Home Care In Medina, TX

A fatal neurological disease among deer was detected in a 1-year-old buck in Medina County.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said the buck tested positive during live animal testing at a deer-breeding facility. A postmortem test confirmed it had CWD.

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This marks the fifth CWD detection at a Medina County breeding facility since 2015.

A surveillance zone spanning a 2-mile radius will be placed around the facility. Deer harvested within that zone must be presented at a check-in station in Hondo within 48 hours, a news release states.

“CWD has an incubation period that can span years, so the first indication of the disease in a herd is often found through surveillance testing rather than observed clinical signs,” the release states. “Early detection and proactive monitoring improve the state’s response time to the detection of CWD and can greatly reduce the risk of further disease spread.”

CWD is fatal for certain cervids, like deer, elk, moose and others in the deer family.

Its incubation period can last for years, meaning animals who have the disease may go a while without showing symptoms.

As the disease progresses, it causes weight loss, stumbling, tremors, excessive thirst, salivation or urination, loss of appetite, teeth grinding, abnormal head posture and/or drooping ears. It never goes dormant and can remain on land for several years.

TPWD is urging hunters to take precautions when harvesting deer this fall season.

Around Texas, there are several CWD zones and check-in stations where hunters are required to present their deer.

Click here to view a map of those CWD zones and check-in stations.

There are no known cases of a human becoming infected with the disease, but hunters should test their harvested species for the disease before consuming them, TPWD states.

The general season for white-tail deer starts on Nov. 4, and the general season for mule deer starts in mid-late November, depending on where you live.

Click here to see hunting seasons by animal.

Read more:

Officials said the blaze threatened several other homes, but was eventually extinguished.

MEDINA COUNTY, Texas — Fire crews and neighbors worked together to contain a brush fire in Medina County on Tuesday night that destroyed a home.

The blaze threatened several houses off I-35 between Lytle and Natalia, and one witness said he heard an explosion. Officials said that two acres burned, but was contained thanks to the efforts of four departments and 10 trucks that came together.

Hilario Perez said he smelled burning and saw black smoke before he saw the flames approaching his neighbor's home. He and the neighbors were working to contain the fire when the heard a loud boom. He says it was a gas line that exploded. He mentioned that the wind and dry grass were a concern.

Perez said that the firefighters had been busy and were tired, and that they had encouraged him and his neighbor to help them pull out the hose.

"It's a pretty tough job if you ask me," he said. "I do have a cousin in the fire department, so to me I was proud to give a little hand."

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Efforts by state environmental agencies to improve the water quality within the Medina River could have significant trickle-down benefits for the San Antonio River.

The Texas Water Resources Institute, a research arm of the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, has partnered with the San Antonio River Authority to create a watershed improvement plan that will help improve the water quality of the Lower Medina River watershed. Currently, the water quality in the Medina River below Diversion Lake — just west of San Antonio — is designated by the state as impaired because of elevated bacteria levels, said Jason Gerlich, a research specialist at the institute.

“There are also nutrient concerns present in the watershed,” Gerlich said. “Both the bacteria impairment and nutrient concern can begin to be addressed through the watershed plan.”

While plenty of San Antonio residents take to floating the Medina River during the spring and summer months, the watershed improvement plan will have direct health benefits for the San Antonio River as well, said Lucas Gregory, an associate director of research. Just south of San Antonio, the Medina River meets and flows into the San Antonio River, which then continues southeast and drains into the San Antonio Bay and Gulf of Mexico.

“You’ve got to remember that water is a singular resource,” Gregory said. “If you live in Dallas and then you travel to Houston and drink a glass of water from Houston, you’re drinking water that came out of the wastewater treatment plant in Dallas, flowed down the Trinity River and then into [a Houston] intake system.”

As water becomes a more coveted resource in a booming Texas, making sure the water available is of good quality will continue to grow more important, he said.

The creation of this plan is being funded through a federal Clean Water Act grant administered by the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Collecting input

Currently, the Texas Water Resources Institute and San Antonio River Authority are holding a series of stakeholder and public input meetings to both explain the project and its goals to nearby residents and to gauge their feedback on what they would like to see implemented, Gregory said.

The first of these meetings took place in Castroville in October. The second meeting was also in Castroville earlier this month. A date, time and place for the next meeting has yet to be set, said Laura Muntean, a media relations coordinator for Texas A&M AgriLife.

