This week's episode of the trip Cast is sponsored by Water Grows. All Right, hello, and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip Cast for January twenty eighth, twenty twenty five. I am Matthew Watkins, Editor in chief of the Texas Tribune. We are joined as usual by Eleanor Klibanoff, whose campaign continues to change the name of the trib Cast to the clib Cast.
I would say it's my campaign. I would say it's the people's campaign. You know, it's a one party, one platform issue, all right.
Well, and one supporter too, one supporter. And we have James Barragon, whose weekend was just ruined by the announcement of the State of the State speech on Sunday.
Oh, not ruined. I'm fine, all right.
Well, I mean, if you like to work on your weekends, that's.
Look on the positive side, that's the day and a half to.
Enjoy, all right.
So today we will be endeavoring to convince James to get excited about water policy. But before that, we're going to talk a little little bit about what's happened in the news this week. We have, you know, talked in previous episodes about you know, the obviously the Dustin Burrows's election to speaker, but also the campaign against him, one of which was around, you know, the effort to get
rid of democratic committee chairs in the Texas House. It appears as though the hardline conservatives pushing for that may have lost the speakers race, but at least one on this issue that they've been pursuing for multiple legislative sessions. James tell us a little bit about what happened with the rules recently.
Well, yeah, surprising that you put it that way, because I think if you ask them, they would not see themselves as big winners. In fact, they said that Democrats have more power, which I think realistically and like objectively, that is not true. In the rules, it says that the majority party will hold committee chairmanships and the minority party will have vice chairmanships, so that effectively strips Democrats from being allowed to run committees, which is exactly what
they wanted. Now, I think we have to be intellectually honest about this that it's one of the things that they wanted. It's the big thing that they rallied around, But there are a bunch of other things that those hardline conservatives wanted that they did not get, which is what they are sort of yelling about. And they're what they're making a big fuss about. Democrats and the Speaker. Burrows's Republican coalition are saying, hey, like, we gave you
guys exactly what you wanted. The Democrat chairs are gone, and the hardline Conservatives are saying, well, that's just one thing. And I've just pulled up the contract with Texas, which is what they basically are saying, that they are following.
The contract to Texas. Is what the kind of more.
It's like the pledge that they came up with for the Conservatives, yeah, which Cook had signed and said, Cook being David Cook of Mansfield, the other candidate for speaker who lost obviously. But you know, just going down the list here, you only still support for speakership from Republican members. Obviously neither of them did that. And the practice of awarding Democrats with committee chairmanship, that's high, that's number two,
and Burrows has done that. And sure all GOP legislative priorities receive a floor vote before any Democrat bills that has not been codified in the rules. Replace the current liberal these are their words. Liberal parliamentarians with staff committed to only offering advice on adherence to House rules, not advancing their personal ideology. They're referring to Hugh Brady, a Democrat who was a parliamentarian and he is gone. Now there is only one parliamentarian.
Which is the parliamentarian. For people who don't.
Know, parliamentariy basically interprets the rules and make sure the make sure makes sure that the whatever body it is is running according to the rules. And so there's a whole list of these, but you can see that there is like differences here right the The next one that I see is limiting the speaker to two terms to reduce their power over individual members. That also is not
in the rules. And so what the hardliners wanted to do this week and last week and the rules is to put these things in to codify them, to say you were going to commit to the entire contract with Texas. The thing is that Burrows never committed to those things, and so they can say, but this is the contract that we had committed to. Burrows never committed to. So there's like truth in both spaces. But I think overall to your initial question is like, what are we going
to see. I think we have to be again intellectually honest and say there's going to be a more conservative session no matter which way you slice it.
Well, James, I mean we're sort of a broken record on this, but you have continuously made the point on this podcast that this is less about ideal ideology and more about power, right, And you know, I think we have to ask the question, is this situation where if I wonder if Burrows is asking this question too, Like, if he gives this group what they want on one thing, are they just going to start then saying I want
this instead, you know? And if the point is to be kind of going after this speaker and they seem kind of committed to doing that throughout this legislative session, is is this a sort of impossible battle to win in terms of getting the support and getting people to say, you know, be happy with his speakership this session?
