Speaker 1: This week's episode of the trip Cast is sponsored by
Water Grows. All Right, hello, and welcome to the Texas
Tribune trip Cast for January twenty eighth, twenty twenty five.
I am Matthew Watkins, Editor in chief of the Texas Tribune.
We are joined as usual by Eleanor Klibanoff, whose campaign
continues to change the name of the trib Cast to
the clib Cast.
Speaker 2: I would say it's my campaign. I would say it's
the people's campaign. You know, it's a one party, one
platform issue, all right.
Speaker 1: Well, and one supporter too, one supporter. And we have
James Barragon, whose weekend was just ruined by the announcement
of the State of the State speech on Sunday.
Speaker 3: Oh, not ruined. I'm fine, all right.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, if you like to work on your weekends, that's.
Speaker 3: Look on the positive side, that's the day and a
half to.
Speaker 4: Enjoy, all right.
Speaker 1: So today we will be endeavoring to convince James to
get excited about water policy. But before that, we're going
to talk a little little bit about what's happened in
the news this week. We have, you know, talked in
previous episodes about you know, the obviously the Dustin Burrows's
election to speaker, but also the campaign against him, one
of which was around, you know, the effort to get
rid of democratic committee chairs in the Texas House. It
appears as though the hardline conservatives pushing for that may
have lost the speakers race, but at least one on
this issue that they've been pursuing for multiple legislative sessions.
James tell us a little bit about what happened with
the rules recently.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, surprising that you put it that way, because
I think if you ask them, they would not see
themselves as big winners. In fact, they said that Democrats
have more power, which I think realistically and like objectively,
that is not true. In the rules, it says that
the majority party will hold committee chairmanships and the minority
party will have vice chairmanships, so that effectively strips Democrats
from being allowed to run committees, which is exactly what
they wanted. Now, I think we have to be intellectually
honest about this that it's one of the things that
they wanted. It's the big thing that they rallied around,
But there are a bunch of other things that those
hardline conservatives wanted that they did not get, which is
what they are sort of yelling about. And they're what
they're making a big fuss about. Democrats and the Speaker.
Burrows's Republican coalition are saying, hey, like, we gave you
guys exactly what you wanted. The Democrat chairs are gone,
and the hardline Conservatives are saying, well, that's just one thing.
And I've just pulled up the contract with Texas, which
is what they basically are saying, that they are following.
Speaker 4: The contract to Texas. Is what the kind of more.
Speaker 3: It's like the pledge that they came up with for
the Conservatives, yeah, which Cook had signed and said, Cook
being David Cook of Mansfield, the other candidate for speaker
who lost obviously. But you know, just going down the
list here, you only still support for speakership from Republican members.
Obviously neither of them did that. And the practice of
awarding Democrats with committee chairmanship, that's high, that's number two,
and Burrows has done that. And sure all GOP legislative
priorities receive a floor vote before any Democrat bills that
has not been codified in the rules. Replace the current
liberal these are their words. Liberal parliamentarians with staff committed
to only offering advice on adherence to House rules, not
advancing their personal ideology. They're referring to Hugh Brady, a
Democrat who was a parliamentarian and he is gone. Now
there is only one parliamentarian.
Speaker 2: Which is the parliamentarian. For people who don't.
Speaker 3: Know, parliamentariy basically interprets the rules and make sure the
make sure makes sure that the whatever body it is
is running according to the rules. And so there's a
whole list of these, but you can see that there
is like differences here right the The next one that
I see is limiting the speaker to two terms to
reduce their power over individual members. That also is not
in the rules. And so what the hardliners wanted to
do this week and last week and the rules is
to put these things in to codify them, to say
you were going to commit to the entire contract with Texas.
The thing is that Burrows never committed to those things,
and so they can say, but this is the contract
that we had committed to. Burrows never committed to. So
there's like truth in both spaces. But I think overall
to your initial question is like, what are we going
to see. I think we have to be again intellectually
honest and say there's going to be a more conservative
session no matter which way you slice it.
Speaker 1: Well, James, I mean we're sort of a broken record
on this, but you have continuously made the point on
this podcast that this is less about ideal ideology and
more about power, right, And you know, I think we
have to ask the question, is this situation where if
I wonder if Burrows is asking this question too, Like,
if he gives this group what they want on one thing,
are they just going to start then saying I want
this instead, you know? And if the point is to
be kind of going after this speaker and they seem
kind of committed to doing that throughout this legislative session,
is is this a sort of impossible battle to win
in terms of getting the support and getting people to say,
you know, be happy with his speakership this session?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: I am not in Burrows' head, so I wouldn't know.
