Friday, September 30, 2011 5:10:02 AM
Texas' water resources are drying up
County Extension Agent Garrett Gilliam walks through a cracked lake bed where at one time an estimated 30-feet of water once stood at Lake E.V. Spence, Aug. 10, 2011, in Robert Lee.
Photo: Michael Paulsen/Houston Chronicle / SA
By Patricia Kilday Hart and Gary Scharrer
patti.hart@chron.com
Updated 12:12 p.m., Friday, August 19, 2011
AUSTIN — When the Legislature approved a statewide water plan in 1997, then-Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock hailed it as “the heart of our legacy,” while its sponsor, Sen. J.E. “Buster” Brown, promised it would provide plentiful supplies of the crucial resource “for our grandchildren and our grandchildren's grandchildren.”
Then came the Great Drought: Since passage of the landmark 1997 legislation, state funding for water projects has been as scarce as rain in summer 2011.
Fourteen years after Bullock and Brown laid out a road map for securing adequate water resources for the state's booming population, state leaders still haven't found a reliable way to finance water development beyond asking voters for authority to issue debt through bonds.
With the population of Texas expected to double by 2050, Gov. Rick Perry is fond of saying that people have been “voting with their feet,” moving here for the state's conservative governing principles.
The additional population, however, has severely strained the state's infrastructure.
As Texas endures the most severe one-year drought in its history, state leaders have identified $53 billion in state investment needed to expand water capacity by 2060, but haven't resolved how to pay for it.
Unless Texas grows its water resources, experts say 83 percent of Texans will not have an adequate supply of water in times of drought.
“If we don't fund the water plan and get it going, 2050 is going to be chaotic,” said Rep. Alan Ritter, R-Nederland. “As our population continues to grow, you've got to do the infrastructure. If you want people to leave Texas, then don't have water.”
The current drought provides a glimpse into the future, with a historic number of communities implementing water restrictions, such as banning outdoor watering. Some towns, such as Llano, are seeking alternative sources of water as their municipal supplies run perilously low.
In November, Texas voters will be asked to approve $6 billion in bonds that the Texas Water Development Board will use to help local communities grow and maintain water supplies.
Perry, who took note of the withering drought in April when he issued a proclamation calling on Texans to pray for rain, endorsed the legislation authorizing the bond election.
“As Texas' population and economy continue to grow, Gov. Perry is committed to making sure both families and businesses have clean and reliable sources of water,” said spokeswoman Lucy Nashed.
She noted that since the Water Development Board was established, Texans have voted to authorize more than $4 billion in bonds for water projects.
The 1997 plan called for spending $53 billion for expanding water resources, and identifies $142 billion in capital costs for water treatment and distribution projects, and flood control.
Brown and Ritter said other financing tools are needed to help the state secure water resources for the future.
In the late 1990s, Brown and others proposed fee surcharges on bottled water or on consumption exceeding 5,000 gallons a month for residential users. Opposition was swift and stout.
“This is a water tax. The people I represent are viscerally opposed to this,” one Houston lawmaker said at the time.
To this day, a prevailing anti-tax sentiment “makes it pretty difficult” to invest in the state's future water needs, Brown said.
Just this past legislative session, Ritter proposed an annual “tap fee”— $3.25 a year per household — as a steady revenue stream for the water plan. His bill was approved by a legislative committee, but failed to pass.
Former state Rep. Ron Lewis, who chaired the House Energy Resources Committee and now is a lobbyist with several water district clients, said the current drought demonstrates the state is running out of time.
“There's no way we're going to have enough water 50 years from now to take care of the population growth,” he said. “We're now in a situation where we may not be able to take care of the water needs in this state for the next 15 years.”
Texans, he said, must invest in more reservoirs and in pipelines to carry water from existing East Texas reservoirs to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which would use the water before discharging it in a network of pipelines connecting Austin, San Antonio and South Texas in addition to Houston and Corpus Christi, Lewis said.