Right?
I am not in Burrows' head, so I wouldn't know. But what we've seen with previous speakers is they said Joe Strauss is too liberal and he only gives us a little bit of red meat so that some members can go back to their districts and say they passed conservative legislation and then the rest of us get shut out. So then Straus steps down. Bonnin comes in, he's clearly a more conservative speaker. He goes further to the right, and then they say this guy's not conservative enough. Then
he goes down. Feelim comes in, he's more conservative, passes more conservative legislation and they say he is not conservative enough. Comes in and they're saying he's not conservative enough. Each of these guys has gone consistently more and more conservative, and it's just never enough for the hard right. That is their prerogative and that is what they say their voters come to represent. But they will keep fighting that fight until the cows come home.
I think, well, it's also interesting, as you have listed this kind of progression of more conservative speakers, that faction that's been unhappy with that leadership in the hard right has grown during that time as well. You know, so kind of an interesting dynamic there what's gone.
Through waves, hasn't it like the Freedom Caucus was, you know, they they certainly were very active in twenty seventeen, and then they kind of waned, I think thanks to Speaker Bondon who really managed the Chamber and the inter chamber relationships. Well, and then they've popped back up. I don't know. I think it's come and gone. But certainly this year there are more people, more lawmakers aligned with that view. Okay, that's for multiple reasons.
Quickly, before we move on what impact on governing? Does not having democratic chairs have this legislative session?
If any?
I mean, I think the conservatives are right. Democrats leading committees obviously helps Democrats. You think about things, and I've come up with a few examples. You think about in twenty twenty one, Herald Dunton leading public education in the twenty twenty one second special Session, he refused to advance legislation that restricted transgender student athletes, and there was a lot of pressure coming from the Lieutenant governor to pass that.
That was SB two in that special session, clearly a priority bill. That bill got killed in twenty twenty one. You think about Chairman Pancho Navarrees in twenty nineteen saying there wouldn't be a hearing on open Caerry legislation because some gun rights activists had gone and bothered lawmakers at their homes, which is pretty reprehensible, but Pancho says, no more of that and it's done. Obviously, that legislation later passed,
but it was blocked. You think of people like Missus t and Fronie Thompson and Houston in twenty nineteen leading public at public education, I'm sorry, public health, and so then the abortional legislation stops going to public health and starts going to the state affairs. I mean, there clearly is a stopper, and this is the way representative government works, right, so I think there will be an impact. I think to ignore these concerns that the Conservatives are saying is
to not be honest about this. But it's also fair to say that this is representative government and just because they're the minority government doesn't mean that they should be completely shut out, which is I think what Borrows is trying to get out with these vice chairs and these sub committees, which will have to wait and see what impact they actually have. But the Conservatives are obviously concerned about that because they think that's a run around. No charite for Democrats.
Yeah, ultimately, I mean, when you're a committee chair, you know every bill has to go through a committee in the House for it reaches the full floor. When your committee chair you can control what comes up for a hearing. A lot of bills get rewritten in committee, so there is a considerable amount of power there for sure. All Right, I want to talk next about both chambers filing their baseline budgets for the legislative session.
This is Matthew's favorite day of the year.
I do you know again, the budget the most important bill of the session every year, even though it maybe doesn't cause as much excitement as a lot of the other ones. Eleanor what were the highlights that you saw?
Well, I will say and just a brief anecdote to get inside the mind of Matthew Watkins. Two years ago when we were at this point, I remember our former colleague Karen Brooks Harper came to me and was like, Matthew has asked me to cover the budget. And I was like, it's like when a cat brings you a mouse as a present and you're like, thank you, I don't want that, but I know it came with love. You love the budget. Karen actually does love the budget.
