How Texas counties voted on Prop 6. Counties in Blue passed the measure; Counties in Red voted against it. Map by Matt Wilson/StateImpact.
There wasn’t much nail-biting on either side of the Proposition 6 debate as people watched the votes come in on Tuesday. The measure, which will move $2 billion dollars from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to start a fund for water projects, won approval from over 73 percent of the state.
But as poll watchers began digging into the turnout, competing versions of what those numbers mean for the future of water in Texas began to take shape.
Speaker of the House Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, led the Water Texas PAC, which spent nearly two million dollars to promote the measure, pointed to the broad base of support to call the victory a triumph for bi-partisanship and coalition building.
“Small businesses, manufacturing, the energy industry, farmers and ranchers all came together very strongly,” said Straus at his PAC’s election night party.
Opponents of the measure say the way people voted points to a looming confrontation between water-rich rural areas and thirsty urban consumers. Continue Reading →
Speaker Joe Straus speaking on the passage of Prop 6 in Austin Tuesday evening.
Texans overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment Tuesday to jump-start financing for water projects in the state: Proposition 6. The plan will take $2 billion in surplus state money (from the Rainy Day Fund) to start a low-interest loan program for water projects in Texas. The measure had widespread support from both sides of the aisle as well as business and environmental groups. It passed with over 73 percent of the vote.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the members of the legislature who worked in a collaborative way on a very positive agenda for planning for our future water needs,” Speaker of the House Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, said at a rally celebrating the amendment’s passage Tuesday evening. “But the people of Texas today validated our good work with an overwhelming vote of support.” Some Libertarian and smaller environmental groups were vocally against the measure.
The creation of the water fund, overseen by the Texas Water Development Board, represents the first time in decades that the state has put significant money towards water infrastructure. The $2 billion approved this week will act like a down-payment on a mortgage that will allow the state to borrow billions more for hundreds of water projects outlined in its official Water Plan. Those projects aim to provide enough water to meet the state’s needs over the next fifty years. Continue Reading →
Voters in Texas will have the opportunity Tuesday to weigh in on a proposal to fund water projects in the state. There’s a lot involved that’s not in the ballot language, so we’ve put together an explainer on the amendment.
What is Prop 6 Exactly?
Proposition 6 is a constitutional amendment that would take $2 billion out of the state’s Rainy Day to create two accounts to help fund water projects in the state: the State Water Implementation Fund of Texas (SWIFT) and the State Water Implementation Revenue Fund of Texas (SWIRFT).
The initial $2 billion would be transferred from the Rainy Day fund to the SWIFT. Over time, revenue generated from SWIFT projects would be into the SWIRFT.
The SWIRFT money would then be used to fund even more projects. Together, backers argue, accounts could fund over $25 billion worth of projects over the next 50 years. Continue Reading →
The extreme drought and 2011 releases to farmers lowered levels in Lakes Buchanan and Travis (pictured) in Central Texas.
After a month of heavy rains and flooding culminating in the wettest October in history for Austin, many in Central Texas are likely wondering if the drought is over. Far from it: Austin’s reservoirs in the Highland Lakes are still very low, roughly only a third full, and could reach their lowest levels in history this winter. AÂ new proposal out today from the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) plans for the drought to possibly continue well into next year.
If the plan goes forward, it would likely cut off most rice farmers downstream for a third year in a row if the Highland Lakes don’t see significant rains this winter, increasing the amount of water in the lakes. Much of the precipitation this past month fell downstream of the lakes and did little to raise the levels of the two main reservoirs in Central Texas, Lakes Buchanan and Travis.
It’s the most restrictive proposal the authority has made since the drought began, designed to give the Highland Lakes time to recover from several years of dry weather and massive releases of water to agricultural customers in the summer of 2011. Continue Reading →
When voters go to the polls this year, many of them will have only as much information about the constitutional amendments they’re voting on as is provided on the ballot.
That is to say, not much at all, especially when it comes to the major item on the list, Proposition 6.
The ballot refers to the creation of funds for the State Water Plan, a list of projects to improve water supplies across the state, but makes no mention of the dollar figure that would be involved. It mentions financing for water projects, but not why that financing might be needed, or how the projects will be chosen.
You might have better luck learning about Proposition 6 by asking someone whose job hinges on its passage. Bech Bruun is one of Governor Perry’s newly-minted Water Development Board Members, and if the proposition goes forward, they will decide what water projects to lend money to.
“What Proposition 6 would do is, it would move $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund into a new account, that we will refer to as SWIFT, the State Water Implementation Fund of Texas. And it would allow the Water Development Board to use money from the SWIFT fund for projects in the State’s Water Plan,” he said.
But a vote on the proposition is a vote on even more than that. That’s because of provisions in a law this year that overhauled the Water Development Board.
As several interest groups push for billions of dollars to finance water projects, the opposition is warning it could be another opportunity for cronyism.
How do you get Koch Industries, Chevron and Environment Texas all donating to the same political action committee (PAC)? That’s what’s happening here in Texas, with a diverse group pushing support for Proposition 6, a constitutional amendment that would use billions of dollars to jump-start financing for water projects in Texas.
