This lawmaker wants to fix Texas’ water shortage with desalination and billion-dollar pipelines
The state lawmaker expected to carry out Gov. Greg Abbott’s “transformative” water reforms this year wants to earmark billions of dollars to develop new sources and fix leaking pipes as the state faces a looming shortage amid an influx of people and industry.
Under the plan from Sen. Charles Perry, Texas would begin dedicating money each year to water projects – much like it already does for roads – and prioritize accessing harder-to-reach water, like seawater, brackish groundwater and water brought to the surface during oil and gas production. The fund would also invest in a network of pipelines to redistribute water around the state from new sources, such as desalination plants or even other states, to places that desperately need it.
Those strategies will require a lot of money, more than local water districts can raise on their own.
“It’s got to move to a statewide infrastructure conversation, just like we do roads and bridges,” Perry said.
Perry, a Lubbock Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs, helped create a state water fund last session that voters agreed to stock with a $1 billion appropriation for water infrastructure projects and new water supplies like marine desalination.
Experts say that money is only a drop in the bucket of what’s needed. A recent analysis from Texas 2036, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that Texas will need to spend $154 billion on water infrastructure over the next 50 years, including $59 billion to access new water supplies and another $95 billion to fix deteriorating drinking water systems and broken wastewater infrastructure.
Perry said his yet-to-be-filed plan wouldn’t address groundwater regulation, which some experts say has contributed to water scarcity by allowing overpumping. Outside of the state’s 98 groundwater management districts, property owners are free to pump as much groundwater water as they like. And many groundwater districts lack the resources to enforce pumping restrictions — or deny permits and risk litigation.
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Since World War II, Texas’ water supply strategy has been “let’s build reservoirs and let’s dig wells,” said Jeremy Mazur, the director of infrastructure and natural resources policy at Texas 2036. “That’s always been called the easy water. But we can’t really do that much anymore. We’re going to need to really look at the diversification of our water supply portfolio.”
The state water plan, published every five years by the Texas Water Development Board, anticipates that more than half of the state’s future water needs will be met through conservation — by using and losing less water.
Water loss is a significant problem: Aging and deteriorating drinking water and wastewater systems lose roughly 572,000 acre-feet of water annually, Mazur said.
Mazur pointed to the increasing number of boil water notices issued by cities and towns over recent years as indicative of the problem. “It’s a series of small cuts that over time really add up to being a meaningful wound to the state’s economy,” he said.
That’s especially true in Houston, which has lost 36 billion gallons of water due to leaky pipes in the past two years.
As noted before, it sure would be nice to get some state assistance for fixing oue leaky pipe problem. Doing that without having to sell some of our existing water supply would be even better. I will note that after the terrible 2011 heat wave and drought, the state did a smaller version of this, called SWIFT, which I suppose is still a thing, but a thing I don’t hear much about these days. We’ll see what the details are of Sen. Perry’s proposal, but it’s increasingly clear that big parts of the state have serious water issues. Something needs to be done.
Corpus Christi Launches Emergency Water Projects as Reservoirs Dwindle and Industrial Demand Grows
Drought has always been a part of life in South Texas. But in recent years, Corpus Christi has faced combined pressures of a prolonged dry spell and record-breaking heat during a period of rapid growth in its industrial sector.
City leaders initially hoped to meet the water demands of new industrial facilities with a large seawater desalination plant, which they planned to build by 2023. But the project became mired in delays and still remains years away from completion.
Meanwhile, the new industrial facilities have begun to draw water. An enormous plastics plant owned by ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. uses millions of gallons per day. A lithium refinery owned by Tesla is slowly starting operations and plans to drastically increase its water consumption in coming years, according to water authority records. Another company has secured rights to millions of gallons per day of Nueces River water to produce hydrogen for export, but hasn’t yet broken ground.
Several other hydrogen plants, a carbon capture facility and a new refinery are also in development nearby. Other companies are interested in building here, too.
“There are a lot of projects that have looked at locating in South Texas, but it will be difficult until this drought is over or we have added some additional supply,” Michael said. “It’s going to be difficult to take on any big new industrial projects, other than the ones that have already started.”
Corpus Christi now hopes to build its first desalination plant by mid-2028. If the city’s reservoirs continue their rate of decline from recent years, that could be too late.
The Nueces River groundwater initiative was one of several short-term water supply projects described in an update issued by the city in January. As the two Nueces River reservoirs dwindle, crews are also hurriedly expanding a pipeline and pump stations to Corpus Christi’s third reservoir, Lake Texana, which remains 75 percent full but is 100 miles away. The update also said a private desalination plant built by a local plastics manufacturer, CC Polymers, will come online in 2025, and could be incorporated into the public water supply.
“It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing right now,” said Perry Fowler, executive director of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network, a lobbying group based in Austin. “The water supply situation is rather serious.”
Corpus Christi isn’t alone. Across parts of south, west and central Texas, decades of rapid development and recurring drought have stretched water supplies to their limits. Official projections show some places running dry within 10 or 20 years, with few new sources of water to turn to.
That’s a major deterrent to big businesses, from microchip makers to chemical plants, that would otherwise invest in Texas.
The previous story mentioned desalination as a medium-to-long term solution for the water shortage. It has a lot of intuitive appeal, but there are logistical problems – you’ll have to build pipelines to get the water from the Gulf of Mexico to pretty much any non-coastal part of the state – and environmental concerns – like, what do you do with all that salt, in a way that isn’t harmful? Our state has done nothing to slow down the pace of climate change, so we really don’t have much choice but to take increasingly large and expensive steps to mitigate against its effects.
Texas’ economy stands to lose billions of dollars without investments into its water infrastructure
The outlook for water in Texas is looking a bit … dry. The state will face a long-term water deficit if it fails to develop new supplies and gets hit by another multi-year drought, according to a new report.
The report also suggests that a prolonged, severe drought, like that of the 1950s or 2011, could cost the state’s economy hundreds of billions of dollars.
Texas 2036, a non-profit, public policy organization, commissioned the report to explore the possible consequences of under-investment in the state’s water infrastructure.
That potential large loss of money is because industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and energy production heavily rely upon water availability, said Jeremy Mazur, director of infrastructure and natural resources policy at Texas 2036.
“If we don’t have reliable water infrastructure, then we likely cannot have the continuation of the Texas economic miracle,” he said. “But one of the more alarming findings was that if we don’t have enough reliable water supplies and have a long, severe drought, then the reliability of our state’s electric grid could come into question.”
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Sarah Kirkle, the Texas Water Association’s director of policy and legislative affairs, said her organization has similar priorities heading into this year’s legislative session.
Like Mazur, Kirkle said she hopes to work with state lawmakers to create a dedicated revenue source for the Texas Water Fund and Flood Infrastructure Fund.
“I think that’s really going to help set up our state to meet the challenges that we’re facing with water infrastructure, especially as it relates to population growth and extreme weather and economic development needs that we’re seeing in our growing state,” she said.
Mazur said it’s also important that lawmakers act now.
“In addition to these economic losses, if we don’t start investing in our water infrastructure now, the costs for fixing these issues are just going to go up over time,” he said.
“So the dollar that we don’t spend today will be $10 that we’re going to need to spend in 10 years from now … It’s the financially prudent thing to do to make these investments now, or otherwise we’re going to cost future taxpayers more dollars down the road.”
As the old saying goes, a dollar of prevention now is worth $10 of cure later. The first story referenced this study as well, and the costs are indeed steep. The cost of doing nothing is much greater. And the irony of the 21st century crop of Republicans in the state killing its economic future because they were so nominally pro-business that they failed to take care of business…well, it’s grim. But here we are.