The combination of continuing population growth and continuing drought, Lewis predicted, eventually will grab everyone's attention as water wells dry up and some families will be limited to weekly showers while cities fight over water with agriculture users.
Texas hasn't opened a major reservoir since 1987, though a small one near Nacogdoches was completed in 2005.
Reservoirs can cost between $13 million and $2 billion — depending on size and location, according to the Texas Water Development Board.
“It's hard to figure out what happened,” said Brown, now a Capitol consultant. “I fully expected with the passage of SB 1 that we would begin to see water projects all over the state — identified by regional planning groups and then put into motion by private and public partnerships. We don't have any of those.”
*
Texas under Perry
A four-part series looking at the state of Texas infrastructure under the tenure of Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor in state history.
Part 1: All roads lead to Texas, where they're jammed
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/All-roads-lead-to-Texas-where-they-re-jammed-2076369.php
Part 2: Texans access to health care lacking
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/article/Texans-access-to-health-care-lacking-2083053.php
Part 3: Texas' water resources are drying up
[this article]
Part 4: State's education funding is not making the grade
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/article/State-s-education-funding-is-not-making-the-grade-2133521.php
*
© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Water-resources-drying-up-2122864.php [no comments yet]
===
Badly-needed water funding evaporates for parched Texas
The dam and spillway at Lake Meredith National Recreation area reveals the receding water line that now sits beneath the spillway base near, Fritch, Texas, in this August 2011 photo.
Tony Gutierrez / AP
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
Associated Press
updated 9/23/2011 7:43:45 AM ET
SANFORD, Texas — On paper, at least, Texas is well-prepared to meet the water needs of its rapidly expanding population — even when Mother Nature lays down a harsh and lengthy drought.
The price tag on the plan: $53 billion. State money allocated: $1.4 billion.
If there were funds, Texas would be able to build the dams, reservoirs, pipelines, wells and other infrastructure that would ideally avoid tight water-use restrictions imposed on residents, farmers and ranchers during times of drought while also guaranteeing there would be enough water for the state's rapidly growing population — even in 2060.
Instead, now, more than four years after the latest blueprint was published, deadlines have passed with some work barely begun, and many projects never started. Meanwhile, lakes are shrinking, rivers are drying up and temperatures are rising.
"The longer you delay implementation, the costs are going to go up," warns Carolyn Brittin, a planning official at the Texas Water Development Board, responsible for publishing a revised plan by January.
Globally, 7 billion people need water — 97 percent of which is salty and 2 percent is locked in ice. Of the rest, two-thirds is used to grow food.
The United States, and Texas in particular, need to find water for a growing population. Unusually high temperatures and dry weather recently have highlighted the urgency.
Three years of dry winters that started in 2008 left populous Southern California and the agriculturally rich Central Valley desperate. Officials could not deliver more than 50 percent of the water needed by cities and farmers. In the Midwest, water levels since the 1990s have dropped at times on Lakes Huron and Michigan, causing millions in losses. The arid Southwest has struggled for decades.
'Billions of dollars of ideas but no funding'
In Texas, seeing one of the most severe droughts on record, officials know exactly what to do to guarantee water for future generations — in fact, Texas spends $16 million every five years to plan ahead.
When the most recent plan was published in 2007, officials estimated it would cost $31 billion to provide water to the population in 2060, said Dan Hardin, director of water resource planning at the water development board. That doesn't include more than $140 billion needed for other water-related infrastructure, including flood control. But in January, the board told the Legislature the cost had jumped to $53 billion.
Yet lawmakers, struggling with a $27 billion budget deficit, allocated only $100 million to water projects — enough, say, to build one small reservoir.
"Billions of dollars of ideas but no funding," sums up Laura Huffman, state director of the Nature Conservancy of Texas.
Story: Texas cities set records for days above 100F
As of now, local officials have said they have about $26 billion to fund the plan, but need state loans for the rest. Competition for loans — when they're available — can be fierce.
The West Texas town of Robert Lee has struggled with water issues for so long it was unprepared for the current drought. Now, town officials are tapping private loans in a rush to build a $1.5 million pipeline to draw water from nearby Bronte, said Eddie Ray Roberts, the city's water superintendent.
