{"id":16940,"date":"2025-10-23T05:03:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/16940\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T05:03:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:03:06","slug":"texans-vote-on-a-20-billion-investment-in-water-the-austin-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/16940\/","title":{"rendered":"Texans Vote on a $20 Billion Investment in Water \u2022 The Austin Chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not a secret that Texas is running out of water. By 2070, our municipal demand is projected<\/a> to outstrip the water that exists in our state by over 3 million acre-feet. The gargantuan Ogallala Aquifer, providing West Texas with water, will likely deplete within our lifetimes and takes centuries to recharge. In Austin, as summer turns to autumn, drought has resurged with the fifth-driest September<\/a> on record. Austin\u2019s local groundwater conservation district has declared the Edwards Aquifer to be in \u201cexceptional drought<\/a>\u201d for only the second time in history, as of Oct. 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe winter months are some of our driest, and so with the way things are right now, we expect to see [ground]water levels to continue to gradually decline,\u201d Shay Hlavaty of the Barton Springs-Edwards Aquifer Conservation District said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hydrologists say the solutions for the state\u2019s water problem are to conserve what we have and procure or create new sources of water, and the Texas Legislature has chosen to invest serious money into both. During this year\u2019s session, lawmakers passed House Joint Resolution 7<\/a> and the accompanying Senate Bill 7<\/a>, proposing a new constitutional amendment to give $20 billion over 20 years to the Texas Water Fund \u2013 a long-term investment that will attempt to close the gap on our future demand for water.<\/p>\n

Amendments to the state constitution must be voted on by Texans, and so HJR 7 will appear as Proposition 4 on ballots Nov. 4. Though oddly not clear in the ballot language<\/a>, Prop 4 proposes that the state spend $1 billion a year, from 2027 to 2047, on water-creating and conserving projects across the state. The money will come from state sales tax revenue and doesn\u2019t raise or create new taxes for Texans.<\/p>\n

If Prop 4 is approved by voters, SB 7 kicks in and gives the Texas Water Development Board, appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, authority over how the funds will be spent and on what projects, which must be a 50\/50 split between \u201cnew water supply\u201d projects (mainly through expensively purifying very dirty water or seawater back into drinking water) and implementing the State Water Plan, which includes water conservation and reuse projects and is created by several regional planning groups across the country.<\/p>\n

The money can also go toward fixing leaky pipes and infrastructure across the state, which currently lose 186 billion gallons of water annually \u2013 enough to fill a large reservoir. \u201cEven fixing one leaky pipe can make a great impact for a neighborhood,\u201d Evgenia Spears of the Sierra Club said.<\/p>\n

On the \u201cnew water\u201d side, Prop 4 would also fund massive marine desalination plants, built along the Texas coast \u2013 a controversial project among environmentalists. The salt is removed from water taken from the Gulf of Mexico and purified into drinkable water. That salt has to go somewhere though, and the brine (extremely salty water) these plants produce is usually either buried underground, pumped back out into the sea (either close to the shore or far out, via huge pipes), or dumped into inland bays and estuaries along the coast.<\/p>\n

Spears said that when brine is dumped into bays and estuaries, the salt can kill marine life and even endangered species that call those pools home. Unlike when it\u2019s piped back out in the Gulf, the water doesn\u2019t mix and dilute quickly enough in a smaller body of water. Moreover, Spears emphasized that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality\u2019s salinity standards for the discharge of brackish water from marine desalination are \u201cclose to nonexistent,\u201d which should be part of the state\u2019s surface water quality standards<\/a>. But, Spears said, no updates on salinity are expected in the next revision of those standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo until the TCEQ develops strong, enforceable, and very clear standards for salinity, we can\u2019t safely and responsibly embark on seawater desalination,\u201d Spears emphasized. \u201cA lot more work needs to be done, and Texas is simply not ready yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, other experts view marine desalination as a necessary and relatively sustainable step for our future water \u2013 the ocean won\u2019t soon dry up like aquifers will \u2013 but agree that the brine needs to be disposed of responsibly. Preferably, piped over 3 miles out into the Gulf.<\/p>\n

Another project listed in SB 7 is the purification of \u201cproduced\u201d water, the immense amount of water used (around 33 million barrels<\/a> every day in Texas) to push oil and gas out of the earth in the fracking process. That is very dirty water, and yet remains another strategy prompted by the state\u2019s desperation for new water sources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Spears said that scientists don\u2019t know exactly what chemicals are in it, and therefore don\u2019t know exactly how to treat the water, due to oil and gas companies not being required by the state of Texas to report that chemical information. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about heavy metals, organic and inorganic compounds, and even radioactive materials, plus that set of unknown chemicals,\u201d Spears emphasized.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand that Texas needs to unlock new water supplies, but we are for responsible approaches, sustainable approaches,\u201d Spears continued. \u201cAnd due to lacking regulations or lacking science, many \u2026 are not responsible or sustainable at this moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prop 4 will create a steady stream of funding to fix much-needed water infrastructure and water reuse projects in the state, but environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the Texas Water Foundation urge Texans to watch how the funds are used, to ensure that the state doesn\u2019t use our green light to funnel billions toward projects that only further hurt the environment. \u201cIt\u2019s important that Texans know that they have a say in how these funds are allocated,\u201d Spears said. \u201cProposition 4 is public money, and it needs to work for the people \u2013 not special interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article appears in October 24 \u2022 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not a secret that Texas is running out of water. By 2070, our municipal demand is projected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,13334,1551,6589,8529],"class_list":["post-16940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-barton-springs-edwards-aquifer-conservation-district-board","tag-feature","tag-november-2025-election","tag-prop-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}