Reporting on Texas water -- drought and supply, reservoirs and groundwater, utility infrastructure, conservation rules, and the growing competition for a finite resource.
Texas oil and gas wells throw off roughly 26 million barrels of salty wastewater a day, and operators pump nearly 30 million barrels a day back underground.
Corpus Christi can continue holding back the fresh water it owes Nueces Bay until its reservoirs are half full, Texas environmental regulators decided Sept. 9, affirming a drought emergency order without changing a word.
The four-member state board that has to sign off before most Texas bonds reach the market meets Sept. 17 to vote on a water borrowing authorized at up to $2.2 billion.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologists are monitoring a red tide bloom off the Galveston coast that has produced fish kills and prompted reports of respiratory irritation among beachgoers, the agency said in a Sept. 14 media statement.
Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas Water Development Board on Sept. 14 to compel major water users, including data centers, to comply with state water use reporting requirements and to impose legal consequences for past and future failures to do so.
Nearly half of Texas voters say it is “extremely important” for the state to prioritize water projects, according to new polling released Sept. 8 by Texas 2036, a nonpartisan policy organization.The group said 49 percent of voters gave the issue that highest rating and another 30 percent called it “very important,” putting the combined share at 79 percent.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s executive director signed an emergency order on Aug. 25 letting Corpus Christi stop sending fresh water downstream to Nueces Bay.
The Texas Water Development Board will decide Sept. 10 whether to spend $69.5 million lining and piping irrigation canals in the Rio Grande Valley, the state's half of a $164 million package assembled with a bank the United States and Mexico own together.
Texas environmental regulators will decide Sept. 9 whether to let Corpus Christi keep water in its reservoirs that it would otherwise have to send downstream to Nueces Bay.
The governor, lieutenant governor, comptroller and speaker of the Texas House meet Sept. 8 as the state's bond review board to take up a water bond sale capped at $2.2 billion — the money behind the next round of projects in the state water plan.
A spring on Ryan White's ranch in the Pecos River basin flowed 1,200 gallons a minute until 2014.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department announced Sept. 1 that it has elevated the invasive zebra mussel status of Fort Phantom Hill Lake, near Abilene, to fully infested.
Texas sent water-use surveys to 341 data centers this year.
Roughly 65,500 people in Johnson County were told on Aug. 28 that they may water their lawns only twice a week, and only between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m., because a reservoir system 60 miles away had run short enough for its operator to declare a drought stage.