Charles Perry, a Republican state senator from Lubbock and the legislature\u2019s leading water expert, believes that the ominous 2022 projections are too optimistic; he has said that Texas may face an annual water deficit of up to twelve million acre-feet by 2050. (The municipal supply used by the entire state in 2023 was a bit more than five million acre-feet.) \u201cThis is the only thing that we\u2019re not addressing that is going to be the limiting cap on the Texas that we know and love today,\u201d Perry said at a Water for Texas conference earlier this year. \u201cThe time has arrived. We can\u2019t go any longer without somebody saying something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of the problem is the state\u2019s antiquated approach to water policy. Texas follows the rule of capture, also known as absolute ownership, which allows landowners to draw as much water from below their property as they\u2019d like, even if this has a negative impact on neighboring properties. Critics argue that the rule of capture incentivizes over-pumping, and note that every other Western state has jettisoned the rule, instead opting for an approach that mandates \u201creasonable use.\u201d In Texas, where private property is regarded as sacrosanct, it\u2019s been harder to get lawmakers to move beyond absolute ownership. But it\u2019s misleading to equate the rule of capture with private property, according to Robert Glennon, an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona\u2019s College of Law and the author of \u201cWater Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America\u2019s Fresh Waters<\/a>.\u201d \u201cProperty owners in Texas can\u2019t prevent someone next door with a bigger pump and a deeper well from sucking groundwater from underneath their property,\u201d Glennon told me. \u201cInstead of a private-property right, absolute ownership is more of a circular firing squad.\u201d<\/p>\n The rule of capture, once an obscure provision of Texas law, is now on more people\u2019s radar after a fight over water rights in East Texas went public earlier this year. \u201cThis is the No. 1 topic, the one thing that everybody cares about the most here,\u201d Cody Harris, a Republican state legislator who represents the area, told me. \u201cUsually, it\u2019s property taxes, border security, education, things like that. But right now, and for the last few months, it\u2019s been nothing but water.\u201d The issue came to the forefront when Kyle Bass, a hedge-fund manager who cemented his reputation by betting against the subprime-mortgage boom, in 2008, announced plans to intervene in the looming water crisis. Like Perry, he believed that the worrying projections in the 2022 Water Plan weren\u2019t ominous enough. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a blessing or a curse, I can identify significant problems before they happen,\u201d Bass told the Houston Chronicle. A proponent of what he calls \u201cconservation equity management\u201d\u2014that is, increasing property values through environmental stewardship\u2014Bass applied for permits that would allow him to drill dozens of high-capacity wells on his East Texas ranch. The idea was to pull up to nearly forty-nine thousand acre-feet of water from the wettest part of the state and sell it to the fast-growing Dallas suburbs. Although such a plan is perfectly acceptable under the rule of capture, and similar projects are already under way elsewhere in the state, East Texans bristled at the idea. (The Texas Water Development Board has concluded that the permits would allow Bass to withdraw more groundwater than is available in the area, but Bass has said that such an interpretation of his permits is misleading, and that it would be \u201csilly\u201d to take more water than the aquifer could sustain.)<\/p>\n When Bass\u2019s application came before the board of the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District, hundreds of people showed up to the meeting. (In Texas, water boards can approve well-drilling permits, but have a limited ability to adopt pumping caps.) Bass was there, too. When it was his turn to speak, he struck a folksy tone. \u201cI wear boots every day. I wear jeans every day. And I spend about all my time out here in Henderson County,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cThe state of Texas\u2019s main problems are power and water,\u201d and he was hoping to address the issue by \u201cdoing things that are responsible by law and by science.\u201d He was followed by dozens of residents, most of whom spoke in opposition to his plans. (Bass would later call the crowd \u201cwoefully uninformed and uneducated on the subject\u201d and \u201cobviously very emotive.\u201d) A gray-haired man in a checked shirt who said that he could trace his ancestry back to early Texas settlers called the area\u2019s water \u201can inheritance for me and my family.\u201d \u201cAmen!\u201d a woman in the crowd shouted. \u201cThe aquifer . . . it\u2019s not going to be able to keep up with demand and it\u2019s going to hurt people. It\u2019s going to kill people,\u201d the man went on. (A judge recently halted Bass\u2019s well-drilling project, which is facing a lawsuit from local businesses. Bass has responded by suing<\/a> to reinstate the project.) The furor was heated enough that it seemed briefly as if the legislature might finally reconsider the rule of capture. Harris has said that he plans to challenge the policy the next time lawmakers meet. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time in my career where discussions have been at this serious level, about considering changing rule of capture,\u201d Mace, of the Meadows Center, told me. \u201cI\u2019ve got my bowl of popcorn, and I\u2019ll be watching very closely to see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Perry, a Republican state senator from Lubbock and the legislature\u2019s leading water expert, believes that the ominous…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":376203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[4788,65888,746,3041,42012,159,358,67,132,68,56408],"class_list":{"0":"post-376202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-conservation","9":"tag-droughts","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-natural-resources","12":"tag-population-growth","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-water-shortage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115543112605109221","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}