Also a nerd, I would say, you know, the budget is the only thing the Texas Ledges has to pass. They could pass that, they could go home it's an idea. I think they should consider it. But assuming they're not going to do that. I mean, the budget has, like all the high priority items, I think a lot of it was not a huge surprise. They are, as how Speaker Boroughs said, substantially identical between the House and the Senate. Obviously, the working out the details is what you know, will
take up most of the session. I think the big thing we were seeing is, you know, a big increase in funding for vouchers. You know, this has obviously been a Conservative priority for a long time. Seems like they've got the votes this session, and this increase in funding definitely makes it seem like, you know, they don't want to take a half step into vouchers, they want to
run into that pretty significantly. And then also as sort of promised funding increases for public education to go into that increases for teachers rural teachers, which we should say the teacher groups feel like is not is still not enough. So figure out how to balance those two things. The one thing I will say, in my universe, in the health world, that's like a very big deal, a very small line item comparably to some of these big numbers.
But the Texas Health and Human Services Commission has asked for three hundred million dollars to improve their Medicaid enrollment system, which is in the health world a huge deal. We've written a decent amount about that, and so that made it into both budgets, and I think people are pretty optimistic that that's going to happen.
Yeah, you know.
I think two things you look for in those base budgets, which can very much change and will change over the coming months, are where this is there agreement right, Where do they have similar amounts of money, Where are their difference is, and how does that change compared to previous years.
So we saw both both chambers two point five billion dollars to spend on broadband expansion in the state, two point five billion dollars to spend on water infrastructure we'll talk more about that later, five billion dollars on the grid, three point five billion dollars to go toward property taxes, and as you mentioned, a billion dollars for school vouchers, which is double what was in the budget last session
five hundred million dollars. We also saw a voucher bill get filed in the Senate that kind of laid out at least the Senates proposal for what that would be. Again, we're talking about spending double the amount of money, the proposal being ten thousand dollars to give you know, basically parents who want to send their kids to private school, maybe around two thousand dollars for parents who are going
to homeschool their kids, things like that. They would prioritize low income children and kids with disabilities in that range. When you talk about ten thousand dollars per student, you're talking about, you know, funding for around one hundred thousand students in that realm. Worth noting, there's an estimated two hundred and ninety thousand private school students in Texas right now.
So even though it is a a significant increase in what they wanted to spend last year, it's still not enough to cover the students who are already in Texas public schools. So I think one question that will come up if that is indeed how much they end up spending, is will there then be immediate demand to spend more in upcoming sessions from there?
Yeah, I think that's definitely. Like, I mean, obviously, through as we've talked about previous episodes like Strategic Winning of certain seats, Like these policies have the numbers. It seems like it seems like Voucher's is going to happen this session. That doesn't mean that, Like the way the bill is written today is like everyone agrees, we all shake hands, and.
We go home.
Like there's a lot of this to sort out, and you know, Texas legislators are not overly fond of spending money, so you know, the more expensive this starts to look, obviously it's still going to get the support, but there might be sort.
Of more guards on the borders, and they're very happy.
Actually there's a lot of things they want to spend money on.
But I think that the agreement on the one billion dollars is huge too. I was just trying to look up here the tweet from the governor where he sort of tweeted out approvingly of the billion dollar budget, and he said something like, I can't find the tweet right now, but like, you know, this is a great start, and I think the indication that the Senate and the House are both out of billion dollars shows you that the governor is also involved in sort of the settling on
that number. So I'm not sure that is actually going to change.
Yeah, how does this bode for I mean there is I took notice about how much agreement there was on these big ticket items. How much does this bode for the ability of the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor to get along this legislative session.
Well, go for it.
I found it interesting. Obviously, Lieutenant Governor Patrick was very critical or perhaps not critical. Yeah, I mean he was critical at Burroughs, he was critical at Burrows, and he was clearly very supportive of Cook saying that he was the House GOP Caucus nominee. Right, But in the aftermath of the action, I've sort of seen like him leaving the door open and saying like Burrows will have the opportunity to prove that he is going to be the
most conservative speaker. And Burrows, i think, compared to Feelin, is like a player, and he is like he knows the chamber, he knows the inter chamber relationships. He's been involved in a lot of these negotiations. I think he's going to be a lot more forceful and perhaps tactful and how he deals both handling interchamber inter chamber battles and intra chamber battles, So I'm kind of curious to see how that plays out. The litank Nuver has kind of backed off a little bit, I think yeah.
