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Will Texas Secure Its Water Future?

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www.texasobserver.org – Lise Olsen – 2025-02-20 17:04:00

Senator Charles Perry is a man on a water mission as he prepares to file a package of five bills that address the future of Texas water, including asking his fellow lawmakers to make at least a $1 billion-a-year  commitment. The veteran Republican legislator from West Texas has been part of a years-long push to dedicate significant funding for water infrastructure to prepare our fast-growing state for its thirsty future. Some of the ideas he’s proposing would have sounded outlandish just a few years ago but, as he told the Texas Observer, Senator Perry thinks there is the technology, and the votes, to get it all done now. 


TO: We’ve been hearing about your plans for a series of ambitious water bills. There’s been talk about multiple new desalination plants and of a statewide water pipeline system running along every interstate. What’s your vision? What are your biggest goals for 20 years from now? 

We have to develop 10 to 12 million acre-feet [of new water supply] in the next 30, 40 years. And that’s not any small task. … It’s multiple decades, billions of dollars. So it only makes sense to treat the water supply needs just like we treat state highways, and that continuity, connectivity, that oversight to make sure dollars that are spent on supply development benefit as many people as possible. So we’re proposing this session to frontload the cost of starting massive infrastructure projects that are overdue in some areas and will be needed most certainly within the 20-year time frame. 

Basically, the reason this hasn’t gotten done is there’s no local taxing jurisdiction or city council [or] mayor that can tell people we need to charge X number of dollars a month for the next 30 years so that we have water supply. That’s just not a politically doable deal. 

And if we leave it to the locals, we end up developing depleting resources, which is shortsighted, and we typically end up not getting what we needed but what the taxpayers were willing to pay for. And so this statewide look [is] coordinating new supply plans from new developments, undeveloped resources in brackish, fresh, produced water in the oil and gas [industry], marine desal on the coastline where it makes sense, and surface water where we can develop and acquire in Texas and outside of Texas. [Before] we always went to the lowest-hanging fruit and developed the cheapest water. We have developed all the cheapest water, and it’s not enough to get us where we need to be. We can’t keep moving existing resources around the state and calling it “new supply.” This actually adds new inputs.

How many big desalination plants do you think might be involved? You know, there’s some concern about whether those would harm the bays’ ecosystems, or even create ‘dead zones.’

So there’s multiple desal conversations, right? There’s produced water desal, which is in the Permian Basin. There’s brackish aquifers, which are scattered all over this state. … And then there’s marine desal. Marine desal is typically federally regulated … because of the Gulf conversations that it usually involves. The science that allows us to use salt water—marine desal—is well-established, it’s been implemented in Israel and other places around the world for decades. And the one that’s currently going into Corpus Christi was permitted after almost a decade of compliance and application processes. It was pulled in the Biden administration and subsequently was re-permitted after the environmental concerns were addressed. So the science is there. 

[Then there’s the] discharge that comes up out of brackish and produced water out of the oil and gas fields. If you have it in that great of supply, there are commercially viable minerals, rare earths, and other components of those discharges that will literally be a new commercial value. And then the private sector and the scientists of the day will find uses for just about all of [that]. And actually the desal cost on the marine side and the brackish cost is significantly lower than what it was just 10 years ago. So technology keeps advancing.

We’ve had ranchers, some East Texas towns, and a West Texas Baptist church camp raise concerns about the recent permitting of oil and gas wastewater sites by the Texas Railroad Commission. People worry how those might contaminate water supplies. What ideas do you have to address those concerns? Are you talking about literally recycling that water or treating it instead of having to store or inject it?

I have six pilot projects currently ongoing [to study produced water]. Those pilot projects are there to prove out the viability of beneficial use for agriculture as well as possible potable use. We’re testing the crops [and] making sure the soil’s not accumulating any unknown or known constituents at harmful levels. [This] is proving out to be very, very successful. We are doing the testing and the other things required to develop a produced water standard for potable use. We’re probably three years out from the scientific data that’s required to support that. As a practical level, there’s not a single person in that arena that will dispute the fact that today the technology exists to clean up produced water for drinking use. It’s just how far do you want to go with it and how much money you want to spend? 