"It surprised me that they let it get this bad. It's a funding issue," Roberts said, explaining the state won't give communities money until January, when it flows in from Washington.
Meticulous planning was meant to prevent such scenarios. Yet the water board has not surveyed what work was under way or completed until the plan coming in January. Planners know the list of untouched projects will be long.
The region that includes Dallas and Fort Worth, for example, had 59 major projects recommended at a cost of more than $13 billion to provide water to a population expected to nearly double by 2060. Of those projects, 16 are in various stages of planning or completion, Hardin said. And the agency only knows about projects it funds, making it more difficult to track.
Pricey projects
Water projects, especially reservoirs, have always been expensive. It cost $30 million in the mid-1960s — or what would be $227 million now — to create Lake Meredith in the Texas Panhandle. Today, the cost of a large reservoir could exceed $500 million. But sometimes other factors, including stringent environmental regulations and bureaucracy, can stymie a project.
In North Texas, the Lower Boisd'arc Reservoir project has half the land it needs. Planners hope to have the lake online by 2020. But the permitting and legal obstacles could delay it.
North of Houston, opposition from residents has stopped, for now, a reservoir meant to supply water to the city and its suburbs, where nearly a quarter of Texans live and the population is booming. Here, planners recommended 121 projects. Seven are in development, Hardin said.
"I don't think there's this sense that there's a problem down the line, and I think that is the biggest challenge: change the mindset not only of our citizens, but of our leaders," said Larry Soward, a water expert who formerly served as a commissioner at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, which serves residents in some of the state's most arid terrain, is one of the few agencies that has implemented — and independently funded — its entire plan.
Lake Meredith, the source for nearly 80 percent of the area's water, didn't live up to expectations from the start. It only once reached full capacity, and the water quality was poor. Still, for about 40 years, the authority met most of its water needs by pumping the reservoir, while residents spent summers enjoying the canyon-like vista and launching boats from a marina.
In the past decade, the region has experienced several intense droughts. And Lake Meredith, which was supposed to serve residents for 150 years, began rapidly drying up. This year, the lake is barely 30 feet deep. If the drought and heat continue, just 15 feet could be left next summer.
Kent Satterwhite, general manager of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, believes one good rainy season could reverse that. The National Park Service does not share his optimism — it has torn down the marina.
Quantity now more important than quality
Today, 93 percent of the authority's water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, a rich stream of groundwater that stretches through six states. That the transition came before the lake ran dry, though, was due more to luck than planning. A decade ago, the authority launched a modest project aimed at improving water quality that became an urgent $300 million enterprise to access more groundwater when the lake began dropping.
"We don't care about quality anymore. We're concerned about quantity," Satterwhite said.
Soward warns this could become all of Texas' fate.
"If we don't deal with this now," he said, "this state's going to have to close the doors and say, 'We can't take any more people, because we don't have the water.'"
© 2011 The Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44636513/ns/us_news-life/t/badly-needed-water-funding-evaporates-parched-texas/ [with comments]
===
Texas drought worsens from 'abysmal'
The drought in Texas has created conditions for wildfires like the one that burned through Magnolia, Texas, destroying some 1,600 homes.
Mayra Beltran / Houston Chronicle via AP
Lack of Nate rains and prospect of La Nina winter 'add fuel to ... entrenched drought'
msnbc.com
updated 9/15/2011 1:01:10 PM ET
The drought in Texas that has fueled wildfires, devastated agriculture and caused water shortages actually worsened in the past week while several other states also saw spreading drought, according to a weekly report issued Thursday. The forecast for three months out isn't any better: Texas was told to expect abnormally warm and dry conditions from October to December thanks to another La Nina weather cycle.
Texas conditions continue to deteriorate what little they can from abysmal," the U.S. Drought Monitor [ http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/monitor.html ] stated. That was due to drought expanding into "the southeast, central, south-central, Big Bend region, and extreme south around Brownsville."
