The town of Junction recently endured a six-week ban on outdoor watering, during which residents sometimes used bathwater to water lawns. With the prospect of drought becoming a way of life, Junction is searching for solutions.
water supply
Posted in
Energy
Carolyn Brittin: The TT Interview
The deputy executive administrator of the Texas Water Development Board on overseeing the 295-page water plan, what the state should spend to fully ensure it has adequate water supplies and what scares her about the future.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Murphy, Ramshaw and Root on Rick Perry and race, Philpott on Perry’s vague economic plans, Tan and Wiseman on Barack Obama’s foray into Texas to defend his jobs plan, Aguilar on Perry’s proposal to send U.S. troops to Mexico, Ramshaw on efforts to leash rising health care costs, M. Smith on upcoming legal challenges to the state’s school finance system, Aaronson interactively explores Medicare spending proposals, Galbraith on efforts to pass — and to oppose — a $6 billion water program, Grissom on the release of a man wrongly convicted of murder and Hamilton on efforts to let the public write some legislation: The best of our best content from October 3 to 7, 2011.
Posted in
Energy
Business Groups Back Water Ballot Measure
Next month, Texans will go to the polls to decide whether to authorize $6 billion in bonding authority dedicated to building and fixing water infrastructure. But some conservatives and Tea Party members have concerns about the measure.
Posted in
Energy
Draft Water Plan: Texas “Will Not Have Enough”
The Texas Water Development Board’s just-released 295-page report says that if Texas does not spend tens of billions more on water infrastructure, a drought as bad as that of the 1950s could cost Texans $116 billion per year by 2060.
Posted in
Energy
Katharine Hayhoe: The TT Interview
The Texas Tech climate scientist and author of A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions on why why working in Texas, a state full of both prominent climate skeptics and extreme weather, is an “opportunity.”
Posted in
Energy
LCRA Approves Emergency Drought Plan, Which Will Hurt Farmers
At a board meeting on Wednesday, the Lower Colorado River Authority approved an emergency plan that could cut off water supplies to downriver rice farmers entirely next year if the drought worsens.
Posted in
Energy
Texas Schools Feeling Effects of Drought, Fires
The drought and extreme heat are taking their toll on school districts across Texas. Costly problems include cracks in building foundations, increased maintenance costs and loss of vegetation.
Posted in
Energy
Drought Could Pose Power Plant Problems
If the drought continues well into next spring and summer, the electric grid could lose “potentially several thousand megawatts,” according to an ERCOT official. That’s roughly equivalent to several coal plants.
Posted in
Inside Intelligence
Inside Intelligence: Parched
Amidst a record-setting drought and neighborhood-devouring wildfires, we asked the insiders this week about water and fire policy.