To get Prop 6 passed, a PAC led by Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus raised over $2 million to promote it, according to financial records analyzed by the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice. They found nearly a million dollars in contributions from the energy industry to the PAC (i.e. the state’s powerful oil and gas sector), nearly half a million from the construction industry (which stands to benefit from the potential projects funded through the plan), and a small donation ($500) from Environment Texas. There has also been vocal support from other environmental groups, like the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy.
Not surprisingly, many of the big donors to the Texas Water PAC are also big contributors to Texas Governor Rick Perry, Texans for Public Justice points out.
Strange bedfellows form the opposition to the idea as well, with its own unusual mix of smaller environmental groups and libertarians.Continue Reading →
The Public Utility Commission of Texas says concerns about smart meters are "unwarranted."
They’re in over 6 million Texas homes. But if you want to get rid of them, you’ll have to pony up. We’re talking about smart meters — advanced electricity meters that communicate wirelessly with the grid. They’ve spread rapidly across the state since 2005, when the state legislature passed a law to fund and encourage the distribution of smart meters. Now they’re in 97 percent of Texas homes in the deregulated electricity market, according to the Public Utility Commission of Texas. (In the non-competitive areas of the Texas market, Austin has smart meters installed throughout its area, while San Antonio is slowly expanding smart meters in the city.)
But after some Texans (notably, the Alex Jones/Infowars crowd) made their privacy and health concerns about smart meters vocal, the Public Utility Commission decided to give people a choice to stay out of the smart meter craze. “The customers who opt-out will have to pay the costs that will be incurred to be able to do that,” Public Utility Commissioner Ken Anderson told StateImpact Texas recently. “We also will be requiring those customers to acknowledge in writing that they understand they will be losing some benefits from not having the smart meters.”
Now that the rules have been figured out, some transmission companies are submitting proposals for how much they want to charge customers who opt out. It isn’t going to be cheap.  If you’re in the competitive market of Texas (most of the state other than Austin, San Antonio and El Paso) choosing to opt out means you can be subject to a one-time or recurring fee, or both, totaling hundreds of dollars. Continue Reading →
One Houston firm's idea would give tar sands protesters another option for their commute.
Houston Landscape Architecture Firm Pushes Concept of Keystone XL Right-of-Way for Use as Bike Path
As a North American oil boom has taken off in the U.S. and Canada, so has the need to move that oil to refineries, many of which are in Texas. And the cheapest, most efficient way to do so is pipelines. But as those pipelines proliferate, so do issues over safety, like the spill that took over a neighborhood in Arkansas earlier this year. There are also conflicts over property rights, including several landowners in Texas who have fought companies who want to route private pipelines through their land.
Photo by Terrence Henry/StateImpact Texas
The Keystone XL pipeline under construction in East Texas in the Spring of 2013.
Those pipelines can cut a large swath through property, with an easement 50-feet wide. As you can see in the photo to the right of the Keystone XL pipeline under construction in Northeast Texas, it’s like building a road. And once the pipeline is in the ground, there’s not very much you can do with it. You can’t build any permanent structures on it, for instance.
Domes at fertilizer facility near Bryan where fire in 2009 destroyed a wooden structure
In response to the deadly explosion six months ago in West, Federal agencies will soon be making recommendations to Congress on how to reduce the risk at fertilizer storage facilities. Should igloos be among the ideas?
“There’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind that if the West (fertilizer) had been in a dome it would have lost the top, you would have heard a lot of noise, but it would not have damaged the buildings around it,” said David South, president of Monolithic, a company in Italy, Texas that designs concrete dome structures. Continue Reading →
Donna Nelson, chairperson of the Texas PUC, moved the commission a step closer today to a capacity market.
Public Utility Commission Signals Move to Increase Reliability, Which Could Raise Prices; Anderson Calls Idea “Corporate Welfare”
Meetings of the Texas Public Utility Commission are not a place you go to see fireworks. They usually deal with phone companies, transmission lines, and power generation. But it’s on that last subject where the conversation got a little spicy today.
The chairperson of the commission, Donna Nelson, unexpectedly brought up a proposal that could have wide implications for the deregulated power market in Texas, and could also raise power bills for consumers. Nelson wanted to move the state’s reserve margin — the amount of extra power available at times of peak demand — from its current state of a goal to something that is mandatory. Commissioner Ken Anderson was taken aback.
“I would’ve liked some advance notice, even a memo the day before,” Anderson said. “Saying, I plan to bring this up. Cause this is big.”
“Commissioner Anderson,” Nelson interrupted, “you have handed memos to me at 8 o’clock in the morning as I walk in, right before an open meeting.”
“Not on something this big!” Anderson retorted.
The two commissioners have been deadlocked for over a year on this issue.
At the center of the debate is an idea that would pay power generators in Texas not just for the electricity they produce, but also just for being around. It’s known as a capacity market. There’s a lot of nitty gritty here, but it boils down to one question: Will the state of Texas have enough power for its growing population and potentially hotter summers?
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