As Texas legislators continue to grapple with how to identify and fund water project priorities for the state, Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo) makes the argument that Texans don’t value water enough. His comments came at StateImpact Texas’ panel: The Texas Water Crisis: Finding and Funding a Solution. As a representative of a district that […]
John Nielson-Gammon, Texas’ State Climatologist, offered a grim forecast to kick off a joint House and Senate Natural Resources Committee meeting today at the Capitol. “There’s still a good chance this will end up being the drought of record for most of the state,” he said. Several officials from state agencies involved with Texas’ water […]
From the Texas Tribune:Â Last January, as the Texas drought wore on, an Austin-area homeowners association called the Woods of Brushy Creek made a big change to its landscaping policies. No longer would homeowners be required to have grass covering the entire front yard. Instead, they could request permission to cover most of the yard […]
In his biennial ‘State of the State‘ speech today, Texas Governor Rick Perry called for spending billions to fund water projects and build and repair roads, advocating for taking $3.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund “for a one-time investment in infrastructure programs.” Current proposals in the Texas House and Senate that appear to have growing support call […]
Two billion dollars is a lot of money. It’s also how much some state lawmakers want to spend to protect Texas from future water shortages. A lot has been made of that price tag. But when three state lawmakers sat down with StateImpact Texas at a forum in Austin last night, they also talked rulemaking. […]
At a Texas Tribune event this morning in Austin, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst talked with Tribune Editor-in-Chief Evan Smith about a whole host of issues facing the state, such as public education. And of course, they also talked about water. On Wednesday, State Senator Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) announced his support of a plan to […]
While some Texans have employed water-efficient landscaping as a way of dealing with the ongoing drought, a large group is often left out: those who live in homes belonging to Home Owners Associations, or HOAs. HOAs can have strict restrictions on what kind of grass a homeowner can plant for a lawn (sometimes, the thirsty […]
With water on the minds behind the Texas legislature, Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, the chairman of the House National Resources Committee, sat down last week to talk with the Texas Tribune about what lawmakers can do to secure new water supplies for a growing state. Ritter recently filed a fill that would take $2 billion from […]
The rains that made their way across much of Texas last week were a welcome sight for the state, currently in its third year of drought. The latest U.S. Drought Monitor Map shows that drought levels decreased for the first time since October 2012. But they didn’t fall much. About seven percent of the state […]
For the rice farmers of Southeast Texas, 2012 was a rough year. For the first time in history, they were cut off from water because there wasn’t enough in the main reservoirs of the Lower Colorado River to supply them. In 2013, they face the same situation: if there isn’t enough water in the Highland […]
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