And also, I mean last session, obviously there was a great discord between perhaps the three, the big three, and you know, I think Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has shown a willingness to sort of, you know, hold out and not necessarily play nice with the other chamber. But also, as he has noted, you know, his chamber has repeatedly passed a lot of these top priority legislations and a top parity legislation and it gets stalled out in the House.
And so you know, is it perhaps in his best interest to try to play nice with the House speaker when there is widespread agreement on a lot of this.
I just would say yes. And looking ahead, State of the State address is on Sunday. As you previously mentioned, the Governor is going to come out with his emergency items. Lieutenant Governor Patrick has said, we've got to go, we've got to get moving on these things. And the House is known typically for rolling a little bit slower, rolling a little bit slower, and so it'll be curious to see once the Senate because I have no doubt that the Senate will hit the ground running and get going
on a bunch of these things. How quickly the House will move, And I think if the House doesn't move as quickly as the Lieutenant Governor wants it, then you might see some of this tension start to build up.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably safe to assume that school vouchers will be an emergency item which will allow the legislature to move more quickly. The I believe as we are recording this, the Senate is having a hearing on the bill, and I you know, once that speech happens on Friday and I mean Sunday and it is declared an emergency item, the Senate I would expect, will move, you know, in early February to pass that bill.
So we could be in a situation where, you know, this this aspect of the legislature is decided quite quickly. So James, as already mentioned, on Sunday, you will be doing your favorite Sunday activity of covering.
You were Lord's Days people.
You are jubilant.
What else do you expect from that? What are you watching for?
I'm curious to see what we do with border stuff. Obviously, Republicans have a partner now in the federal government, but there's still a lot of money dedicated in the budget for border security and immigration enforcement, so I wonder what will happen there. I'm also curious there's always been this ongoing issue of bail reform and I think election integrity.
I don't have a whole lot of insight into the governor, but yeah, I'm curious about those issues because they've been things that he's been very supportive of in the past. But yeah, I'm kind of curious because there's been so much focus on vouchers that I wonder what else he's
sort of been thinking about. And also, one more thing, we talk about this sort of line that the governor walks between, you know, traditional Republicans who are more business friendly and think about things like infrastructure, which I know we're going to talk about next, and the social conservatives who want to fight a lot about LGBT rights and abortion and all these things. Right, So I wonder what he will signal in sort of his attempt to walk that line.
Well, speaking of wanting to know what people are thinking, we would also like to know what our audience is thinking. We were interested in possibly answering some questions or topic discussing topics that people send in. So if you have any comments, questions, thoughts for the trip cast, things you'd like us to discuss, shoot us an email trip Cast at Texastribune dot org. If you happen to be the governor and you're listening, you know you were also welcome.
You are welcome in boxes invited too.
Yeah.
In fact, we would give you the you know, the welcome of the century.
Yeah, but you also don't have to be the governor, so so right in all right, Well, we are going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors.
Eleanor is going.
To hop off because she has another speaking engagement, but we're going to talk about water after that. See you later, Eleanor, Thank you so much. Water grows our food economy and future. Discover how Texas farmers make strides to make water last for Texans now and for generations to come more at Water Grows dot Org. Okay, Texas summers might seem hot and dry now, but the worst it was even worse
in the nineteen fifties. Between nineteen forty nine and nineteen fifty seven, Texas received between thirty percent and fifty percent less rainfall as during normal years. The drought wiped out half of the state's farming industry. More than a thousand cities and communities had to implement water use restriction restrictions during that time. It's now referred to as the drought of record in Texas, and Texas uses that time as a benchmark to measure the sufficiency of its water infrastructure
moving forward. Jeremy Maser, who is our guest right now, director of Natural Resources and Infrastructure Policy at the Texas twenty thirty six think tank, recently assessed that readiness and the results were not encouraging, at least from my eye. Jeremy is our guest. Welcome, Thank you for joining us.
Matthew James, thank you so much for having me here. It's great to be here this morning.