How big of a priority is it for you to dedicate more funding to improving the efficiency of the current systems and fixing leaks that waste lots of water?

This leaking infrastructure is an issue. We kind of let it go too far, too, so it’s time to address them all. But we’ve got to address supply the most. But I do believe a large part of these communities have actually collected water and sewer fees that were intended to repair leaky pipes and plants and water sewer treatment along the way. And [instead] that was diverted to pay general fund expenses. I’ve been told it’s a $3 to $4 billion dollar number across the state. So as we have the leaky pipe infrastructure conversation, there’s going to have to be transparency and we’re going to have to stop those practices so that the taxpayer is not being double charged for something that should have been done. So we’ll correct that and we’ll put funding in place to address leaky pipes. It just won’t be the priority until we get supply under control.

How soon do you expect to file a bill (or bills) and how confident are you that you can get the votes to pass it with the other competing priorities?

I have 30 ‘“Yeses” in the Senate on the concept of [at least] $1 billion a year. And in the lump sum [proposed total], I have not gotten a single “No.” And as far as that goes, I have not gotten a single “No” with the members in the House with whom I’ve had opportunities to visit. So conceptually, there’s nobody against it. It’s a five-bill package. I’m hoping [tweaks] will be addressed and the Senate will be able to vote on the bills this week.

We need pipelines for water and oil. I prioritize water right under air. We need air to breathe. We can’t last four or five minutes without it. We need water to live. After about four or five days, it’s a problem. And everything else is convenience. You know, energy is awesome. We need electricity. It’s important. It does a lot of great things. But if I had to pick some[thing] I can’t do without, centuries have proved this out, it’s water. If you have water, you have people. And if you don’t, you don’t. So it’s time to address water. 

Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Will Texas Secure Its Water Future? appeared first on www.texasobserver.org

News from the South - Texas News Feed

Dish Soap: The Versatile Cleaning Hero You Didn’t Know You Needed

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www.youtube.com – KPRC 2 Click2Houston – 2025-04-28 10:23:42

SUMMARY: Dish soap is a versatile cleaning tool that goes beyond washing dishes. It can remove hair dye from skin, clean makeup brushes, reduce condensation on windows, stop squeaky doors, and even clear clogged drains. Dish soap works as a gentle insecticide for plants and is effective for cleaning various surfaces. Consumer Reports highlighted top picks, with Dawn Ultra praised for its suds and Gain Ultra Clean for affordability. However, dish soap shouldn’t be used in dishwashers or washing machines as it creates excess suds that can damage appliances. Additionally, excessive use on skin or hair can strip natural oils.

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Discover the incredible versatility of dish soap, a kitchen staple that does more than just cut through grease. Consumer Reports unveils how this soapy superhero can tackle a variety of messes around your home, making it the secret weapon hiding in plain sight.

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News from the South - Texas News Feed

Mostly cloudy, slight chance of storms west of SA tonight

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www.youtube.com – KSAT 12 – 2025-04-28 09:56:50

SUMMARY:

Title: Mostly cloudy, slight chance of storms west of SA tonight.

Summary: Good Monday morning! I’m meteorologist Justin Horn sharing the forecast. Today will be mostly cloudy with temperatures near 90. Although there’s a slight chance of showers tonight due to potential storms from Mexico, it’s unlikely to impact the river parade. Tomorrow should remain quiet, but expect increased rain chances midweek, particularly Wednesday evening with possible strong thunderstorms. A 40% chance of rain is forecast for Wednesday, along with similar chances on Thursday and Friday. Stay weather-aware, especially with ongoing Fiesta events, but no need to cancel plans.

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Better chances of rain by midweek.

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In Booming Central Texas, Wastewater Is Polluting Rivers and Streams

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www.texasobserver.org – Dylan Baddour – 2025-04-28 07:38:00

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared at Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.