The lack of rain from Tropical Storm Nate last week "and better odds of a second consecutive La Nina winter only add fuel to this well-fed and entrenched drought," the report added.
La Nina conditions in the U.S. tend to mean warmer, drier weather in the south and the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that over the next three months above normal temperatures are expected in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas — as well as parts of areas along the western Great Lakes.
Much of Texas and Oklahoma would need 9 to 23 inches of rain over the next month to emerge from drought.
While some rain fell Thursday morning in parts of hard-hit north Texas, nearly 88 percent of the state is in what is classified as exceptional drought — up from 81 percent the week before.
Nearly 97 percent of Texas is in either exceptional or extreme drought.
From June through August, Texas suffered the hottest three months ever recorded in the United States, according to the National Weather Service. And the 12 months ending on Aug. 31 were the driest 12 months in Texas history, with most of the state receiving just 21 percent of its annual average rainfall.
Record heat has extended to other states: Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma joined Texas in posting their warmest August on record.
In Texas alone, agricultural losses have topped $5 billion.
Several other states are also seeing worsening drought:
• Oklahoma: the entire state is in either severe, extreme or exceptional drought.
• Georgia: Some 80 percent of the state is in extreme or exceptional drought.
• Florida: Conditions improved in South Florida "but longer-term deficits and low lake levels (Lake Okeechobee in particular) and surrounding ecosystem stress is still of concern heading into the dry season."
• South Carolina: Drought conditions spread into the state from north Florida.
• North Carolina: the central part of the state saw new drought conditions after being missed by rains from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.
• Midwest: an expansion of severe drought "leads to a band connecting Indiana with Illinois and Iowa to the west across the heart of the Corn Belt."
Over the next few days, some 1-2 inches of rain is forecast in drought areas. But the rain is expected to largely miss Texas, instead favoring Oklahoma, Kansas and areas more to the north.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2011 msnbc.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44534812/ns/weather/t/texas-drought-worsens-abysmal/ [with comments]
===
(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67001652 and preceding and following
County Extension Agent Garrett Gilliam walks through a cracked lake bed where at one time an estimated 30-feet of water once stood at Lake E.V. Spence, Aug. 10, 2011, in Robert Lee.
Photo: Michael Paulsen/Houston Chronicle / SA
By Patricia Kilday Hart and Gary Scharrer
patti.hart@chron.com
Updated 12:12 p.m., Friday, August 19, 2011
AUSTIN — When the Legislature approved a statewide water plan in 1997, then-Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock hailed it as “the heart of our legacy,” while its sponsor, Sen. J.E. “Buster” Brown, promised it would provide plentiful supplies of the crucial resource “for our grandchildren and our grandchildren's grandchildren.”
Then came the Great Drought: Since passage of the landmark 1997 legislation, state funding for water projects has been as scarce as rain in summer 2011.
Fourteen years after Bullock and Brown laid out a road map for securing adequate water resources for the state's booming population, state leaders still haven't found a reliable way to finance water development beyond asking voters for authority to issue debt through bonds.
With the population of Texas expected to double by 2050, Gov. Rick Perry is fond of saying that people have been “voting with their feet,” moving here for the state's conservative governing principles.
The additional population, however, has severely strained the state's infrastructure.
As Texas endures the most severe one-year drought in its history, state leaders have identified $53 billion in state investment needed to expand water capacity by 2060, but haven't resolved how to pay for it.
Unless Texas grows its water resources, experts say 83 percent of Texans will not have an adequate supply of water in times of drought.
“If we don't fund the water plan and get it going, 2050 is going to be chaotic,” said Rep. Alan Ritter, R-Nederland. “As our population continues to grow, you've got to do the infrastructure. If you want people to leave Texas, then don't have water.”
The current drought provides a glimpse into the future, with a historic number of communities implementing water restrictions, such as banning outdoor watering. Some towns, such as Llano, are seeking alternative sources of water as their municipal supplies run perilously low.
