Texas' growth at risk due to water shortages, urgent action needed
AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- In Wimberley, boulders and deer bones bake in the heat where there was once a thriving creek. The lakes and rivers that once attracted Texans and enabled them to grow communities there are drying up, posing an active but underappreciated emergency that sets a limit on the "Texas Miracle," state leaders say.
"Texas is out of water," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told Nexstar on Tuesday. "We can't grow, we can't expand, we can't have economic opportunity and jobs without water. We've reached our limit, there is no more. We've got to do some things different."
Wimberley and much of Central Texas has been in a drought for most of the last two years. It has led some local officials to implement Stage 4 water restrictions, where residents are penalized for automatic water sprinklers and watering is confined to certain times. But out in West Texas, conditions are far worse.
Miller said Texas loses about one farm every week, but it's not for lack of land. Farmers don't have enough water to keep their crops alive.
Texas’s population is expected to gain over 22 million people by 2070, according to the 2022 Texas State Water Plan. Over the same period, the water supply is projected to decrease by 18%.
The National Wildlife Federation found Texas loses 572,000 acre-feet of water per year — enough to fill almost 240 AT&T Stadiums and supply Austin, Fort Worth, El Paso, Laredo, and Lubbock combined for an entire year. As Texas regularly faces drought periods, some lawmakers are urging the state to proactively protect the most valuable resource.
“It’s the silent issue, with the least urgency, with the biggest impact,” State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, previously told Nexstar. “We’ve been, for far too long, treating water like a commodity that has no meaning. And it’s truly not. It’s not a commodity. It’s a necessity.”
On Tuesday, state lawmakers tasked with shepherding natural resources reviewed the implementation of the Texas Water Fund, which dedicated a billion dollars to water conservation projects across the state. But that sum is, for lack of a better term, a drop in the bucket.
Perry, one of the legislature's longtime champions of water conservation, expects it will take billions more.
“Water is the only problem that we face as a state that can literally be fixed with more money,” Sen. Perry said. “It’s just a commitment to a vision to provide water and a commitment of resources to get there. So that’s been my frustration — it’s not one of those problems that we can’t solve. The lack of urgency to deal with it is frustrating.”
On Tuesday, Commissioner Miller pointed to multiple tangible ways to save water -- the first is hard infrastructure upgrades. Leaky pipes alone waste more than 130 billion gallons of water every year, the Texas Water Development Board found.
Fracking is also a focus -- using clean water to frack wastes and pollutes, and Miller said more companies are transitioning to brackish water.
"We've got a lot to do," he said. "We've just got to get busy and help ourselves."