Margo Denke set out to rally the town when she learned that a Christian youth camp planned to build a wastewater treatment plant and discharge its effluent into the pristine Hill Country creek that ran through her small ranch.

Denke, a 1981 graduate of Harvard Medical School who moved to the Hill Country in 2013, printed fliers, put them in Ziploc bags and tied them to her neighbors’ cattle gates in the tiny community of Tarpley, population 38. A coalition of families pooled resources, hired a lawyer and dug in for a yearslong battle. 

Theirs was one of many similar struggles that have unfolded in recent years across Central Texas, where protection of creeks and rivers from treated wastewater discharge often falls to shoestring community groups as an onslaught of population growth and development pushes ever deeper into the countryside. 

“All this would have been destroyed,” Denke said in April as she surveyed a spring-fed stretch of Commissioners Creek. “Raising the money to fight this is not easy. But you have to, you can’t let this just slide by.”

Eventually, the camp owner, who did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Climate News, agreed in settlement negotiations not to discharge into the creek. Instead, they would spray their treated effluent over their own property—an increasingly popular means of wastewater disposal. In exchange, the neighbors would drop their opposition to the two-story dam the camp erected for a private lake and waterpark on little Commissioners Creek. 

“I’m trying to stay positive about it,” Denke said. “It was a huge win.” 

But the battle never ends amid the rapid pace of development in Texas. Several miles downstream, another subdivision developer wants to treat wastewater and discharge it into Hondo Creek. And in a neighboring watershed, another community group recently stopped another Christian youth camp from discharging into the Sabinal River. 

Similar stories repeat throughout Central Texas, where two decades of booming population growth have come with a massive increase in domestic wastewater—mostly human sewage. The effluent from wastewater treatment plants appears clean and clear, but it contains high levels of organic nutrients that can cause algae blooms and devastate native aquatic ecosystems when dumped into streams and rivers. 

Stephanie Morris wades through an algae bloom on the South Fork San Gabriel River near her house in Leander. (Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News)

“Unfortunately, society at large has no idea,” said Jeff Back, a staff scientist at Baylor University who has studied nutrient pollution in Texas waterways for 20 years. “Developers want to continue to do their business, but they need to be responsible.”

Now, as the state Legislature meets for its biennial session, advocates for water protection are supporting a bill that would prohibit most new discharges of treated wastewater into the state’s last 21 stretches of pristine rivers and streams, as defined by measured nutrient levels. Filed by state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat from Austin, it’s the latest iteration of a bill that groups have tried repeatedly without success to pass in Texas. 

It wouldn’t ban development along pristine streams. It would just require other outlets for treated wastewater beside the natural waterways. Plenty of solutions are available on the market, from systems for onsite re-use to treatment methods that remove the nutrients from wastewater. 

“People have to understand that it’s not going to be free,” Back said. “People want to do everything as cheaply as possible.”

The luxury of doing things cheaply might not last forever. As Texas cities begin to outgrow their water supplies and state leaders increasingly recognize shortages looming on the horizon, there may come an end to the days of showering lawns with drinking water while dumping treated effluent into rivers for disposal. 

“This effluent should be considered a resource, not a nuisance to get rid of,” said David Venhuizen, a civil engineer in Austin who sells hardware for on-site water reuse.

It could be used to irrigate and fertilize the turf grass of parks, sportsfields, golf courses and private lawns, which make up the bulk of municipal summertime water use in Texas. In existing cities, such reuse has proven prohibitively expensive because plumbing from wastewater treatment plants is expensive to run out to individual customers.

New development, however, could be built to incorporate on-site wastewater reuse, said Venhuizen. His system, buried underground like a septic system, can treat a household’s wastewater, then drip it beneath the lawn. It could also be adapted at neighborhood scale for subdivisions to create a decentralized network of wastewater treatment and local redistribution. 

But the breathless pace of suburban sprawl in Texas leaves no time to pause and make systemic changes. Instead, Texas cities run pipelines to distant aquifers to meet the ever-growing needs of new neighborhoods that will use most of their drinking water on lawns while piping away their effluent for treatment and discharge into a creek. 

