the Lower San Antonio River.

“We want to keep that flow,” Wayne Dierlam, Victoria County commissioner in Precinct 4, said. “Flowing water is a clean river. When it becomes still, it becomes stagnant.”

McFaddin landowner Walter Womack, who owns property along the Lower San Antonio River, wants to keep the rights of landowners in the mix. Beauty and ecology of the river are extremely important, but in the proper context, he said.

Womack leases his land for hunting and relies on the river to attract wildlife. The river makes his land what it is, he said.

“The landowner is very much aware of the responsibility and importance of the river,” Womack said. “The land owns me as much as I own the land.”

Tara Bozick is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6504 or tbozick@vicad.com