a new draft plan from the Texas Water Development Board<\/a>, Texas will have to invest $174 billion over the next 50 years to keep up with the growing demand for water in the state.<\/p>\nThat number is more than double what the development board had previously said when it released its last draft plan in 2022. A big reason for the sharp increase is due to inflation in construction costs and lingering supply chain impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Another large part has to do with a backlog of water projects that have yet to be implemented. Water leaders say Texas’ population is set to pass 52 million people by 2080, and existing water supplies are projected to fall by 10% by that time.<\/p>\n
The report found that if the state doesn’t take action by 2080, one in four Texans could have less than half the amount of water they need during a record drought, and severe drought could cost the state $90 billion in damages over just the next four years.<\/p>\n
Leaders are now taking feedback on the plan and their recommendations, saying they especially want input from city and county leaders who are dealing with water issues daily. Leaders say getting feedback and buy-in on water solutions now will help avoid bigger problems in the future.<\/p>\n
The public can also weigh in on the draft until May 29. The board will release phase two of its plan in January, just as the 90th Texas Legislative Session begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas faces a looming water crisis, needing $174 billion over 50 years to meet demand, as a growing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-254983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-texas","9":"tag-texas-headlines","10":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254983","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=254983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}