In November, Texas voters will be asked to approve $6 billion in bonds that the Texas Water Development Board will use to help local communities grow and maintain water supplies.
Perry, who took note of the withering drought in April when he issued a proclamation calling on Texans to pray for rain, endorsed the legislation authorizing the bond election.
“As Texas' population and economy continue to grow, Gov. Perry is committed to making sure both families and businesses have clean and reliable sources of water,” said spokeswoman Lucy Nashed.
She noted that since the Water Development Board was established, Texans have voted to authorize more than $4 billion in bonds for water projects.
The 1997 plan called for spending $53 billion for expanding water resources, and identifies $142 billion in capital costs for water treatment and distribution projects, and flood control.
Brown and Ritter said other financing tools are needed to help the state secure water resources for the future.
In the late 1990s, Brown and others proposed fee surcharges on bottled water or on consumption exceeding 5,000 gallons a month for residential users. Opposition was swift and stout.
“This is a water tax. The people I represent are viscerally opposed to this,” one Houston lawmaker said at the time.
To this day, a prevailing anti-tax sentiment “makes it pretty difficult” to invest in the state's future water needs, Brown said.
Just this past legislative session, Ritter proposed an annual “tap fee”— $3.25 a year per household — as a steady revenue stream for the water plan. His bill was approved by a legislative committee, but failed to pass.
Former state Rep. Ron Lewis, who chaired the House Energy Resources Committee and now is a lobbyist with several water district clients, said the current drought demonstrates the state is running out of time.
“There's no way we're going to have enough water 50 years from now to take care of the population growth,” he said. “We're now in a situation where we may not be able to take care of the water needs in this state for the next 15 years.”
Texans, he said, must invest in more reservoirs and in pipelines to carry water from existing East Texas reservoirs to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which would use the water before discharging it in a network of pipelines connecting Austin, San Antonio and South Texas in addition to Houston and Corpus Christi, Lewis said.
The combination of continuing population growth and continuing drought, Lewis predicted, eventually will grab everyone's attention as water wells dry up and some families will be limited to weekly showers while cities fight over water with agriculture users.
Texas hasn't opened a major reservoir since 1987, though a small one near Nacogdoches was completed in 2005.
Reservoirs can cost between $13 million and $2 billion — depending on size and location, according to the Texas Water Development Board.
“It's hard to figure out what happened,” said Brown, now a Capitol consultant. “I fully expected with the passage of SB 1 that we would begin to see water projects all over the state — identified by regional planning groups and then put into motion by private and public partnerships. We don't have any of those.”
*
Texas under Perry
A four-part series looking at the state of Texas infrastructure under the tenure of Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor in state history.
Part 1: All roads lead to Texas, where they're jammed
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/All-roads-lead-to-Texas-where-they-re-jammed-2076369.php
Part 2: Texans access to health care lacking
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/article/Texans-access-to-health-care-lacking-2083053.php
Part 3: Texas' water resources are drying up
[this article]
Part 4: State's education funding is not making the grade
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/article/State-s-education-funding-is-not-making-the-grade-2133521.php
*
© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Water-resources-drying-up-2122864.php [no comments yet]
===
Badly-needed water funding evaporates for parched Texas
The dam and spillway at Lake Meredith National Recreation area reveals the receding water line that now sits beneath the spillway base near, Fritch, Texas, in this August 2011 photo.
Tony Gutierrez / AP
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
Associated Press
updated 9/23/2011 7:43:45 AM ET
SANFORD, Texas — On paper, at least, Texas is well-prepared to meet the water needs of its rapidly expanding population — even when Mother Nature lays down a harsh and lengthy drought.
The price tag on the plan: $53 billion. State money allocated: $1.4 billion.
If there were funds, Texas would be able to build the dams, reservoirs, pipelines, wells and other infrastructure that would ideally avoid tight water-use restrictions imposed on residents, farmers and ranchers during times of drought while also guaranteeing there would be enough water for the state's rapidly growing population — even in 2060.
