PANEL APPROVES MAJOR WATER BILL
(AUSTIN) — Water projects in Texas will have the backing of $1 billion in dedicated funds each year under a bill approved unanimously by the Senate Water, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs Committee on Monday. Within 50 years, state demand for water will double, said committee chair and Lubbock Senator Charles Perry, and the state’s current water supply and infrastructure will not meet those needs. He said that the state’s aquifers are depleting and almost all the surface water supply is spoken for. The agriculture sector is already feeling the pinch, he said, with the state’s sole sugar mill closing last year due to lack of water supply and farmers across the state planning on decreased production. Industrial firms, said Perry, are already debating on whether or not the state can meet future water needs when choosing where to expand and cities and counties are cutting back on development as they worry they won’t be able to meet the water demand that comes with new residents. Half of the state’s rural water associations, he said, believe they will run out of water in the next 20 years. Perry’s bill, SB 7, will make what he called “a generational leap” for water policy in Texas. “The 89th will be the session that people look back on that laid the foundation for actually developing our water supply plan,” said Perry.
Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock says his bill, SB 7, will help the state meet water needs for the next 50 years.
Water policy in Texas starts in the hands of 16 regional planning groups, but only two of them have been able to put together a plan that will fully meet the future needs of their areas. Perry said that the planning groups have served the state well in identifying needs and developing strategies, but haven’t had the financial resources to answer them. “If we didn’t have a water plan, we’d just be throwing darts at a wall,” he said. “All I’m doing is taking that and putting the one thing that’s been missing – money - to the problem to solve it. It doesn’t have a broken heart or broken family attached to it. It’s not political. It’s just a matter of commitment to a vision.” In 2023, voters approved the creation of the Texas Water Fund, and it was financed with a one-time, $1 billion appropriation in the state budget. Perry aims to make that $1 billion annual appropriation to water infrastructure permanent, creating a reliable water financing stream to build the projects necessary to meet future needs. “By 2050, with this money that’s going into the system, we ought to be far ahead in meeting the challenges that we have in water supply,” said Perry. In the Senate version of the plan, eighty percent of those funds will have to go towards development of new sources.
Ultimate approval of that funding stream will have to come from the voters, but the bill also makes a number of changes to existing state water policy and expands the duties and authority of the Texas Water Development Board. It will be the job of the TWDB to approve financing for new water projects, create a uniform standard for pipelines and other infrastructure, and ensure that all the regions of the state are working in concert. It would expand the categories of projects eligible for water fund financing, which Perry said is intended to encourage non-traditional water supply development. “In a nutshell, it is a master plan that will have all water supply development options in front of everybody involved,” he said. The bill would also move flood mitigation projects under TWDB and authorize water fund financing for those efforts. “That way it’s not an afterthought,” said Perry. “It’s always going to be in consideration for additional money.”
The bill also seeks to protect existing local water supplies by prohibiting the fund from financing projects that reach into other watersheds or those that transport fresh water from one location to another. “It has to be new supply, plain and simple,” said Perry. “We cannot move water from one part of the state to another, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and not create overall volume increase for people to actually have new supply…we have to develop new sources and not deplete the existing resources any more than we already have.”
The bill now heads to the full Senate for consideration.
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