Citizen “input is essential for identifying land and water issues and ensuring that appropriate and desirable management measures are included in the watershed-based plan,” Gerlich said.

Staff holds typically four or five public input meetings before actually setting about to create the plan, Gregory said, although it can have as many as 10 to 12 if the public seems particularly interested. They can take on different formats, he noted, from lecture-style discussions to working group discussions. Educating the public on watersheds, how they work as a part of the ecosystem, and how humans impact them is also a big reason for these public meetings, he added.

“It just kind of depends on the group and how complicated the issues are in the watershed and how good their base knowledge is on those issues,” Gregory said.

After sufficient public input has been collected, the research team gets to work discussing which strategies to implement for the watershed and putting together a draft of the plan, Gregory said.

Staff uses data points about the watershed to also guide the process, he added. In this case, most of the scientific data about the Medina River has been collected by the San Antonio River Authority, Gregory said.

Common strategies that may be in a plan include educating local farmers on best practices and on which products to use or which to avoid, helping restore native grasses to riverbeds and adding more waste bins and pet waste bag stations along popular sections of a river, according to the EPA.

After the watershed improvement plan is drafted, it will go to both the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board and then to the EPA, Gregory said.

“They basically just review it and say ‘Yes, this looks good to us, it meets what we say a watershed plan needs to,’ or give us other suggestions for the plan,” he said.

Data collected by the San Antonio River Authority has shown the water quality in the Medina River watershed is very poor, and the river has high levels of E. coli — a type of bacteria typically used as the testing standard, as its presence in water is a strong indicator of sewage or animal waste contamination.

The watershed improvement plan will hopefully bring those levels down, helping make the water flowing into the San Antonio River cleaner, Gregory said.

“It behooves us, and it behooves the citizens of San Antonio and in the watershed area at large, to make sure that all of our water bodies are protected as much as possible,” said Shaun Donovan, the river authority’s manager of environmental sciences.

The health of watersheds in Central Texas can directly affect the health of watersheds to the south, all the way down to the coast, Gregory said.

“That impacts that coastal water quality as well, so that’s really kind of the message that I try to convey to people — it’s really just about being good stewards of whatever resources you have,” Gregory said.

A rainy start to 2024 brought no relief to Medina Lake, and the century-old Hill Country reservoir is continuing to shrink, slipping closer to historically low levels.

Here’s a look at the state of things at the lake, and at what it would take to bring its water levels back to normal:

How empty is Medina Lake?

Medina Lake is currently 3.1% full, according to data from the Texas Water Development Board. Water levels recorded this week have been just over 974 feet above sea level. That number that references the elevation of the top surface of the lake.

How low is that, really?

The Texas Water Development Board’s data goes back to 1997, and the lowest level recorded since then was 972.42 feet, on May 25, 2014. That’s less than two feet below the current level.

The lake is considered full when it reaches “conservation pool” at 1,064.2 feet. The last time the lake was that high was July 7, 2019.

READ MORE: Despite recent rains, San Antonio area still locked in drought

How fast is the lake level dropping?

In the past month, the lake has fallen more than six inches, according to the board’s data. With the water level down more than 1 ½ feet from three months ago, and more than 8 ½ feet from this time last year, another hot and dry summer threatens to draw the lake down to a record low.

What will it take to refill the lake?

The lake was created by building a dam on the Medina River, which springs from the ground in northwest Bexar County. In order to replenish the lake, more water needs to be entering the lake than leaving it through the dam or by evaporation — and that hasn’t been the case.

Upstream of the reservoir, the river has seen some improvement. The river gauge at Bandera reported no flow at all from late July through early December, but since then, the flow rate has increased.

According to U.S. Geological Survey data, for the past two weeks, flows have ranged from about 5 to 10 cubic feet per second, a metric that measures the volume of water. That’s still far below normal. The median flow for this time of year is more than 50 cfs. USGS data shows a one-day surge above median flows on Feb. 10. However, that data is still considered provisional and hasn’t been reviewed and approved yet.

While the San Antonio area saw more rain in January, which helped improve drought conditions, more rain is needed to the north and west in Bandera and Medina counties to help refill the lake and get the river flowing.

The U.S. Drought Monitor shows a bullseye of “extreme drought” lingering over that area, stretching from Medina County through Kendall County and into Blanco County.

READ MORE: Who is ‘Edwards,’ anyway? 5 things to know about the Edwards Aquifer.

Why does Medina Lake matter?

