LUBBOCK, Texas (KVII) \u2014 How to change the culture of water use for the future in the state of Texas was one of the many focus points people were discussing at the two-day Agricultural Water Sustainability Summit (AWSS) at the Lubbock Civic Center on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
Attendees from across Texas are at the summit to receive new data on groundwater levels and learn about techniques that cities, businesses, and homeowners can use to help recycle and conserve water.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing as a lawmaker to protect our water resources, especially in the Texas Panhandle?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, so we pull from an aquifer that is depleting. Everybody knows it, the other states that are pulling from it know it,\u201d said Charles Perry, state senator, Texas District 28. \u201cWe have to learn how to use that water to the max.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state of Texas, on average, currently uses around 17 million acre-feet of water as the population continues to grow and as more industry comes to the Lone Star State, the amount of water we use will only increase.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, Texas is growing very rapidly, and we got these new demands for water,\u201d said Dr. Robert Mace, executive director for Meadows Center for Water & Environment. \u201cData centers are a big one in this area. We\u2019re pumping the Ogallala Aquifer about six times the rate as it’s refilling back up and so we are in a depleting resource out here on the High Plains.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a pathway to bringing more water to this region, and if you get that water to Lubbock and or to Amarillo, and those guys are using options, and that will quit depleting the aquifer by the municipal use,\u201d said Perry. \u201cIf we can mitigate municipal use growing at that level and then stabilize it by not using it, then farmers will have more water going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Integrating remote sensing and understanding how to quantify groundwater extraction and evaluating water use efficiency in irrigated cotton fields will serve as the final program on Wednesday. It will start at 4:15 p.m. There are a number of breakout sessions and panel sessions planned for the two-day summit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KVII) \u2014 How to change the culture of water use for the future in the state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4259,4256,4258,4260,4257,4261,27,29,28,4255],"class_list":["post-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-agricultural-water-sustainability-summit","tag-aquifers","tag-conservation","tag-demand","tag-groundwater","tag-irrigation","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-water-use"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793","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=3793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}