Right, so great to have you. Let's talk about this nineteen fifties type drought situation, because you wrote a report on this, and you led the report basically saying that we could potentially see some major damage we see another drought like that in the future, lay out for us that scenario, that sort of worst case scenario we could face.
So we Texas.
Twenty thirty six, we released a report assessing Texas water infrastructure needs and those basically fall into two buckets.
First, we need to expand.
Our water supply portfolio for drought prone and growing state. We can talk more about this later, but droughts are part of the Texas experience. If you've been here for a year, ten years, a century, you know we're drought proman state. The second bucket of challenges we face relates to the issues of aging, deteriorating drinking water and waste
water systems. And thanks of the Texas Tribune, you guys have covered a lot of stories across the state from East Texas to West Texas, even in the Valley of aging, deteriorating systems that are failing, falling apart and leaking and really becoming liabilities to the communities that they serve. But starting with a drought issue and the need to expand our water supplies. So in the nineteen fifties, we had this drought of record, and that was the worst recorded drought.
It's worse since like eighteen ninety five or something like that. I started recording, Yeah, we started.
Recording in eighteen ninety fourteen ninety five year righte. And there were droughts around World War One and the nineteen thirties, which is with the Dutch dust Bowl, But the nineteen fifties drought was pretty unique in terms of its duration and its severity. And what was remarkablet that drought It really prompted two things to start happening in Texas. First, it began our campaign of water planning and aggressively developing
more water supplies, principally water wells and reservoirs. But the nineteen fifties drought also began this huge economic and cultural shift in the Texas where we became we started becoming less of an rural agrarian state, and a lot of people started moving towards them the cities. And so I think you know cities where the more majority of people live today. That trend started during the drive up record of the nineteen fifties.
Right And so you, like you said, you identified kind of two different needs that the state has in order to meet this. One is sort of finding new water supply in the state. The other is fixing those broken
water and wastewater systems. The total that you put together, I believe in this report or your team put together is that we in order to do those two things sufficiently to be prepared for a nineteen fifties type drought, we would need to spend one hundred and fifty four billion dollars over the next fifty years.
That's right, Matthew. What we did is we looked at the cost.
Estimates in the state Water Plan as well as those from the EPA on how much needs to be spent over the next couple decades for fixing and rehabilitating, our aging, deciorating drinking water and wastewater systems. And when we adjusted those numbers, those cost estimates for inflation, we see that the state is going to need to spend at least one hundred and fifty four billion dollars over the next
half centuries on water infrastructure. But the good news is we have some existing programs that are already working to provide financial assistance, such as the Texas Water Fund approved by voters and Propositions six last year, the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas that voters approved eleven years ago. But these existing funds are only going to be able to provide according to estimates, about forty to forty five
billion dollars worth of long term financial assistance. Say that emergan about forty to forty five billion dollars in the long run of financial assistance, And so we're seeing that there's going to be a big financial assistance funding gap to just north of one hundred and ten billion dollars of what the state really needs to pony up to invest in order to fix our waterf structured challenges.
How did we get so far behind? Here? Is it?
I mean, Texas obviously a place that's growing a lot. How much is this growth, how much of it is under investment in the past. What's what put us in this position in twenty twenty?
And are we an out are we in an outlier compared to other states?
Well, I you know other I think what's unique about Texas is, you know, unlike other states such as Florida, New York, you know, Illinois, they really don't have drought and water supply issues like we do.
I think, you know, our water supply.
Challenges are certainly analogous to what's being seen in the desert southwest with California, Arizona, and New Mexico, which is which is in the in the throes of actually a mega drought right now. But I think also the issues that we have with ageing, deteriorating drinking water and wastewater systems, those are not just a Texas problem. I mean those also exist in Florida, California, from from coast to coast.
But Matthew, you asked, how did, how did how? How is it?
How has it?
Why has it come to this?
And I think there are several factors that have been accelerating and aggravating our water infrastructure challenges. First, when we look at the data, such as studies we've done in partnership with the off state climatologists, we're seeing that droughts and extreme heat are accelerating the strains on our water supplies. The hotter it gets, the quicker your lakes and reservoirs dry up.
