Levels of two of the five lakes supplying water for San Angelo increased last month from floods on the watershed.

Expressions of relief in the press were immediate. The daily newspaper announced in bold print that plans for water rationing had been postponed. Dry-weather ranchers accustomed to depending on clay-bottomed catch tanks and potholes for stock water, cisterns and tea kettles for household water were most likely more conservative about the runoff. They know it takes more than one rain to quench the thirst of a city of over 90,000 citizens, to water and bathe twice that many laps dogs and house cats, plus fill all the goldfish ponds and swimming pools in the town.

A big break for the city was a bill passed through the Texas Legislature a session ago by Congressman Rob Junell and Senator Bill Sims to appropriate money to assist ranchers in clearing off the brush on the North Concho River watershed and put the river back to flowing into O.C. Fisher Lake. Mr. Junell's and Mr. Sims' skill in maneuvering the bills by the urban majority at Austin is a monument to two gentleman legislators, not only trusted by their constituency but respected as straight shooters on the floors and in the cloak rooms of the state house.

The program, already in action, pays 70 percent of the cost of controlling mesquite and cedar by mechanical or chemical means, up to 75 bucks an acre. One outfit alone signed up to clear 30,000 acres. Newspaper accounts of this project reviewed an excellent conservation plan of leaving strips of cover for game habitat and raking brush across draws and headers to prevent erosion. Steel track tractor owners and cropdusting brush services were bound to have been jubilant over the news of the prospect of so much new business.

The Spring Creek and Middle Concho watershed draining into San Angelo's lakes are the next target for a similar program. Should money be appropriated in the January session of the state legislature, the Irion County part of my outfit will qualify and a small amount of the Divide country.

Much to my dismay, Goat Whiskers the Younger blabbed the news over the wire and alerted the rest of the family just as soon as the Middle Concho Soil and Water Conservation Board announced the first public meeting at Mertzon in March. I already knew approval is on a first-come, first-served basis. All the clan owns land in dire need of brush control. Whiskers and I are the only ones, however, who live at the ranch. If he hadn't been such a big-hearted, loyal dope, we could have waited until our applications were approved, and then helped our family fill out the forms.

Two of the principal landowners on the Middle Concho were out of town on the night of the Mertzon meeting. After they returned, the younger brother called to find out about the meeting. I made him swear to keep the information quiet, but be prepared to act when I called him to apply. "I am going to do all the ground work and not charge a cent," was the way I put it.

Next thing he wanted to know was whether his brother's outfit was going to be covered, too. After he confirmed his telephone was private, and he wasn't on a cell phone, I told him, "You are overreacting. This is just a little ol' state program." (Seven or eight million bucks of rich juice and gravy sounds big at first, until you think about the 12 billion dollars "the Fed" sent over last week to help heal the trouble in Kosovo.)

Lowering my voice, I asked him to be patient, to trust me to keep him and his brother right on top of things.

By the second morning after the meeting in Mertzon, I began to feel confident the daily in San Angelo wasn't going to cover the meeting. Reporters weren't in evidence at the community center. The old-time way to measure press coverage was to watch the refreshment table, especially an open bar. Modern-day scribes must not be so hungry and thirsty as my contemporaries, or perhaps they just have better manners.

But all stayed quiet until the Sunday edition splashed the whole minutes of the Mertzon meeting on the agriculture section of the paper. Between the circulation of the daily and Goat Whisker's touch tone phone style, competition is going to be high if Spring Creek and the Middle Concho are added in the next session. In the meantime, the only hope left for a fair draw is for the two brothers to be back out of town on opening day.

April 13, 2000