“We’re going to continue to rely on extraction instead of any regenerative kind of water systems,” said Venhuizen, 78, on a rocking chair in his backyard fitted with rainwater collection tanks and covered in native plants. “The madness has to stop.”


Stephanie Morris bought a house on the South Fork San Gabriel River, 27 miles north of Austin, in 2013. She wouldn’t have done it if she knew what the beautiful river would become. 

When she and her family moved in, Morris said, the neighbors were already exhausted by a long-running battle with the neighboring city of Liberty Hill over its discharge of treated wastewater into the river about a quarter mile upstream. 

Back then, Liberty Hill had about 1,000 residents, and its discharge created relatively minor algae problems in the river. Then its population exploded, like many other small cities of Central Texas. Now almost 15,000 people live in Liberty Hill, most of them relying on the South Fork San Gabriel for their wastewater disposal needs. 

“There’s a hell of a lot more people pissing in the pond,” said Morris, a high-risk labor and delivery nurse, as she trudged through the green, mucky river in high rubber boots. “Every year things would get worse as their volume increased.”

All those nutrients, primarily from human waste, have caused the riverbed to choke up entirely with algae at times, extending three to five miles downstream and burying native ecosystems. When the algae dies, it sinks and rots in heaps of black, stinking muck. 

Year by year, Morris became increasingly involved, until she spent all of her free time trekking the riverbed and taking photos of the destruction to show to her elected representatives, commissioners of the TCEQ and judges at the administrative law courts in Austin. 

As a result, the TCEQ has twice reduced the concentrations of phosphorus that the Liberty Hill plant is permitted to discharge, although its overall volume continues to increase. The river looks better today than it did several years ago, Morris said. But the fight has nearly exhausted her. 

“This has cost so much time and money, it’s not even funny,” she said. “Private citizens should not have to be enforcing the environmental standards of the state.”

The story of the South Fork San Gabriel, and the pictures that circulated online, jolted other communities to fight against proposed discharges in their areas, said Annalisa Peace, executive director of the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, a group that helps its member organizations challenge the proposed discharge permits in the 21 counties that overlie the Edwards and Trinity aquifers.

“It’s incumbent upon the citizens and GEAA to raise the money for the legal fees to do all this,” Peace said. “It seems to be that the burden is placed on the average citizen.”

Most new wastewater sources come from new housing subdivisions and the municipal utility districts that are established to serve them, she said. Others are commercial projects, from summer camps to music venues, that plan to treat their own wastewater. Much of the new construction, especially near pristine streams, takes place outside of any city’s jurisdiction so it faces little regulation or oversight. 

Previous attempts to pass statewide regulations of discharges into waterways have repeatedly failed, said Peace, who has worked with GEAA for 20 years. Much of the resistance comes from lobbying by major homebuilding companies that are making big money off explosive population growth in Texas. 

“It’s the big nationals that we’re really seeing the most intransigence and the most organized opposition from,” she said. “They don’t like regulation.”

The Texas Association of Builders declined to comment on this report.

Peace wishes for a law increasing treatment standards for wastewater discharge into all Texas waterways. But she’ll settle for the current bill, which protects just the remaining pristine segments, and provides exemptions for cities and river authorities. 


Outside the Texas Legislature, groups have had more success challenging individual permits. Such was the case on the Upper Sabinal River, where another Christian youth camp, operated by the national nonprofit Young Life, proposed in 2019 to build a wastewater treatment plant that would discharge into the river. Local landowners rallied. They gathered 25,000 signatures on a petition and hired a lawyer to challenge the discharge permits. 

Faced with an extensive delay in state administrative courts, Young Life opted to settle instead. Young Life did not respond to a request for comment. 

“Once this became a high-profile issue, they were willing to look at alternatives,” said Jeff Braun, a landowner on the upper Sabinal River and a spokesperson for the Bandera Canyonlands Alliance, which fought the permit. “I think it hit a chord with a lot of people that are native Texans because they all love these iconic streams.”