Uh.
You know, the less rain that we have means that there's less water in those surface water resources, but also means that we're drawing a.
Lot more from our groundwater.
And so what's happening with the weather has been accelerating the strains on water supplies. There's also the issue of population and economic growth. If you talk with water policy people, they're going to say there's a lot of people coming to Texas and they're not bringing water with them.
That's true, but there's also.
A a unique expansion in water intensive industries in Texas as part of the Texas economic miracle, where you have a growth in the energy sector, semiconductor manufacturers, data centers, just to name a few, that all have to use water resources in order to work. And the state's political economy as such is that's very attractive for these industries and businesses to move here, which is good economic growth and jobs, but that's also accelerating the strains on our
water resources. And then the last issue is Matthew's you pointed to in your question. The state's financial assistance policy has been incremental over time, and so what we haven't really seen as a sustained, concerted, reliable effort to address these long term funding needs for water infrastructure.
You touched a little bit on the economic impact of this, and I want to dig a little bit deeper in there. You you talk about it a little bit in your report about how a lot of the big infrastructure commercial investments, industrial investments in the state recently have been accompanied by communities where those investments have happened really, you know, taking big steps to increase their long term water supply, things like the Samsung plant north of Austin and things like that.
One of the things you really talk about is that if this is felt, you know, I mean, you know, we've seen communities go through water crisis. Is you truck in water from other places, you get water bottles and everything like that. But what you could really see is a reluctance for companies and organizations to invest in the
state if that water is not done. You say, if we see another nineteen fifties strought, we could see losses annual GDP losses of one hundred and sixty billion dollars, nearly eight hundred thousand jobs lost, and what you describe as a potential exodus from the state if we don't address these needs. What does it actually look like for Texas if we don't meet the water demand needs going forward?
There's extraordinary downside risk if we fail to develop the water infrastructure that we need a lot of that's described in the report that I wrote with Texas twenty thirty six.
Also, it's explored in more.
Detail by a report by Gabe Collins with A Baker Institute at Rice University, who we also partnered with to explore the economic costs and benefits of water infrastructure investment, and so we know what would likely be the potential economic losses in terms of millions of jobs lost, a diaspora of people leaving the state looking for opportunity and potentially water elsewhere, and not to mention the one hundred and sixty plus billion dollars per year in GDP losses,
which were comparison is worse than the economic losses observed during the COVID pandemic and the Great Recession. But there are some fascinating examples that we point to in our report of what inadequate water infrastructure has meant for other economies. Australia saw some negative growth in its GDP during the Millennial Drought between the early twenty and twenty fifteen. Same
thing for Cape Town, South Africa. And there are some fascinating examples from the rest of the world of how not only you actually realize and see this economic downturn, but there's also cases of businesses and industries shutting down and not working anymore absent absent drought and reliable water supplies are increasingly becoming a part of the economic development equation in Texas. When I've been talking with state leaders, a lot of them are saying, like, Hey, we're talking
with companies they want to come to Texas. They're like so many things here. The question we're getting asked is if we have enough reliable water.
Right And we've seen this in some ways kind of already start to play out in regions this day. The talk a little bit about what's happening in the Rio Grand Valley.
The Rio Grand Valley comes in and out of trouble almost like every two years.
I mean twenty twenty two. August of that year, the water levels in.
Lake Amistan and Lake Falcone were at precipitous lows, and city managers were looking at emergency measures they may have to implement in order to avoid cutting people off of water. Fortunately, a tropical depression came over, put a bunch of water in the river, saved the day for a little while. But again in twenty twenty four, low water conditions in the Rio Grand Valley have begun to precipitate some real
economic consequences. Notably when a year ago the Santa Rosa sugar mill closed, and that is a business that provided you know, over five hundred jobs within the region and about five hundred million plus in regional GDP. In addition to seeing that that that farm close, were the sugar cane farm closed, we're also seeing that we're also hearing that the citrus industry is under duress due to drought conditions.
And I think the Rio Grande Valley is becoming a bit of a canary in the coal mine for Texas in terms of describing what can happen, when, what will go wrong, and what economic horrors will be visited on your region if you have insufficient water supplies.