But what we've seen with previous speakers is they said
Joe Strauss is too liberal and he only gives us
a little bit of red meat so that some members
can go back to their districts and say they passed
conservative legislation and then the rest of us get shut out.
So then Straus steps down. Bonnin comes in, he's clearly
a more conservative speaker. He goes further to the right,
and then they say this guy's not conservative enough. Then
he goes down. Feelim comes in, he's more conservative, passes
more conservative legislation and they say he is not conservative enough.
Comes in and they're saying he's not conservative enough. Each
of these guys has gone consistently more and more conservative,
and it's just never enough for the hard right. That
is their prerogative and that is what they say their
voters come to represent. But they will keep fighting that
fight until the cows come home.
Speaker 1: I think, well, it's also interesting, as you have listed
this kind of progression of more conservative speakers, that faction
that's been unhappy with that leadership in the hard right
has grown during that time as well. You know, so
kind of an interesting dynamic there what's gone.
Speaker 3: Through waves, hasn't it like the Freedom Caucus was, you know,
they they certainly were very active in twenty seventeen, and
then they kind of waned, I think thanks to Speaker
Bondon who really managed the Chamber and the inter chamber relationships. Well,
and then they've popped back up. I don't know. I
think it's come and gone. But certainly this year there
are more people, more lawmakers aligned with that view. Okay,
that's for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: Quickly, before we move on what impact on governing? Does
not having democratic chairs have this legislative session?
Speaker 4: If any?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the conservatives are right. Democrats leading
committees obviously helps Democrats. You think about things, and I've
come up with a few examples. You think about in
twenty twenty one, Herald Dunton leading public education in the
twenty twenty one second special Session, he refused to advance
legislation that restricted transgender student athletes, and there was a
lot of pressure coming from the Lieutenant governor to pass that.
That was SB two in that special session, clearly a
priority bill. That bill got killed in twenty twenty one.
You think about Chairman Pancho Navarrees in twenty nineteen saying
there wouldn't be a hearing on open Caerry legislation because
some gun rights activists had gone and bothered lawmakers at
their homes, which is pretty reprehensible, but Pancho says, no
more of that and it's done. Obviously, that legislation later passed,
but it was blocked. You think of people like Missus
t and Fronie Thompson and Houston in twenty nineteen leading
public at public education, I'm sorry, public health, and so
then the abortional legislation stops going to public health and
starts going to the state affairs. I mean, there clearly
is a stopper, and this is the way representative government works, right,
so I think there will be an impact. I think
to ignore these concerns that the Conservatives are saying is
to not be honest about this. But it's also fair
to say that this is representative government and just because
they're the minority government doesn't mean that they should be
completely shut out, which is I think what Borrows is
trying to get out with these vice chairs and these
sub committees, which will have to wait and see what
impact they actually have. But the Conservatives are obviously concerned
about that because they think that's a run around. No
charite for Democrats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ultimately, I mean, when you're a committee chair, you
know every bill has to go through a committee in
the House for it reaches the full floor. When your
committee chair you can control what comes up for a hearing.
A lot of bills get rewritten in committee, so there
is a considerable amount of power there for sure. All Right,
I want to talk next about both chambers filing their
baseline budgets for the legislative session.
Speaker 3: This is Matthew's favorite day of the year.
Speaker 1: I do you know again, the budget the most important
bill of the session every year, even though it maybe
doesn't cause as much excitement as a lot of the
other ones. Eleanor what were the highlights that you saw?
Speaker 2: Well, I will say and just a brief anecdote to
get inside the mind of Matthew Watkins. Two years ago
when we were at this point, I remember our former
colleague Karen Brooks Harper came to me and was like,
Matthew has asked me to cover the budget. And I
was like, it's like when a cat brings you a
mouse as a present and you're like, thank you, I
don't want that, but I know it came with love.
You love the budget. Karen actually does love the budget.
Also a nerd, I would say, you know, the budget
is the only thing the Texas Ledges has to pass.
They could pass that, they could go home it's an idea.
I think they should consider it. But assuming they're not
going to do that. I mean, the budget has, like
all the high priority items, I think a lot of
it was not a huge surprise. They are, as how
Speaker Boroughs said, substantially identical between the House and the Senate. Obviously,
the working out the details is what you know, will
take up most of the session. I think the big
thing we were seeing is, you know, a big increase
in funding for vouchers. You know, this has obviously been
a Conservative priority for a long time. Seems like they've
got the votes this session, and this increase in funding
definitely makes it seem like, you know, they don't want
to take a half step into vouchers, they want to
run into that pretty significantly. And then also as sort
of promised funding increases for public education to go into
that increases for teachers rural teachers, which we should say
the teacher groups feel like is not is still not enough.