In an announcement of the settlement agreement in August 2021, Young Life said it would reuse most of its wastewater on-site for irrigation rather than discharging into the river. Regulators call this practice “land application,” and it’s growing in popularity. 

By banning discharges into pristine streams, the bill in the Legislature would effectively force developers in those areas to use land application for wastewater disposal. Although the practice is less impactful to waterways than direct discharge, it can still do damage. 

Mike Clifford, technical director at the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance, said that opposition from community groups has already pushed many developers to seek land application permits. 

“The problem now is we just have too many of these,” he said. “They’re popping up everywhere.”

The TCEQ has issued 413 active permits for land application of treated wastewater, according to online records, and 2,374 active permits for discharge. 

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For example, community groups are currently fighting a planned 10,000-seat amphitheater, luxury hotel and condominium complex on 84 acres nestled next to the Barton Creek Habitat Preserve on Barton Creek, a pristine stream, in Austin. The complex would treat its own wastewater with land application permits to spray up to 120,000 gallons per day of treated effluent onto its property. 

Over time, Clifford said, the nutrient pollutants would accumulate until a big rainstorm washes them into Barton Creek. About five miles upstream, on Fitzhugh Road, another proposed 5,000-person music venue wants to treat its own wastewater and discharge it into ponds near Barton Creek. 

One solution, Clifford said, would be for Texas to require developers to add nutrient removal to their treatment process. 

“It’s just about money,” he said. Nutrient removal “can double the cost of a wastewater treatment plant.” 

With adequate investment, plenty of solutions exist. Some could even be configured to make money that covers part of their costs. For example, some treatment systems that remove nitrogen and phosphorus from water do it by growing algae, which could be harvested and sold as fertilizer. To avoid the buildup of nutrients where effluent is sprayed onto land, grasses can be harvested and sold as hay. Irrigation of hay for livestock is the largest water demand driving shortages in parts of Texas and the West.

Eventually, water scarcity will compel urban planners to make use of wastewater rather than dumping into rivers, said Brian Zabcik, advocacy director for the Save Barton Creek Association, which has pushed for discharge protections on Texas pristine streams through several successive legislative sessions.

“It’s crazy that we’re using our highest-quality drinking water to water our lawns and flush our toilets,” he said. “It makes a lot more sense to use recycled wastewater for those purposes.”

Texas might soon have to consider systemic changes as its population continues to boom, temperatures continue to rise, a multi-year drought persists and water shortages approach. Already, changes are beginning in small pockets. 

Zabcik pointed to West Texas cities of Big Spring and El Paso, national pioneers in the reuse of treated effluent for drinking water. In Austin, a new city government building features on-site wastewater treatment and recycling for non-potable uses. Consumer products exist to do the same at any home, building or neighborhood. 

These aren’t radical practices, said Zabcik, who lives on his grandparents’ ranch in Bell County. Conserving water was part of life for previous generations in Texas. For example, Zabcik said, his grandparents grew a garden, but not with their drinking water; they ran in a pipe from their stock tank. The water from their washing machine drained onto the lawn. 

Passing protections on pristine streams won’t ban development along those stretches, Zabcik said. It will just require new approaches to wastewater use. Although they remain costly for now, prices may come down as necessity boosts demand for new affordable products.

The timeline will depend on whether Texas finds the political will to implement new wastewater systems in advance, or if it waits for scarcity conditions to force its hand.

“We’ve got to reuse every drop,” Zabcik said. “It’s really stupid to be wasting wastewater.”

The post In Booming Central Texas, Wastewater Is Polluting Rivers and Streams appeared first on www.texasobserver.org



Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The content reflects a strong focus on environmental conservation, community activism, and the impact of development on natural resources. It presents the struggles of local communities in Central Texas against wastewater discharge into pristine rivers, framing these efforts as necessary for protecting the environment. The mention of political figures such as Democrat Sarah Eckhardt and advocacy for regulatory changes indicates a tendency toward policies aimed at environmental protection, often associated with more progressive or center-left positions. The article also critiques the role of developers and industry in resisting regulation, which aligns with a broader environmentalist agenda.

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