Fair Water Texas is concerned about the ability of Texans to obtain fairly priced, adequate water. Please read the following summaries of articles about the issue and join us in our fight for Fair Water Texas.
The Illusion of Abundance in the Hill Country
In the rapidly growing suburbs surrounding Austin, the conflict between development and resource limits is most visible. In Dripping Springs, often called the “Gateway to the Hill Country,” the Texas Supreme Court recently intervened in a long-standing battle over wastewater. For years, the city’s growth was throttled not by a lack of buyers, but by a wastewater system that had hit 90% capacity. While the court’s ruling allows the city to triple its treatment capacity to over 820,000 gallons per day, environmental groups remain concerned about the long-term impact on local landmarks like Onion Creek.
Further south in Kyle, one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation, the “American Dream” is built on a fragile foundation. Relying heavily on the Edwards Aquifer, the city has been forced to sign expensive contracts to pipe in water from vast distances to keep up with new subdivisions. Homeowners here face a future of water bills that could eventually rival electricity costs, and some have already received cease-and-desist letters for violating strict watering restrictions.
Crumbling Infrastructure in the Basin
While the Hill Country struggles with growth, West Texas is battling age and neglect. In Odessa, a catastrophic infrastructure failure recently left over 100,000 people without water in the blistering summer heat after a major water main break. The city’s aging cast-iron pipes, some over 60 years old, require hundreds of millions of dollars in replacements—a cost that will inevitably be passed to homeowners through taxes and fees.
In neighboring Midland, the competition for water is industrial as well as residential. The hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry consumes billions of gallons, competing directly with the municipal supply. Residents have seen their outdoor watering limited to twice a week, making it nearly impossible to maintain property values as the shifting soil cracks the foundations of unwatered homes.
The Existential Threat to the Border and Panhandle
The most dire warnings come from the edges of the state. In the Panhandle, Lubbock sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, where the water table has dropped by more than 100 feet in some areas. Humans are currently extracting water ten times faster than nature can recharge it, leading experts to warn that buying a home here is essentially a “bet against geology”.
At the southern border, Laredo relies almost exclusively on the Rio Grande, which has become terrifyingly unreliable due to drought and international treaties. In recent peak crises, the city was reportedly ten days away from running completely dry. Even more dramatic was the situation in Rio Grande City, which declared a state of disaster when its intake pumps began sucking mud instead of water.
The Policy Paradox: Planning vs. Reality
At the University of Texas, researchers and policy experts at Planet Texas 2050 emphasize that while Texas has a robust planning process dating back to the 1960s, it is not infallible. Experts warn that if Texas faces a repeat of the “Drought of Record” from the 1950s, the current infrastructure will not be enough to sustain the population.
A significant blind spot in state planning is “water for the environment.” As Jennifer Walker of the National Wildlife Federation notes, the state does not affirmatively plan to ensure rivers keep flowing to support fish, wildlife, and the ecosystems that underpin the state’s beauty. Furthermore, the legal reality is that many river basins are already “over-allocated,” meaning there are more permits to take water than there is actual water in the system during dry years.
The Hidden “Water Tax”
To solve these desperate shortages, major cities are turning to massive, multi-billion-dollar engineering projects. San Antonio‘s Vista Ridge pipeline, which carries water 142 miles from a neighboring county, has been called a “water tax” by critics as residents’ bills surge to pay for the infrastructure.
Experts conclude that the Texas housing market is currently operating on an assumption of infinite resources that nature is no longer supporting. For a suburban homeowner, the true cost of a house is no longer just the mortgage and property taxes; it is the rising cost of a resource that is becoming as precious as “black gold” once was. As the narrator of the investigative report warns, “a home without water is just a pile of wood and brick in the desert”.
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