All right, let's talk about the two quick kind of areas that need investment very quickly. One, as we already mentioned water supplies. You know this actual water you know that the state needs to draw from. You've you listed the water supply deficit as being nearly six point nine
million acre feet of water. For people to understand, one acre foot serves around two to three houses per year, So if you're six point nine million acre feet short, you're talking about somewhere around like seventeen million your short the shortage being about enough to serve seventeen million houses per year. In that realm. Of course, it's more than just houses that draw from the water. It's you know, in industry and agriculture and everything like that. But what
are the solutions there? I mean, obviously you need to invest money, but is that money to build reservoirs like desalination like what is what actually needs to be built and done in this state in order to get to where we need to be for that supply.
So our six point nine million projected six point nine million acre foot water supply deficit comes from the most recent state water plan prepared by the Texas Water Development Board. What needs to happen is the state needs to invest in a broad, diversified water supply portfolio. And some of these projects are going to be the same types of water supply technologies they used in the Roman Empire, your
groundwater wells and your reservoirs. But I think a lot of those types of easier water supply projects relatively easier are I mean, a lot of those have already been built, and so there's not a lot of easier water to develop. I think we're going to have to lean into technology innovation and water supply diversification in order to meet that six point nine million, six point nine million acre foot water supply deficit, and so we're going to be talking
about greater water conservation. I think water reuse in recycling is exciting that can be done, that can expand the water supply portfolio.
And we're also going to.
Talk about desalination, seawater and brackish water. But also we need to have a bigger conversation about moving water from the water rich areas of the state to the areas that needed the most.
Yeah, and that's where I think some of the politics come into play. It's not just is there support to spending this kind of money, right, It's like whenever there's an idea to build a reservoir in the state, there's
a lot of landowner resistance. Whenever a company, you know, whether a city wants to pipe in water from you know, across the state, you hear a lot of concern about the local uh, you know, the people who are local there saying, you know, why are they taking water away from our community?
Right?
Exactly how much of that is a hurdle? Do you feel like in addition to just the spending, and.
Also with desalination, I mean, how effective is desalination, and is there concern from lawmakers about the efficiency of desalination, like going forward, like if you invest billions of dollars in desalination, Yeah, how efficient will that?
Actually, well it's a Matthew will start with you, then James will talk about de cell and so you know, I've followed water policy and the legislature for the past twenty five years. And what's interesting is like all of those water policy fights are regional and local.
They don't really break down on partisan lines.
And there are some regions that are fiercely protective of their water resources for good reason. That supports the regional identity, that supports their regional economy, and the prospect of moving water from one part of the state to another is easier say it said that done. The same thing with reservoirs. I mean, there have been some reservoirs on the books for decades that have still not been built, but are are just politically challenging to develop, owing two concerns about
water supply development or even condemning condemning that land. James, you asked about desalination and what are what are legislators thinking about desalination? I would say that Over the past twenty years, there has been a growing crescendo of interest in dec salnation among within within the within the House, incentate leaders in the legislature. Desalination has the benefit of
being a little bit more drought proof. There's I mean, unless a meteor hits it, there's always gonna be water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is a good thing. But it's always been expensive to do in energy intensive and so I think the the load demands of desalination plants are something that need to be taken into consideration, especially as we have increasing load demands across our electric grid, as our economy and population continues to grow. There is opportunity,
there is promise in desalination. Will it be the panacea or silver bullet that solves every region's problems? That that probably We're probably not at the scale and position to do that yet, But desalination is going to be playing more of a robust part in contributing to a water supply portfolio.
And then the other part of this to actually maybe the more expensive part of this is just the pipes that are in the ground across Texas are crumbling. They're starting to break down, some of that is in fact worsened when drought comes and it causes the ground to shift. But I mean, you've identified ninety five billion dollars to fix broken water and waste water systems. There's an astounding amount of water leaking out of pipes in Texas that's causing waste and causing us to need more supply.
Tell us a little bit about that situation.
