WATER POLITICS

Some regions of Texas have already run out of water — and the rest face a looming crisis, the state’s agriculture commissioner said on Sunday.

“We lose about a farm a week in Texas, but it’s 700 years before we run out of land,” Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller told WFAA’s Inside Texas Politics show on Sunday.

“The limiting factor is water.”                                   

The front lines of the crisis is the Rio Grande Valley, where international disputes, declining groundwater, over-pumping from big agricultural growers and — above all — a deteriorating climate has eroded the ability of Texas’ Winter Garden to produce fruits and vegetables amid broader fears of cities in the state running out of water.

“We’re out of water, especially in the Rio Grande Valley,” Miller told WFAA “Our tomato production in the Valley is just about gone.”

“They usually grow five crops of vegetables in that area,” he added. Now “they have enough water to grow one. So, our production’s down 80 percent And it’s all about water.”

Meanwhile, in the West Texas town of Pecos, once known for its melons, “you can’t get a Pecos cantaloupe anymore,” Miller said. “The wells are dry out there. You can’t find one anymore because the farmers are gone. There’s no water. They had to leave.”

Miller spoke to WFAA weeks after state lawmakers, policymaker and water experts from the state’s constellation of water conservations districts found massive shortfalls between state water spending and the scale of the onrushing crisis, as KAMR reported.

While the state passed $1 billion for the Texas Water Fund in 2023, the amount needed to overhaul the state’s water infrastructure sufficient to head off shortages is estimated to be more like $80 billion, per KAMR.

Even if the state were sufficiently funding its water plans, it would be running a 2.4 million acre-foot-per-year deficit, Sen. Charles Perry (R) said at the Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts meeting last month.

That’s more than the entire 2 million acre-foot volume of the Highland Lakes system that the city of Austin depends on.

With state spending “a drop in the bucket, no pun intended,” Perry said last month, the true shortfall was more like 10 – 12 million acre-feet per year.

In his interview on Sunday, Miller called on Texas legislators to act to ensure the state water supply holds. He called on the oil and gas industry to stop using potable water for fracking and on city and state officials to embrace reuse and desalination.

But as reporting from KAMR noted, the ability of the state legislature to pass anything next session will be handicapped by the vicious inter- and intra-partisan fights — starting with the hyper-contentious proxy war for the House speakership.

With the state’s legislature increasingly acrimonious, and longtime moderate Republican House leaders on complex water issues retiring amid the infighting that followed the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, passing serious legislation will be a challenge, Sarah Kirkle of the Texas Water Conservation Association said last month, KAMR reported.

“The vibe,” Kirkle added, “is not great.”