Dec. 7, 2025 – The Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance is calling out San Antonio Water System President and CEO Robert Puente for a recent series of false and misleading statements on Lennar Corp. and its planned controversial Guajolote Ranch development to the detriment of public health and safety.
“When entrusted with the protection of 2.5 million lives and the sacred aquifer beneath them, one does not get to mislead, minimize or deflect,” said Randy Neumann, chair of the steering committee of the nonprofit, nonpartisan alliance, representing the largest neighborhood by square mile recognized by the San Antonio Neighborhood & Housing Services Department.
At issue is Puente’s defense of nine so-called “concessions” for wastewater treatment reached with Lennar as part of a water services agreement for the company to build 2,900 homes on 1,160 acres of Guajolote Ranch in northwest Bexar County, and discharge an average of 1 million gallons per day of treated sewage into the Helotes Creek watershed. The amount could reach 4 million gallons on any given day.
That watershed directly recharges the Trinity Glen Rose Aquifer, the water supply for the immediate area, and contributes up to 15% of the total recharge of the Edwards Aquifer, principal water source for about 2.5 million people across multiple counties.
Puente has claimed – in an Oct. 10 letter to San Antonio City Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito who sought his position on the matter, followed by interviews with KSAT-TV, KLRN-TV and Texas Public Radio – that the agreement “minimizes” harmful effects of the project and that the effluent, even, wouldn’t reach the Edwards Aquifer.
SAWS cites no studies to back the claims. Yet Puente misrepresented findings of the only definitive study that was done, a comprehensive hydrological study by Southwest Research Institute in 2020, funded through the city’s own Edwards Aquifer Protection Plan, which concluded that additional wastewater systems from residential development in the Helotes Creek watershed, “regardless of type,” would “significantly degrade the watershed and the quality of water recharging the Edwards Aquifer.”
Despite the “regardless of type” language, Puente falsely told The Source program on Texas Public Radio on Nov. 5 that the study did not say “any” type of wastewater system from development would degrade the aquifer. He said the one proposed by Lennar wouldn’t do so, again without backing. And his response to Alderete Gavito ignored the study completely.
The alliance also criticized Puente for saying the Lennar water services agreement would minimize harm.
“Minimizing pollution is not the same as preventing it,” Neumann said. “Our city and county have a fiduciary duty to protect our water supply – not to accept its degradation in any degree.” In sum, the alliance says the concessions are empty.
“Unfortunately, the language of these concessions is vague, lacking enforceable definitions, measurable thresholds or operational requirements,” Neumann said. “As a result, Lennar faces no clear obligations to fulfill the intent of the concessions.
“Isn’t the very act of extracting concessions an admission that the Guajolote project poses real risk?” he asked. “Mr. Puente himself conceded that the development ‘… is not without environmental risks.’
“Or was it all political theater – a calculated performance to appear protective while quietly smoothing the way for approval?”
See the alliance’s full breakdown, including of the nine purported concessions, in its paper, titled, “Words and Water: The Battle for Truth on the Guajolote Ranch,” here: https://www.scenicloop.org/wp-content/uploads/Words-and-Water.pdf
Puente and Lennar on the same page
Worse, Puente appears to be parroting Lennar’s own talking points. A Lennar executive told The Source on TPR in a previous program that there already are 17 wastewater plants operating “safely and effectively” in the contributing zone of the Edwards Aquifer, where Guajolote Ranch is located. Puente used that same number in making a similar case to The Source. And it’s false that those plants are operating safely.
The Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance examined compliance records of 16 plants in the area contributing zone that Lennar itself pointed to as examples earlier. Of those plants, records were pending for two. Of the 14 other plants, half had non-compliant quarters over the past three reporting years, with two of them fined a total of $52,672, according to Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) reports of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
And while Lennar and Puente both maintain that the Guajolote Ranch plant would be advanced, three of the four most-advanced plants currently operating in the area contributing zone that treat for drinking-water status have been out of compliance during the past three years, according to the EPA data. The non-compliant findings included pollutants such as E. coli, ammonia, nitrogen, phosphorus and total suspended solids.