Yeah, So this this is data from the Texas Living Waters Project, which which found that our aging, deteriorating, leaking, drinking water systems leak enough water five hundred and seventy two thousand acre feet to be exact to fill a major state reservoir like Possum Kingdom up north, like Buchanan here in central Texas. So our inefficiencies alone are just shoving water supplies out the window, and so we're waste a lot to begin with. But then we have these
bigger issues of aging, deteriorating and failing systems. And the Tribune has done a great job of providing coverage of incidents that have ocurred over the past few years, such as the boil water notices and water condamination in the Rato. The thirty five year old trunk line that broke in and Odessa, leaving the town without water for forty eight hours.
Even the system failure in Zavala. Y'all's coverage of these water system failures has been impressive and it provides very good anecdotal data with regard to this bigger problem of systems that are operating well past their useful life and are really becoming economic liabilities to these communities.
And the EPA has estimated that this cities need about sixty one point three billion dollars in financial assistance over the next twenty years, so about a little bit over three billion dollars a year to help address some of these issues. The past four years, that average was around two hundred and seventy five million, So we're talking about the need being identified being about ten times what is
currently being spent per year in the state. So it all sort of comes down to, I think, no matter what, there's a lot of money that needs to be spent here. We talked a little bit earlier two point five billion dollars identified in the budget or the proposed budget from both chambers this year. Your report in fact called for
five billion. That's also what Senator Charles Perry, who's been kind of taking a lot of the lead on this, particularly in the Senate, on this issue called for Are you worried about the political will to actually get this done? I mean, it's just hard to commit money in a fiscally conservative state like this.
So yes, we recommended that, you know, there'd be a five billion dollar initial endowment for the Texas Water Fund and the consideration of approving a one billion per fiscal year revenue dedication to that fund for the decades to come. The two point five billion that the House and Senate have initially approved for water infrastructure is an extraordinary good signal.
This is the highest appropriation we've ever seen the state make for water infrastructure, more than the one billion dollars for Prop six last year and the two billion dollars for the Swift And so the legislature is already sending a bright, clear, strong signal that they want to prioritize water infrastructure investment. But that two point five billion, which hopefully we can go higher to five, it's not going to come close to closing that one hundred and ten
billion dollar water infrastructure funding gap. And so that's why we think that dedicated funding which we already use for state parks and we already use for state highways. That financial strategy is a kind of model that we need to use in order to tackle our water infrastructure challenges.
The idea here is that in recent years with transportation with state parks things like that, the legislature has essentially made it so that's automatic that a certain amount of revenue coming in goes to that, like you say, dedicated fund.
Yeah, and these were constitutional amendments that were approved by voters in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen that would dedicate state sales and severance taxes to the state Highway Fund.
So what do you feel like is the biggest like, what worries you the most about this? What's the biggest hurdle that's going to have to be crossed to going from to raise the confidence in our kind of long term expectations for water.
In the state.
I think the House and Senate leadership have sent a great signal thus far. I mean, two point five billion dollars for water infrastructure. It's a lot of money, great start, and we should end them for their leadership on this issue. Getting to yes on a revenue dedication is going to
be the challenge. And at Texas twenty thirty six, we've been working with Chambers of Commerce eedcs, the business and industry community and helping make the case for the legislature on why water infrastructure investment is so important for economic growth and development. Most people in the legislaturead I'll say, everyone really likes the benefits of the Texas economic miracle, economic growth, population growth, jobs, good stuff is happening here.
They want that to continue, and they know that in order for that to happen, you have to have three things. One qualified workforce, two dependable electric grid, and three reliable water infrastructure. But if we want to have that reliable water infrastructure, that's got to be dedicated funding for it.
I think that's going to be.
It's certainly an uphill fight, but it's not an instrumental, insurmountable policy discussion for this session.
All right, well, we will watch and see how it goes.
Thank you Jeremy for coming and explaining this complicated but important issue to us. Thank you to our producers, Rob and Chris, and thank you to our sponsor water Grows. Once again, if people have comments, questions, things they want us to discuss, tripcast at Texastribune dot org.
We will be back next week