This report features contributions from Matt Largey and Emily Donahue of KUT News and Jake Silverstein of Texas Monthly.
While last year was the worst in Texas’ recorded history, it was only the latest in a long string of dry spells that stretches back through Texas history, to a time before it was even Texas.
Drought has been a recurring theme in the accounts of nearly everyone who has passed through this place. Around five hundred years ago, the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca wrote the first European chronicle of a voyage through Texas. His journals recorded the misery of the drought-stricken people he encountered.
“For anyone who has lived in west Texas, the presence of drought is every day,” says Roger Hodge, who writes about an early Texas civilization that struggled with water and drought in the new Texas Monthly. “It always seems like there is a drought going on.”
That was certainly true for the people who once lived along the lower Pecos. The ones who left behind magnificent paintings on the walls of caves – with messages we’re still trying to decipher. You can listen to their story above, or view the slideshow featuring some of Roger Hodge’s photos of the rock art up top. (To see more of his photos, visit his website.)
Earlier this year, walking along the dry river and lake beds of the Highland Lakes, you’d likely find yourself stepping on gravel, fish bones and fresh-water clam shells. After the lakes sat around sixty percent drained, water wells in the area also began to fail. That happened most noticeably in Spicewood Beach, where the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), the agency that owns the well, needed to haul water in by truck for the people who live there.
In this installment of our series on water issues along the Colorado River, part of Life By the Drop: Drought, Water and the Future of Texas, we hear from two residents of Spicewood Beach at the start of the town’s water shortage.
As the LCRA hauls water into town and begins construction of a long-term water storage system, Robert Salinas and Martin Peterson speculate about what went wrong, and whether things will ever get better. The audio was produced by Mose Buchele and the slideshow by Filipa Rodrigues.
Since the well failed, little has changed in Spicewood Beach. Continue Reading →
A cow that perished on a ranch outside of Marfa was dried "like jerky" by the drought.
Jake Silverstein of Texas Monthly contributed to this article.Â
It’s a disaster unlike any other. Floods, hurricanes and earthquakes enter swiftly and destroy efficiently. But a drought doesn’t herald it’s arrival. And people usually don’t pay attention to drought until the damage is already done.
For most Texans, especially those living in big cities, a drought is usually little more than an irritation—a brown lawn or a high water bill.
But for Texans living in the country, it’s a little different. For them, a drought is impossible to ignore.It can mean the end of a family tradition or a way of life.
Yet it requires a truly extreme drought, like the one we suffered last year, before the average city-dweller sits up and takes notice.
Controllers make daily forecasts of the next day’s electric demand and supply down to every five minutes.
Temperatures breaching the low 100s are expected to hit all around the state early next week, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).
By Monday, the high in the Dallas-Fort Worth area should be about 100 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
“This is exactly the season that the generators have been preparing for for several months,” says ERCOT’ spokesperson Robbie Searcy. “All the power producers in Texas know that it’s most important to have all of their units available when we start seeing hot summer days in Texas.”
ERCOT said, however, that there should be sufficient power supplies available to avoid hitting emergency alerts that call for rolling outages. Continue Reading →
They creep in slowly. Reveal themselves so gradually, that it’s easy not to notice. Until you do.
“A drought is kinda like a cancer, it just slowly eats and eats and eats,” says John Jacobs, the mayor of Robert Lee. That town nearly went dry last year. “Your water sources dry up. Your businesses start drying up,” he says. “Without water people aren’t gonna stay there.”
You can listen to Life By the Drop: Drought, Water and the Future of Texas Friday, June 22 at 3 p.m. on KUT 90.5 FM. The program will air again at 7 p.m. on Monday, and you’ll also be able to hear the entire documentary here and on other public radio stations throughout the state. And you can learn more about the history of the drought at our interactive web page, Dried Out: Confronting the Texas Drought, and share your thoughts on Twitter with the hashtag #txwater.
The environmental group’s notice of intent cites Clean Air Act violations at the Fayette Power Project (FPP) near La Grange (about 60 miles outside of Austin) as cause for the lawsuit. Specifically, the group claims that the coal plant has exceeded limits on particulate matter emissions.
“We’ve discovered what we believe are egregious violations of the air pollution permit for the power plant and that harms public health, pollutes the air that we all breath,” said Ilan Levin, the Associate Director of Environmental Integrity Project, in an interview with StateImpact Texas.
And like many environmental vs. energy spats in the state, this is another case of He Said, She Said. LCRA General Manager Becky Motal believes the groups claims are groundless.
So far in our special report on Texas water issues, we’ve heard from communities along the Colorado River that survive with its water. But what about the Colorado itself? Does a river have a right to flow? People in Texas bays and coastal areas that depend on fresh water inflows might answer in the affirmative.
As last year’s drought pushed through the summer, the Colorado brought less and less fresh water into the Gulf of Mexico. In Matagorda Bay, where the river empties into the sea, the water quality suffered. Oyster harvesting was shut down and fishermen reported fewer crabs and fish in the bay. Continue Reading →
The map on the left shows current drought conditions in Texas. None of the state is in exceptional drought. At right, is the October 4, 2011 map. Just 8 months ago, exceptional drought (deep red) covered 88 percent of the state.
On Thursday, we profiled John Jacobs, the mayor of Robert Lee, who compared the onset of last year’s drought to the incremental growth a cancer. “It’s just a slow, declining death,” he said. But the positive news is that in the same way, much of the state has been creeping out of it.
In fact, Texas has just hit a milestone in a possible recovery from the drought. In data released today by the U.S. Drought Monitor Map, no portion of the state is any longer in the worst stage of drought, “exceptional.” The last time there was no exceptional drought was back in March 2011, fourteen months ago. If you compare where things are now to the peak of the drought in October of last year (to the right), you’ll see a world of difference.
San Antonio may have to go into Stage 3 water restrictions soon.
Water levels are falling rapidly in the Edwards Aquifer in San Antonio, the primary source of water for municipal users in the region. In just two weeks, the levels have dropped 5 feet, and are projected to drop further. Victor Murphy, the Climate Program Manager for the National Weather Service Southern Region, says there’s even more cause for concern than last year.
“I would say by this weekend or by early next week, the level of the J-17 will be lower this year than last year,” Murphy says. “Not good.” The J-17 is a measurement of water pressure at a test well in San Antonio. If water levels continue to drop, the San Antonio Water System (SAWS) may need to implement stricter water restrictions.
“At 640 feet, that’s when SAWS kicks in their Stage 3 water restrictions,” Murphy said. “To my knowledge, they’ve never had to implement that.”
As of this morning, the well is reading 644.6 feet. “With little to no rain in the forecast over the next week and with triple digit temps looming on the horizon early next week, this level should continue to drop,” Murphy says. San Antonio has already seen more rainfall this year than all of last year combined, with above-average rainfall in May, but the levels continue to drop.
2011 was not only Texas’ worst single-year drought. By a strange twist of fate, it was also the year the state formed its new long-term water plan. Some planners viewed this as a blessing-in-disguise: as least the drought was raising awareness of water issues.
The planning process forced some hard questions: what role will agriculture play in the future of Texas? Should Texans continue to raise water-intensive crops like corn and rice? Continue Reading →
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While last year was the worst in Texas’ recorded history, it was only the latest in a long string of dry spells that stretches back through Texas history, to a time before it was even Texas.