Moreover, Puente told KSAT-TV on Oct. 23 that there would be no contaminants at all coming from Lennar’s plant, when it would not be able to fully treat for persistent and dangerous compounds such as PFOS and PFAS “forever” chemicals, heavy metals and poliovirus – serious pollutants that according to the U.S. Geological Survey and the EPA are present in effluent and nearly impossible to remove once they enter the aquifer’s highly porous karst system.
While both Lennar and Puente argue that the Guajolote Ranch plant would have advanced filtration and enhanced nutrient removal, nothing in the permit just approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality mentions that. “This is not a clerical oversight,” Neumann said. “It is a moral failure to align public assurances with regulatory truth.” The TCEQ decision is still subject to a rehearing request and possible court challenges.
“This is not about opposition,” Neumann said. “It is about obligation. The obligation of public officials to speak truthfully. The obligation of corporations to be good corporate citizens. And the obligation of citizens to demand that environmental stewardship be more than a slogan.”
The alliance notes that one of the concessions calls for Lennar’s wastewater operator to be “licensed at the A level,” when SAWS’ own Clouse/Dos Rios plant – managed by a Class A operator and considered one of the most advanced plants in the country – has experienced sewage spills in four of the last five years. In fact, SAWS has operated under a consent decree, a court-ordered settlement, with the EPA since 2013 due to frequent sewer spills, main breaks and other failures.
“So the question becomes: Why should the people of San Antonio trust the opinion of a utility operating under a consent decree from the EPA for its history of sewer spills, instead of the data and conclusions of world-class scientists?” Neumann asks.
Lennar and Puente together also defend the company’s stated plans to “reuse” the effluent by applying much of it to the surface as irrigation, again ignoring the Southwest Research Institute study that concluded that even land application would degrade the quality of water recharging the Edwards Aquifer.
A monitoring well maintained by the Trinity Glen Rose Groundwater Conservation District six-tenths of a mile from the ranch shows that even modest rainfall events trigger dramatic increases in groundwater levels. “Whatever lands on the surface of this terrain – rainwater, irrigated effluent or direct discharge into Helotes Creek – swiftly becomes groundwater,” Neumann said.
Further, dye-tracer studies conducted by the Edwards Aquifer Authority showed that the Trinity and Edwards aquifers do connect, debunking claims by Lennar and Puente that effluent wouldn’t reach the Edwards.
In his Oct. 10 letter and attachment to Councilwoman Alderete Gavito, Puente argues that the Haby’s Crossing Fault that crosses the area would prevent effluent from reaching the Edwards, based on water chemistry of just one well on either side of it. Preeminent scientists say otherwise.
“There is considerable evidence that there is flow from the Trinity to the Edwards,” said Dr. Ronald Green, a principal author of the Southwest Research Institute study. “The Haby’s Crossing Fault is not a barrier to flow.”
The alliance says those Puente claims also show an alarming disregard for immediate neighbors who depend upon the Trinity for their drinking water.
“In his remarks about ‘caring for our neighbors,’ ” Neumann said, “Mr. Puente suggests that San Antonio has nothing to worry about – that all pollution will remain in the Trinity Aquifer, which, according to him, doesn’t communicate with the Edwards. So much for neighborly concern.
“The science is clear: The Trinity and Edwards aquifers are connected,” he said. “And pollution introduced at Guajolote Ranch will not stay put. It will move. It will spread. Water does not respect fences. And it will impact us all.”
The alliance does see some benefit from the report Puente presented to city council.
“We commend Councilwoman Alderete Gavito for encouraging SAWS into the open and forcing them to make their position known,” Neumann said. “In so doing, she has exposed a massive lack of accountability, a lack of true transparency, a failure to grasp the true geological facts and surprising lack of enforceable protection and empty promises.
“This isn’t just about water. It’s about trust. And it’s time we scrutinize who’s truly safeguarding our water future – and who’s just playing the part.”
The Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) group representing the largest neighborhood by square mile recognized by the San Antonio Neighborhood & Housing Services Department, a wide corridor along Scenic Loop Road from Bandera Road to north of Babcock Road.
Scenic Loop-Helotes Creek Alliance contacts:
Randy Neumann, SL-HCA steering committee chair, 210-867-2826, uhit@aol.com
Steve Lee, 210-415-2402, text; slee_78023@yahoo.com