Who’s Wasting Our Water?
As our population booms, Texas grows hotter and drier. How might we stop the squandering of our dwindling water supply?
As our population booms, Texas grows hotter and drier. How might we stop the squandering of our dwindling water supply?
If the state fixed all the broken and decaying infrastructure, it might save enough H2O to serve the needs of several major cities.
Federal intervention empowered the Edwards Aquifer Authority to restrict water waste like no other area of the state.
Some utilities charge higher prices at higher thresholds of use, but their ability to jack up rates is limited. The Legislature could change that.
The region’s depleted aquifers sustain the modern oil and gas boom when the industry could recycle the briny H2O its process forces to the surface.
Wastewater recycling and aquifer storage will need to become more common statewide.
Overdevelopment, and the rules that encourage it, could literally sink communities such as Katy, where the land is subsiding.
Decades of overpumping, spurred in part by agricultural subsidies, have left too much of the region with too little groundwater.
Cities across the state dramatically curbed water use over the last decade. Now, newcomers and first-time homeowners are causing it to spike again.
Utility giant Aqua Texas pumped 66 million gallons beyond its legal limit in 2023.
The 25-year-old “boys” have taken it upon themselves to score each jump off the diving board, Olympics-style. Austin poolgoers have embraced the challenge.
For the second year in a row, the iconic spring-fed swimming hole has stopped flowing, the consequence of drought and overpumping.
An oil executive wants to block the South Llano River for private recreational purposes. Hill Country residents are outraged.
From rugged coastal inlets to calm urban lakes, these spots offer something for every SUPer.
The water at Pagosa Springs’ luxury resort burbles forth from the world’s deepest geothermal spring.
Plans were underway to revive tourism at Fort Clark Springs in southwest Texas. But then, in a scenario increasingly common across the state, the water stopped flowing.
Chemical engineer Guihua Yu’s team works with tiny particles to try to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.
Following the lead of farm animals, heat-weary humans have embraced the budget joy of cooling off in these shallow metal tubs.
38 ways to cool off in our state's springs, lakes, and more.
Marco who? This is the ultimate water game.
When you’re floating on top of the Marriott Marquis in downtown Houston, you might have reached peak Texas.
After an abandoned well began spewing toxic, salty water onto her Permian Basin land, Ashley Watt would stop at nothing to determine the cause—and to hold Chevron accountable.
A&M researchers say more-robust testing is needed to understand just how much human feces ends up in Gulf waters.
Researchers at Tarleton State have found an all-natural way to prevent Texans from imbibing quite so many tiny plastic particles.
A Pecos County well has leaked noxious salt water for almost two decades. No one is taking responsibility for getting it cleaned up.
As Mexico lags on sending what it owes to U.S. reservoirs and farmers on both sides of the border protest, experts say the 1944 agreement is not suited for today’s agricultural landscape.
In the tug-of-war over groundwater between two Central Texas counties, he who pumps the most, wins. At least until everyone loses.
We all know the Gulf of Mexico is brown. Until it isn’t.
We’ve mapped out nineteen places to cool off the way nature intended by swimming, wading, and diving into Texas’s restorative waterways.
The risks a West Texan will take for a quick dip.
Relinquishing oneself to these green waters is a tradition that runs deep in my family.
Getting wet, getting scared, and getting my family a little closer to Texas at Schlitterbahn.
The exploits of a teenager trying to surf in Galveston.
Michael Mascha doesn’t care so much whether the glass of water is half full or half empty; he wants to know its mineral content, hardness, pH level, vintage and virginality.
It was a wild night in the House yesterday as Democrats and Republicans battled over their respective priorities: water, for Republicans and education, for Democrats. The leadership could not get the votes for taking money out of the Rainy Day Fund for water—even though Perry came out for doing
Today is the pivotal moment of the session—a vote on HB 11, the funding bill for the water plan. The vote was preceded this afternoon by a meeting of the House Republican caucus, at which Rick Perry was in attendance. Afterward, he told reporters that the prudent
AP Photo | Eric GayJoe Straus said at the beginning of the session that he was going to put the House to work on the state’s biggest problems, and he is making good on his vow. On Tuesday the House passed HB 5, a major public education bill that
As much as anything, the economic boom in Texas depends on water. So what will industry do as the state gets drier? The Texas Tribune's Kate Galbraith explains.
At the same time Texas is fighting to get water from Oklahoma, state officials want to block Mexico from pumping water out of the Rio Grande.
Don't let the recent rains fool you: ninety percent of Texas remains in a drought.
It may have rained where you live Tuesday, but the drought continues to impact everything from butterflies to barbecue and golf to drinking water.
TEXAS MONTHLY partnered with StateImpact Texas and KUT News to take a close look at how the state can manage a growing population amid a shrinking water supply. Listen to reports from NPR’s John Burnett, Texas state photographer Wyman Meinzer, and more audio and online reports.
As much as anything, the Texas economic miracle depends on water. Lots of water. So what are all those power plants, refineries, and factories going to do as the state gets drier and drier and drier?
The future is likely going to require us to move large amounts of water from wet but sparsely populated places (a.k.a. East Texas) to thirsty, booming cities. Good thing there’s a plan for that. There is a plan, right?
Bad as the current drought is, it has yet to match the most arid spell in Texas history. Nearly two dozen survivors of the fifties drought remember the time it never rained.
As last year’s historic drought reminded us, Texas has always lived life by the drop, just a few dry years away from a serious crisis. With our population expected to nearly double over the next fifty years, this situation is about to become more, not less, challenging. This month we
The first serious coverage of water in TEXAS MONTHLY came just a couple months shy of our two-year anniversary, in a story by Greg Curtis entitled “Disaster, Part I. Lubbock is running out of water.” (A companion piece, “Disaster, Part II,” argued that Houston was sinking into
Along the Houston Ship Channel the water is eight feet high and risin’.
West Texans are going to have to figure out what they’re going to do when the well runs dry.
KUT's Terrence Henry and Mose Buchele discuss the stories behind their research and reporting on the drought.