Agencies
Texas Farmers Have Written Off One in Ten Dryland Acres After the Third-Driest August Since 1895
About one out of every ten acres of Texas cropland that depends on rain rather than irrigation has been given up on this year.
Latest in Water
Interim Hearings
Texas Is Running Out of Room for Oilfield Wastewater, House Energy Chair Warns
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.
Interim Hearings
Desalination and Air-to-Water Firms Tell Texas Its Own Rules Are Blocking New Supply
Texas built a fund to buy water that does not exist yet.
Agencies
Water Board Weighs a $7 Million Grant for Harbor Island Desalination
The Texas Water Development Board meets Aug. 24 to vote on a $7 million grant to the Nueces River Authority for engineering work on a seawater desalination plant near Port Aransas.
Data Centers
A Data Center Company Offers to Build Childress a Temporary Water Supply as Greenbelt Lake Falls to 5 Percent Full
Greenbelt Lake, the reservoir that supplies Childress and neighboring towns in the eastern Texas Panhandle, was 5.1 percent full on Aug. 20, according to Water Data for Texas, the reservoir monitoring service run by the Texas Water Development Board, the state agency that plans and finances water supply.
Local Government
Corpus Christi Asks the State to Shut Off Its Environmental Water Releases Weeks After Its Reservoirs Refilled
Corpus Christi has asked state environmental regulators for emergency permission to stop sending water down the Nueces River to the bays, days after the rains that rescued its water supply also triggered the legal obligation to release it.
Agencies
Texas Environmental Regulators Met a 3 Percent Budget Order by Cutting Contaminated-Site Cleanup, Then Asked for the Money Back
In July, the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor and the Speaker told every state agency to build its next budget request around a 3 percent cut to general revenue.
Water
Texas Reservoirs Are Still Three-Quarters Full, and Drought Just Spread Across Eight Percent of the State in a Week
Drought expanded across nearly eight percent of Texas in a single week, and the most severe category on the federal scale returned to the Panhandle after a five-week absence — even as the state's reservoirs, refilled by July flooding, remain about three-quarters full.
Interim Hearings
House Natural Resources Panel to Take Water Planning to the Valley, Weigh New-Supply Fund
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.
Agencies
Texas water board writes its first budget request of the dedicated water money era
The Texas Water Development Board meets Friday for a single piece of business: approving the budget request it sends the Legislature for 2028 and 2029.
Agencies
24 million barrels a day: Texas’ produced-water rollout advances as regulators ask lawmakers to draw the line between them
Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still being written and a jurisdictional boundary two agencies admit they cannot locate.
Agencies
Texas environmental regulators weigh shutting repeat violators out of the easiest water permits
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality votes Wednesday on whether to propose a rule that would stop companies with poor compliance records from slipping back into the state's simplest water pollution permits through an automated approval.
Agencies
Texas water board weighs a $37.6 million PFAS grant for a small Parker County district
The Texas Water Development Board votes Thursday on $37.6 million for a small water district west of Fort Worth — the largest single award yet in a federal program aimed at PFAS, the industrial "forever chemicals" turning up in drinking water.
Agencies
Texas adopted a rushed water plan last week; Wednesday the board sees the full draft
The Texas Water Development Board meets Wednesday morning for a briefing session with nothing on it to vote on.