The reservoir provides water to customers in three counties. The Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Water Control and Improvement District No. 1, known as BMA, manages the lake and distributes water to customers through a canal system. Its customers include a number of farmers who use the water for irrigation. According to the BMA, landowners use more than 46,000 acre feet of water from the lake. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre in one foot of water, or about 326,000 gallons.

The lake is also an important part of the tourism and recreation economy in Medina County.

The San Antonio Water System also has a contract to buy water from the lake, but hasn’t taken that water since 2015, which it says is due to low water levels and poor water quality. Under a contract from 2007, the city-owned utility is still paying the district millions of dollars for the water it isn’t using; last June, SAWS sued BMA in an effort to get out of the contract, which it inherited when it absorbed the former Bexar Metropolitan District in 2012.

That lawsuit is ongoing, according to Bexar County court records.

Feb 29, 2024

Cowboys & Indians: Well, looks like you’ve had the shortest retirement since Frank Sinatra’s brief hiatus in 1971. Because here you are with a terrific new album, Western Chill.

Robert Earl Keen: It really hinges on the fact that I am no longer touring. So that means I don’t have a bus, I don’t get in [it] and go out and tour. I do a few cameo appearances, like two or three songs for different fundraisers, and people that I like and need help, that sort of thing. The main thing is that I just continue to work in music. But the touring part is over. And that would really take up about 80 percent of my life.

C&I: But Western Chill is not just an album. Tied in with it, you’ve got a graphic novel, you’ve got a songbook, you got, I don’t know, maybe coupons for free pizza?

Keen: [Laughs] Well, we also have a DVD.

C&I: So this is quite a package, eh?

Keen: Yeah, absolutely. It’s been a project we started two and a half years ago, at the outset of COVID. When that happened, I decided to keep the entire company and the band intact. And after about a month of not touring or doing anything, I thought, well, let’s just get together and play. So they came out to the place that we have in Medina, Texas, which is west of San Antonio, about 70 miles. And we did some rehearsal. Actually, we just played for a couple of days. And then I said, well, you know, let’s just rehearse some of the stuff that we played over the years and kind of polish it up. And everybody was in on it, because it was so relaxed, and there was no timeframe really.

And while we were doing some of these rehearsals, I wrote ... Well, I actually wrote, like, five songs in one night. And the first song I wrote was this one called “Western Chill.” It’s more or less a talking blues song. And it really became the prologue to the entire project in that it lays out the vibe and the idea of just taking it easy and sitting back and just watching the sunset. Or just enjoying the air.

C&I: How did the band respond?

Keen: When they came back the next time, I said, “Here’s what I want to do: I want to take this particular song” — and I played it for them, and we rehearsed it a little bit. And then I said, “What I’d like to do is this: All you guys write songs, and you’re great players. Really great players. So bring your songs in, and we’ll do those, we’ll work those up, and see what we can do.

And they said, “You mean we bring our songs in, and you learn them, and then you sing them?” I said, “No, no. This is everybody’s thing, everybody’s in it. Bring your songs, you’re going to play them, you’re going to sing them, we’ll all learn them together.” So we did that, and then we decided that well, what we’re going to do is just record it and make a video of it, and put it out there in the world.”

C&I: And then?

Keen: So we had great audio, great video. And from there, I thought, “Well, hell, I’ll just make a record out of it.” So we made a record, and then someone suggested well, you know, you should have some kind of companion piece. And someone suggested doing a graphic novel. And I thought, well, that’s a pretty big undertaking. But we started in on that, found somebody that would do it. Got some great artwork on the LP that we produced, and it just became this thing that I call The Hill Country Multi-Media Project Lifestyle Experience.

C&I: Well, if it’s a graphic novel, are we going to see you in a cape and a superhero outfit?

Keen: [Laughs] No, not really. On the other hand, I might be self-aggrandizing a little bit, but I would have to say, in terms of making a project, it was the most fun I ever had. And you can see on the DVD, everybody’s just really relaxed and just sort of just taking it easy. And these songs — magically, they all came together. The songs that these guys brought in really fit the project perfectly, and everything just dovetailed into another song and another song so well that there is a little narrative that goes on there. Like, boy loses girl, boy meets girl, everything works out in the end kind of thing. If I’d have gone any longer, I would’ve written a musical play behind it. But maybe I’ll save that for another day.

This article appears in our August/September 2023, available on newsstands now or through our C&I Shop.