The Texas House Committee on Natural Resources will gavel in at 10 a.m. Aug. 24 at Weslaco City Hall to hear invited testimony on the state and regional water planning process, the project types eligible for the New Water Supply for Texas Fund, oversight of the Texas Water Development Board and implementation of a 2025 law on jointly operated water and sewer utilities.
Two logistical notes carry weight for anyone hoping to participate: the committee will take no live video feed for this hearing, and registration to testify will be available only on-site, according to the hearing notice. Texans who cannot travel to the Rio Grande Valley can still file written comments on all four topics through the House comment portal until the hearing adjourns.
Chaired by Rep. Cody Harris, R–Palestine, the 13-member panel — seven Republicans and six Democrats — holds jurisdiction over the conservation, control and allocation of water in Texas and over the Water Development Board itself. The choice of venue is pointed: Vice Chair Armando Martinez, D–Weslaco, represents the host city, and the hearing puts the panel in a border region whose supply depends on the Amistad–Falcon reservoir system and on Mexican deliveries under the 1944 U.S.–Mexico water treaty, which Mexico has repeatedly failed to meet on schedule.
The regional water planning charge asks members to examine the data behind long-term demand and supply projections, the criteria used to adopt water management strategies and the progress made against the shortfalls identified in the most recent plan. The timing is deliberate. The Water Development Board unanimously adopted the 2027 State Water Plan on July 23, built from 16 regional plans. It projects the state’s population climbing 53 percent over 50 years, from 34.2 million in 2030 to 52.3 million in 2080, while existing drought-reliable supplies fall 10 percent. Meeting the gap would take roughly 6,700 recommended strategies and 3,000 projects at an estimated capital cost of about $174 billion; failing to build them, the board estimates, would expose Texas to $91 billion in drought-driven economic damage in 2030 and $177 billion a year by 2080. The Texas Dispatch reported in May that the draft carried a record-breaking price tag, and covered the board’s final work session on the plan this month.
The innovative-supply charge turns to the New Water Supply for Texas Fund, the account created alongside the Texas Water Fund when voters approved Proposition 6 in 2023 and directed the board to finance projects yielding 7 million acre-feet of new supply by the end of 2033. Eligible categories run to marine and brackish desalination, treated oil-and-gas produced water, aquifer storage and recovery, and the conveyance needed to move those supplies. Members are asked to identify what is slowing those projects down — a question the Legislature has been circling all interim, as the Dispatch documented when senators pressed regulators on the produced-water rollout this month.
The monitoring charge covers Senate Bill 1169, which rewrote Chapter 572 of the Local Government Code to broaden which public entities may jointly or concurrently provide water and sewer service and to expand the financing tools available to public utility agencies. The oversight charge invokes the committee’s authority under Section 301.014 of the Government Code to monitor the Water Development Board for fraud, waste and abuse — a review that arrives days after the board approved the first budget request of the dedicated-water-money era, following the November 2025 passage of Proposition 4, which routes up to $1 billion a year in sales tax revenue to the Texas Water Fund from 2027 through 2047.
The panel has been an active questioner of large water users this interim; Meta filed a detailed defense of its Texas resource footprint with the committee in July. Because this is an interim hearing, members will take no votes on legislation. What they hear in Weslaco will shape the committee’s interim report and the water bills lawmakers carry into the 90th Legislature, which convenes in January 2027.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 10:00 AM CT, Monday, August 24, 2026
- Where
- Legislative Chamber, Weslaco City Hall, 255 S. Kansas Ave., Weslaco
- Chair
- Rep. Cody Harris, R–Palestine (HD-8)
- Vice Chair
- Rep. Armando Martinez, D–Weslaco (HD-39)
- Format
- Invited testimony only; witness registration on-site only, by card returned to committee staff; electronic public comment accepted on all four posted topics until adjournment; interim charges only — no vote on legislation
- Live video
- Not available for this hearing, per the notice; the chamber’s archive remains at house.texas.gov/video-audio
- Submit comments online
- comments.house.texas.gov/home?c=c390 (until adjournment)
- Full agenda
- Official hearing notice (capitol.texas.gov)
Committee members
- Rep. Cody Harris, R–Palestine (HD-8) — Chair
- Rep. Armando Martinez, D–Weslaco (HD-39) — Vice Chair
- Rep. Trent Ashby, R–Lufkin (HD-9)
- Rep. Jeff Barry, R–Pearland (HD-29)
- Rep. Cecil Bell Jr., R–Magnolia (HD-3)
- Rep. Brad Buckley, R–Salado (HD-54)
- Rep. Caroline Fairly, R–Amarillo (HD-87)
- Rep. Erin Elizabeth Gámez, D–Brownsville (HD-38)
- Rep. Josey Garcia, D–San Antonio (HD-124)
- Rep. Mary E. González, D–Clint (HD-75)
- Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., D–Fort Worth (HD-90)
- Rep. Denise Villalobos, R–Corpus Christi (HD-34)
- Rep. Erin Zwiener, D–Driftwood (HD-45)