Texas is confronting a widening gap between its long-term water supply and the needs of its growing population and economy.<\/p>\n
The draft 2027 State Water Plan<\/a> projects that supplies available during a drought of record will decline from 15.5 million acre-feet annually in 2030 to nearly 14 million by 2080, primarily because of aquifer depletion. Without new supplies or conservation measures, Texas could face shortages of 3.6 million acre-feet in 2030 and 5.8 million by 2080.<\/p>\n Corpus Christi has seen prolonged drought and rising industrial consumption exposed weaknesses in planning based largely on previous droughts. Water-supply projections repeatedly fell as newer droughts proved worse than earlier records.<\/p>\n Artificial-intelligence and cloud-computing data centers create another rapidly expanding demand. A University of Texas study<\/a> estimates data centers\u2014which use water directly for cooling and indirectly for electricity generation\u2014could account for 3% to 9% of statewide water use by 2040. Researchers caution that the range remains uncertain because cooling technologies and development rates vary.<\/p>\n Texas planners recommend conservation, reuse, desalination, reservoirs and other projects. But implementing the state plan\u2019s proposed projects could cost nearly $174 billion, underscoring the difficult choices ahead.<\/p>\n Guest:<\/p>\n Dylan Baddour is a reporter covering Texas water for Inside Climate News.<\/p>\n “The Source” is a live call-in program airing Mondays through Thursdays from 12-1 p.m.<\/p>\n Leave a message before the program at (210) 615-8982<\/a>. During the live show, call 833-877-8255<\/a> or email thesource@tpr.org.<\/p>\n This interview will be recorded live on Monday, July 20, 2026, at 12:00 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas is confronting a widening gap between its long-term water supply and the needs of its growing population…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-379040","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\/379040","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=379040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}