Texas can’t ignore extreme weather in planning future water supply | Opinion
The operations center for Bois d'Arc Lake on Oct. 6 in Fannin County. The lake, which is northeast of Bonham, is over 16,000 acres and began filling with water in April 2021. It is Texas’ first new major reservoir in nearly three decades.Just this past summer, broken water lines triggered a 13-day boil water notice in Laredo and a major water outage in Odessa, andafter reservoirs reached dangerously low levels. Texas is in dire need of better water infrastructure.
The good news is that there is federal money available to spend in water infrastructure, and policymakers are hopeful that the state Legislature will invest more, too. The bad news is that water is evaporating faster than ever, and theis becoming riskier, as the Texas Tribune recently reported. This is the type of extreme weather data that the state must incorporate into its planning, said Jeremy Mazur, senior policy adviser for the think tank, the entity in charge of preparing the state’s water plan, factors a 1950s drought to determine future water availability. With extreme weather events becoming more common, the board needs a new approach.
Mazur points to another problem, and that is water loss because of leaky pipes all over the state, especially in rural areas. He said this accounts for the loss of about 570,000 acre-feet of water annually. That is the equivalent of Possum Kingdom Lake.Tackling this issue would make a huge difference. In small, rural communities, 50% to 60% of water leaks out pipes before reaching consumers, Mazur said.
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