Instead, now, more than four years after the latest blueprint was published, deadlines have passed with some work barely begun, and many projects never started. Meanwhile, lakes are shrinking, rivers are drying up and temperatures are rising.
"The longer you delay implementation, the costs are going to go up," warns Carolyn Brittin, a planning official at the Texas Water Development Board, responsible for publishing a revised plan by January.
Globally, 7 billion people need water — 97 percent of which is salty and 2 percent is locked in ice. Of the rest, two-thirds is used to grow food.
The United States, and Texas in particular, need to find water for a growing population. Unusually high temperatures and dry weather recently have highlighted the urgency.
Three years of dry winters that started in 2008 left populous Southern California and the agriculturally rich Central Valley desperate. Officials could not deliver more than 50 percent of the water needed by cities and farmers. In the Midwest, water levels since the 1990s have dropped at times on Lakes Huron and Michigan, causing millions in losses. The arid Southwest has struggled for decades.
'Billions of dollars of ideas but no funding'
In Texas, seeing one of the most severe droughts on record, officials know exactly what to do to guarantee water for future generations — in fact, Texas spends $16 million every five years to plan ahead.
When the most recent plan was published in 2007, officials estimated it would cost $31 billion to provide water to the population in 2060, said Dan Hardin, director of water resource planning at the water development board. That doesn't include more than $140 billion needed for other water-related infrastructure, including flood control. But in January, the board told the Legislature the cost had jumped to $53 billion.
Yet lawmakers, struggling with a $27 billion budget deficit, allocated only $100 million to water projects — enough, say, to build one small reservoir.
"Billions of dollars of ideas but no funding," sums up Laura Huffman, state director of the Nature Conservancy of Texas.
Story: Texas cities set records for days above 100F
As of now, local officials have said they have about $26 billion to fund the plan, but need state loans for the rest. Competition for loans — when they're available — can be fierce.
The West Texas town of Robert Lee has struggled with water issues for so long it was unprepared for the current drought. Now, town officials are tapping private loans in a rush to build a $1.5 million pipeline to draw water from nearby Bronte, said Eddie Ray Roberts, the city's water superintendent.
"It surprised me that they let it get this bad. It's a funding issue," Roberts said, explaining the state won't give communities money until January, when it flows in from Washington.
Meticulous planning was meant to prevent such scenarios. Yet the water board has not surveyed what work was under way or completed until the plan coming in January. Planners know the list of untouched projects will be long.
The region that includes Dallas and Fort Worth, for example, had 59 major projects recommended at a cost of more than $13 billion to provide water to a population expected to nearly double by 2060. Of those projects, 16 are in various stages of planning or completion, Hardin said. And the agency only knows about projects it funds, making it more difficult to track.
Pricey projects
Water projects, especially reservoirs, have always been expensive. It cost $30 million in the mid-1960s — or what would be $227 million now — to create Lake Meredith in the Texas Panhandle. Today, the cost of a large reservoir could exceed $500 million. But sometimes other factors, including stringent environmental regulations and bureaucracy, can stymie a project.
In North Texas, the Lower Boisd'arc Reservoir project has half the land it needs. Planners hope to have the lake online by 2020. But the permitting and legal obstacles could delay it.
North of Houston, opposition from residents has stopped, for now, a reservoir meant to supply water to the city and its suburbs, where nearly a quarter of Texans live and the population is booming. Here, planners recommended 121 projects. Seven are in development, Hardin said.
"I don't think there's this sense that there's a problem down the line, and I think that is the biggest challenge: change the mindset not only of our citizens, but of our leaders," said Larry Soward, a water expert who formerly served as a commissioner at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, which serves residents in some of the state's most arid terrain, is one of the few agencies that has implemented — and independently funded — its entire plan.
Lake Meredith, the source for nearly 80 percent of the area's water, didn't live up to expectations from the start. It only once reached full capacity, and the water quality was poor. Still, for about 40 years, the authority met most of its water needs by pumping the reservoir, while residents spent summers enjoying the canyon-like vista and launching boats from a marina.
