Texas Lawmakers Prepare to Take On Water Projects
When the 83rd legislative session begins in January, Texas lawmakers will return to a city of brown lawns and low lakes. Austin has withered, getting just 3 percent of its normal rainfall for the past two months, and Lake Travis has fallen to 36 feet below normal. Most of the rest of the state is also still struggling through a severe drought.
If there is a silver lining, it is that after years of hand-wringing from water experts, Texas seems poised to get serious about financing water projects. Top officials, including House Speaker Joe Straus, have said water legislation will ...
Comments (9)
Richard S. Moore via Texas Tribune on Facebook
This should be approached very carefully. Funding should be allocated for studies and improvement of the overall water plan. Otherwise, funding should only be used to help those benefited by specific projects to pay for the projects themselves – such as low cost loans and leverage for bond sales.
Certain urban areas are trying to attract more population/commercial growth than the area’s natural resources can support. The growth projections that can be found in the current state water plan will validate this. If the State directly funds projects in these areas, and the costs are not totally born by the water users in these areas, then the State is in effect “subsidizing” the economic development in the area. This will have the effect of making it more expensive for economic development to occur in areas that have the natural resources to support the growth.
Now I am not thinking that Goliad will ever be a mecca for growth that Austin is (in fact I hope not!), but we need to do something to provide incentives for development in our rural areas, and for the State to directly subsidize growth in urban areas would be a detriment to the rural areas.
Bottom line – make sure that those using the resources are paying for them!
Stanley Moore via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Stop pumping millions of gallons of water down gas wells for fracking.
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
For all those pushing for a Constitutional Amendment that limits expenditures to growth in the population + CPI, you would not be able to address critical state needs. It's another abdication of governance. If you think water infrastructure is important, then figure out how to pay for it. Sometimes, that means raising taxes. We continue to elect idiots.
Michael Hull
Agreed, Hans.
I'd be careful with the private/public partnerships. It seems states and municipalities around the country have been selling off functions and franchises typically held/run by the government. From stories I've read, these partnerships are not working as sold and are typically not beneficial to the public--but the private companies seem to be doing well with them, financially, that is.
raffaele cafagna
Lt. Governor David Dewhurst
I would like to offer a good Idea that will make Texas and all Texians very proud.
I have tried many times to suggest this Idea to you and the Governor ; but the *Chain of Command * does not work or does not care.
So I am Trying again :Water is a serious problem here in Texas: but the Ocean is very close you can touch it ;so: Why not build a * Desalination Plant * that is * separation of salt from water *. This is old Technology from the 30s and 40s and I have seen it at work; today this particular Technology is simple and very efficient.So Why Not ?? After all you have built the *Cirquit of the Americas here in Austin that only the Rich can afford a decent ticket and the normal citizen can`t get close to it or afford it. Why Not ?? A desalination plant on our coast line with a pipeline that can bring water to all Texas , all Texians ,all farmers, all industrial complexes ( at this moment oil co. are using 1 Million Gallons of underground water per oil well ).Lt.Governor it does not take a Genious to figure out how long that underground water table will be depleted. Lt. Governor have you seen Interstate 35?? or the Corridor ??? What a Mess, what a * DISGRACE * that is opening Texas to the Invasion. If you can do that * INVASION * why not do a Desalination plant.???????A reply would be very appreciated, Thank you. Raffaele Cafagna
Jim Vance
There are fundamental flaws in the bottom-up methodology used in the water plan, one of which Richard S. Moore has pointed out -- namely that "[c]ertain urban areas are trying to attract more population/commercial growth than the area’s natural resources can support". This is, of course, by design and intent for such a "local control" mindset and embedded political framework that somehow presumes that State government can and will enable unrestrained and -restricted growth according to the dreams and aspirations of any and all local government entities regardless of cost -- much less any environmental or social impacts from doing so by means of infrastructure required to satisfy the envisioned growth and its accrued demand.
This flaw is exacerbated by another of equal or greater significance -- the lack of any direct linkage coupled to planning activities for the State's other primary infrastructure program that bears equally dominating influence on the character, geographic pattern and spatial distribution of economic growth within those very same water planning regions: transportation. Although both are ostensibly performed in a manner "consistent with" the State's official demographic forecasts, those broadly-derived estimates of natural births, inmigration, outmigration, deaths and population-cohort aging profiles tailored by large-scale region and allocated mechanistically to individual counties based upon past historical performance and some interpretive manual assessment of competitive standing and potential trend evolution in relative attraction for the different population and employment categories among regions. At the subregional level of counties and metropolitan areas, the methodology used for the water planning and for the transportation planning efforts is unlinked and decoupled, producing independent forecasts with potentially significant differences for the same small-scale geographic areas. The 50-year time horizon for water planning dwarfs the nominal 20-year horizon for transportation planning, and though each will go through an update cycle ever 4-10 years the two different processes quickly become divergent in practical terms.
In addition to that discontinuity, the historic practices in metropolitan and statewide transportation planning are fatally and deliberately flawed by institutional policy and political chicanery, specifically from overt misrepresentation and technical failure to accurately assess the development inducement effects of decisions regarding future highway project authorization and construction in advance of any decision for some ultimate commitment toward construction (including both the initial authorization or adoption in a long-range plan). This failure to accurately identify future inducement effects has repeatedly and consistently occurred through long-running management practice by the primary State agency (TxDOT/Texas Highway Department and the Transportation/Highway Commission) and subsequently to this present day under its strong influence through the Metropolitan Planning Organization structure established by Federal mandate.
In essence, every metropolitan transportation planning process throughout the State is driven by its local "build it and they will come" Ponzi-scheme environment so as to gain public acceptance and political approval for new road projects intended to serve primarily undeveloped areas under justifications ranging from "economic development", "congestion relief" or simply "spreading the traffic around". Since the future effects on induced development are deliberately underestimated, the failure to accurately assess the traffic generated by that induced development activity later then consistently results in far less congestion relief and much shorter functional and structural lifespan in whatever road infrastructure has been constructed than was expressed at the time those initial decisions were made. The endemic inaccuracies in the initial planning effort extends into all of the other support infrastructure requirements for the geographic areas where the induced development occurs -- water, wastewater, municipal garbage, fire protection, police protection, parks, etc. which must be established through public and quasi-public governmental entities.
Who wins in this "game"? It's primarily the economic and political insiders in the real estate, development and construction industries who will have locked in the choice-location land parcels along some proposed road project long before most of the public has any comprehension of any planning effort and well before any construction might occur, because following each decision stage from approval to construction those institutional actors will syndicate their respective holdings to more and more investors at higher and higher prices, with no small amount of the increased profits being re-invested into philanthropic, charitable and political funding in order to increase and expand the degree of influence over future decisions on that or some other "play" in the local market.
David Spratt
When considering how people use water ,, how about the practice of pumping millions of gallons a day onto yards to grow grass that is cut hauled away and goes towards no practical use? Maybe raising the price of water would discourage this and provide money for these projects. I realize many homeowners who are subject to HOA rules have no choice , but I am going to Racetrack Or QT to buy gas and do not care how green the grass is in front ,, nor do I care if my bank has a nice carpet of St Augustine around it .
These commercial users are the worse. They have water running down the streets and even when it is raining the sprinklers are on. Some incentive should be considered to encourage the use of native landscaping that does not require the use of large amounts of water to maintain.Using our water to farm grass to provide illegal aliens employment does not seem like a prudent use of a finite resource.
gypsy314 ne
Seams to me with all the flooding one could flow the water to were it could be directed were needed.
Kaye Crux via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Rain is Rain....ideas are just ideas...you still need Rain