ALSO| 15 rescued, dozens evacuated as overnight storms flooded Williamson County<\/a><\/p>\nKEYE<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mazur said Texas has to prepare for both severe flooding and future drought conditions at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re such a large, growing drought-prone state is the reason why we have to pay close attention to our water supplies, even when it\u2019s raining,\u201d Mazur said.<\/p>\n
The draft water plan includes thousands of recommended water supply and conservation projects across the state, ranging from reservoirs and groundwater wells to water reuse projects and seawater desalination.<\/p>\n
State officials estimate the plan could cost roughly $174 billion over the next 50 years, more than double the cost projected in the previous state water plan.<\/p>\n
During a public hearing on Wednesday in Austin, officials discussed some of the factors contributing to the rising cost of the plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cPotential factors contributing to this cost increase include such things as a backlog of unimplemented projects and inflation effect,\u201d one official said during the hearing.<\/p>\n
Officials also noted that the state water plans are designed around preparing for extreme drought conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cTexas\u2019s state water plans are based on future conditions in the event of the recurrence of the worst recorded drought,\u201d another official said during Wednesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
Mazur said Texas is already seeing what can happen when communities fail to keep up with water infrastructure and long-term planning during drought conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t address our water supply challenges, then we\u2019re looking at billions of dollars in economic losses, thousands of jobs lost, and potentially an exodus of people leaving Texas looking for water and jobs elsewhere,\u201d Mazur said.<\/p>\n
For some Texans, the issue feels personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the worst thing that you can do is run out of water because it\u2019s a necessity. We really need it,\u201d one resident said.<\/p>\n
Public comments on the Draft 2027 State Water Plan<\/a> remain open through May 29. The Texas Water Development Board is expected to continue reviewing public feedback before board members consider adopting the next phase of the plan later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Central Texas has seen flooding, rising rivers, and growing lake levels this week after heavy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-311916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311916","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=311916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}