In the past decade, the region has experienced several intense droughts. And Lake Meredith, which was supposed to serve residents for 150 years, began rapidly drying up. This year, the lake is barely 30 feet deep. If the drought and heat continue, just 15 feet could be left next summer.
Kent Satterwhite, general manager of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, believes one good rainy season could reverse that. The National Park Service does not share his optimism — it has torn down the marina.
Quantity now more important than quality
Today, 93 percent of the authority's water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, a rich stream of groundwater that stretches through six states. That the transition came before the lake ran dry, though, was due more to luck than planning. A decade ago, the authority launched a modest project aimed at improving water quality that became an urgent $300 million enterprise to access more groundwater when the lake began dropping.
"We don't care about quality anymore. We're concerned about quantity," Satterwhite said.
Soward warns this could become all of Texas' fate.
"If we don't deal with this now," he said, "this state's going to have to close the doors and say, 'We can't take any more people, because we don't have the water.'"
© 2011 The Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44636513/ns/us_news-life/t/badly-needed-water-funding-evaporates-parched-texas/ [with comments]
===
Texas drought worsens from 'abysmal'
The drought in Texas has created conditions for wildfires like the one that burned through Magnolia, Texas, destroying some 1,600 homes.
Mayra Beltran / Houston Chronicle via AP
Lack of Nate rains and prospect of La Nina winter 'add fuel to ... entrenched drought'
msnbc.com
updated 9/15/2011 1:01:10 PM ET
The drought in Texas that has fueled wildfires, devastated agriculture and caused water shortages actually worsened in the past week while several other states also saw spreading drought, according to a weekly report issued Thursday. The forecast for three months out isn't any better: Texas was told to expect abnormally warm and dry conditions from October to December thanks to another La Nina weather cycle.
Texas conditions continue to deteriorate what little they can from abysmal," the U.S. Drought Monitor [ http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/monitor.html ] stated. That was due to drought expanding into "the southeast, central, south-central, Big Bend region, and extreme south around Brownsville."
The lack of rain from Tropical Storm Nate last week "and better odds of a second consecutive La Nina winter only add fuel to this well-fed and entrenched drought," the report added.
La Nina conditions in the U.S. tend to mean warmer, drier weather in the south and the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that over the next three months above normal temperatures are expected in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas — as well as parts of areas along the western Great Lakes.
Much of Texas and Oklahoma would need 9 to 23 inches of rain over the next month to emerge from drought.
While some rain fell Thursday morning in parts of hard-hit north Texas, nearly 88 percent of the state is in what is classified as exceptional drought — up from 81 percent the week before.
Nearly 97 percent of Texas is in either exceptional or extreme drought.
From June through August, Texas suffered the hottest three months ever recorded in the United States, according to the National Weather Service. And the 12 months ending on Aug. 31 were the driest 12 months in Texas history, with most of the state receiving just 21 percent of its annual average rainfall.
Record heat has extended to other states: Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma joined Texas in posting their warmest August on record.
In Texas alone, agricultural losses have topped $5 billion.
Several other states are also seeing worsening drought:
• Oklahoma: the entire state is in either severe, extreme or exceptional drought.
• Georgia: Some 80 percent of the state is in extreme or exceptional drought.
• Florida: Conditions improved in South Florida "but longer-term deficits and low lake levels (Lake Okeechobee in particular) and surrounding ecosystem stress is still of concern heading into the dry season."
• South Carolina: Drought conditions spread into the state from north Florida.
• North Carolina: the central part of the state saw new drought conditions after being missed by rains from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee.
• Midwest: an expansion of severe drought "leads to a band connecting Indiana with Illinois and Iowa to the west across the heart of the Corn Belt."
Over the next few days, some 1-2 inches of rain is forecast in drought areas. But the rain is expected to largely miss Texas, instead favoring Oklahoma, Kansas and areas more to the north.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2011 msnbc.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44534812/ns/weather/t/texas-drought-worsens-abysmal/ [with comments]
===
(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67001652 and preceding and following
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
