Texas Town’s Taps Still Running

Paul Buck/AFP

A stock pond south of Dallas dries up due to drought.

Earlier this week we asked, What Happens When Water Runs Out?

One of the locales on a government list of places expected to run out of water looked poised to go dry any week now. The small town of Groesbeck, with just 4,328 people, gets all of its water from the Navasota river, which is at well below normal levels.

In good news for the town’s residents, they’ve literally bought a few more months of water. A three-mile pump is being installed further up the river to bring in more water. It should be enough to last them four months, while the town looks for long-term groundwater sources.

StateImpact Texas reported earlier this week on how the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality assists towns in situations like Groesbeck’s. “You can pipe water in from another system. You can drill wells, you can move pumps. But there’s no substitute for rain,” the commission’s spokesperson Andrea Morrow told StateImpact Texas.