How San Antonio Became a National Water Conservation Model

As Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? Thanks to a blind salamander, San Antonio became a national leader in water conservation. The eyeless, five-inch-long mass of virtually unpigmented flesh lives in the watery caverns of the Edwards Aquifer. It’s a pathetic-looking critter but no doubt a source of terror for the tiny snails and shrimp it feasts upon in its lightless subterranean home. The salamander and seven other species found nowhere else on earth depend on the health of the aquifer’s ecosystem.After the unregulated pumping of water threatened the salamander’s survival, federal authorities listed the amphibian as endangered in 1967. That act set in motion four decades of high-stakes lawsuits and…

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