Initial findings of factual misrepresentations in Watershed Systems Group, Inc's reports to City of San Marcos “Effects of changing height of Cape’s Dam on recreation, Texas wild rice and fountain darter habitat in the San Marcos River, Texas” Prepared for: City of San Marcos Prepared by: Dr. Thomas B. Hardy, Ph.D. Dr. Nolan Raphelt, Ph.D. Watershed Systems Group, INC San Marcos, Texas Dated: June 24, 2015 October 12, 2015 Analysis of Watershed Systems Group's reporting submitted on August 22, 2016 by Kelley Smoot Garrett B.Sci., Geological Sciences, 1982 with Honors and Special Honors University of Texas at Austin Executive Summary A number of omissions of factual evidence occur in Watershed Systems Group's (WSG) reports to the City of San Marcos about removing Capes Dam, situated approximately 1400 ft downstream from I-35, on the San Marcos River, on land owned by the City of San Marcos. These serious factual omissions, that render the studies' purported conclusions meaningless, include: Failure to identify and include proper physical boundary conditions in the reports' Study Area, the proper boundary conditions being the next dam located 0.6 mile upstream from Capes Dam (Rio Vista Dam, in City of San Marcos) and the next dam located 3.4 miles downstream (Cummings Dam, Martindale, TX); Failure to state the size of the Study Area, as well as failure to include a scale, a directional (North) arrow to orient the reader, and failure to identify the location of the subject of the study, Capes Dam, on Figure 1 (of both studies') Study Area. Failure by the City of San Marcos to accurately and completely fill out the statutorily-required Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Information Sheet Proposed New Construction, Modification, Repair, Alteration, or Removal of a Dam, including the entire omission of Section 4: Hydrologic Information, such as Required Hydrologic Criteria of Percentage of Probable Maximum Flood. Failure by the City of San Marcos to accurately and completely fill out Texas Parks & Wildlife (TPW) Sand and Gravel Permit Application, despite having been signed & notarized by City of San Marcos City Manager Jared Miller, who acknowledged through his Affidavit “significant penalties for submitting false information, including the possibility of a fine and imprisonment.” Admission by the City of San Marcos in their filing TCEQ Information Sheet and TPW Permit that endangered species Texas Wild Rice and Fountain Darter will be endangered by the removal of Capes Dam, that both species will need to be permanently removed and relocated, from the wild where they now exist. In 2015, the National Academy of Sciences rebuked Watershed Systems Group co-author Thomas B Hardy for his contributions to the Edwards Aquifer Area HCP (Habitat Conservation Plan) citing, “The HCP repeatedly refers to the two Hardy habitat suitability analyses with statements that are not easy to trace back to the reports.” The statements in questions concerned whether or not the referenced Hardy study identified suitable habitat for the endangered Fountain Darter. 100% reliance on Watershed System Group's reports, as well as hypotheses of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) that Texas Wild Rice and the Fountain Darter will not be harmed, so there is no back-up plan to handle the possibility that these untested hypotheses might be wrong, if these two Federally-protected endangered species are decimated by the removal of Capes Dam. Use of out-dated aerial photography by Watershed Systems Group in describing the Study Area to disguise and hide from any reader/reviewer the existence of a 24-acre apartment complex with over 455,000 sq ft of improvements, valued on tax rolls at $44 Million and located wholly-within the Study Area. This massive apartment complex (The Woods of San Marcos) is built within the 100 year Flood plain, is immediately adjacent to the San Marcos River and drains completely into either the San Marcos River (above Capes Dam) or the Mill Race – and the Mill Race is listed on the TCEQ Information Sheet as being slated to be “filled in.” Filling-in any river's major drainage artery that receives 100% of rainwater run-off from an adjacent 24-acre complex is not consistent with sound river and flood water management principles. Watershed Systems Group graphical displays purporting to show three different outcomes due to three different scenarios of Capes Dam's height, which change the base image's scope and aspect ratio to present the three outcomes, are not scientific. Failure of Watershed Systems Group to use water boundary conditions of extreme flood and extreme drought to model what will happen when Capes Dam is removed. Watershed Systems Group only uses average conditions in two reports to the City of San Marcos. Using averages when discussing a river that can range from as low as 60 CFS in extreme drought to as high as 600+ CFS in extreme flood, is misleading and does not allow accurate models to be developed. Failure by Watershed Systems Group, USFWS, or any other entity urging the City of San Marcos to remove Capes Dam to either know or acknowledge that in January 2000 Capes Dam was breached, resulting in a mad scramble to save Texas Wild Rice from being decimated. The Texas Wild Rice taken from the San Marcos River in 2000 were evidently transported to the USFWS' Fish Hatchery and have apparently only been kept alive since 2000 in that laboratory setting. There is no indication that once USFWS removes Texas Wild Rice they transplant it elsewhere in the River, just into their concrete-lined trenches in their fish hatchery. There is no need for hypotheses or guess-work about what will happen when Capes Dam is removed, because there is a real-life example from 2000 as to what happens when Capes Dam is breached, during what was then a time of extreme drought. The use of a Public Engineer from South Dakota, with a Wyoming PE license to complete TCEQ's Information Sheet about Capes Dam, located in Texas, approximately 1,000 miles away, does not engender confidence that the omitted and incorrect data occurring on the statutorily-required TCEQ Dam Safety Program will be recognized by the out-of-state engineer whose license has been used to present the statistics. Table of Contents 1. Omissions of material facts ...................................................................................................................5 2. Errors on the order of a magnitude or more...........................................................................................5 3. US Fish and Wildlife Service failure to reveal "Endangered Texas wild-rice will be removed from the work area and immediately downstream and transplanted in a suitable location." ...........................6 4. Visually deceptive display of data..........................................................................................................7 5. Watershed Systems Group's Reports fail to show the location of Capes Dam......................................8 6. Watershed Systems Group's use of outdated aerial photograph to disguise existence of a 24 acre apartment complex immediately adjacent to Capes Dam..........................................................................8 Flood Plain Discussion...............................................................................................................................9 A real-life San Marcos River example of what happens when Capes Dam is breached..........................11 Peer-Review.............................................................................................................................................11 The Cost of Doing Nothing......................................................................................................................11 Conclusions..............................................................................................................................................12 Table of Figures Figure 1. Omission of 24-acre apartment complex, lack of directional arrow, lack of scale, and inadequately-sized Study Area chosen by Watershed Systems Group....................................................14 Figure 2. What Watershed Systems Groups’ Study Area should have depicted & included...................15 Figure 2a. An existing, properly delineated and keyed Study Area of the San Marcos River, published 2001 by USFWS......................................................................................................................................16 Figure 3. From Watershed Systems Group's June 24, 2015 report to City of San Marcos compares images of different aerial extent and scale...............................................................................................17 Figure 4. Watershed Protection Plan presented to City of San Marcos as part of development of The Woods Apartment Complex drains directly into the Mill Race...............................................................18 Contained with the two reports prepared for the City of San Marcos by Watershed Systems Group's (WSG) reports of June 24, 2015 and Oct 12, 2015 that I have had the opportunity to review, there are: 1. Serious omissions of material facts and physical structures located entirely within Watershed Systems Group's (WSG) self-selected, restricted Study Area which is not large enough to adequately include the bounding physical parameters that encompass Capes Dam. Without a sufficiently large enough area Study Area that must include the dam above Capes