So figure out how to balance those two things. The
one thing I will say, in my universe, in the
health world, that's like a very big deal, a very
small line item comparably to some of these big numbers.
But the Texas Health and Human Services Commission has asked
for three hundred million dollars to improve their Medicaid enrollment system,
which is in the health world a huge deal. We've
written a decent amount about that, and so that made
it into both budgets, and I think people are pretty
optimistic that that's going to happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I think two things you look for in those base budgets,
which can very much change and will change over the
coming months, are where this is there agreement right, Where
do they have similar amounts of money, Where are their
difference is, and how does that change compared to previous years.
So we saw both both chambers two point five billion
dollars to spend on broadband expansion in the state, two
point five billion dollars to spend on water infrastructure we'll
talk more about that later, five billion dollars on the grid,
three point five billion dollars to go toward property taxes,
and as you mentioned, a billion dollars for school vouchers,
which is double what was in the budget last session
five hundred million dollars. We also saw a voucher bill
get filed in the Senate that kind of laid out
at least the Senates proposal for what that would be. Again,
we're talking about spending double the amount of money, the
proposal being ten thousand dollars to give you know, basically
parents who want to send their kids to private school,
maybe around two thousand dollars for parents who are going
to homeschool their kids, things like that. They would prioritize
low income children and kids with disabilities in that range.
When you talk about ten thousand dollars per student, you're
talking about, you know, funding for around one hundred thousand
students in that realm. Worth noting, there's an estimated two
hundred and ninety thousand private school students in Texas right now.
So even though it is a a significant increase in
what they wanted to spend last year, it's still not
enough to cover the students who are already in Texas
public schools. So I think one question that will come
up if that is indeed how much they end up spending,
is will there then be immediate demand to spend more
in upcoming sessions from there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's definitely. Like, I mean, obviously, through
as we've talked about previous episodes like Strategic Winning of
certain seats, Like these policies have the numbers. It seems
like it seems like Voucher's is going to happen this session.
That doesn't mean that, Like the way the bill is
written today is like everyone agrees, we all shake hands, and.
Speaker 3: We go home.
Speaker 2: Like there's a lot of this to sort out, and
you know, Texas legislators are not overly fond of spending money,
so you know, the more expensive this starts to look,
obviously it's still going to get the support, but there
might be sort.
Speaker 3: Of more guards on the borders, and they're very happy.
Speaker 2: Actually there's a lot of things they want to spend
money on.
Speaker 3: But I think that the agreement on the one billion
dollars is huge too. I was just trying to look
up here the tweet from the governor where he sort
of tweeted out approvingly of the billion dollar budget, and
he said something like, I can't find the tweet right now,
but like, you know, this is a great start, and
I think the indication that the Senate and the House
are both out of billion dollars shows you that the
governor is also involved in sort of the settling on
that number. So I'm not sure that is actually going
to change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how does this bode for I mean there is
I took notice about how much agreement there was on
these big ticket items. How much does this bode for
the ability of the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor to
get along this legislative session.
Speaker 4: Well, go for it.
Speaker 3: I found it interesting. Obviously, Lieutenant Governor Patrick was very
critical or perhaps not critical. Yeah, I mean he was
critical at Burroughs, he was critical at Burrows, and he
was clearly very supportive of Cook saying that he was
the House GOP Caucus nominee. Right, But in the aftermath
of the action, I've sort of seen like him leaving
the door open and saying like Burrows will have the
opportunity to prove that he is going to be the
most conservative speaker. And Burrows, i think, compared to Feelin,
is like a player, and he is like he knows
the chamber, he knows the inter chamber relationships. He's been
involved in a lot of these negotiations. I think he's
going to be a lot more forceful and perhaps tactful
and how he deals both handling interchamber inter chamber battles
and intra chamber battles, So I'm kind of curious to
see how that plays out. The litank Nuver has kind
of backed off a little bit, I think yeah.
Speaker 2: And also, I mean last session, obviously there was a
great discord between perhaps the three, the big three, and
you know, I think Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has shown
a willingness to sort of, you know, hold out and
not necessarily play nice with the other chamber. But also,
as he has noted, you know, his chamber has repeatedly
passed a lot of these top priority legislations and a
top parity legislation and it gets stalled out in the House.
And so you know, is it perhaps in his best
interest to try to play nice with the House speaker
when there is widespread agreement on a lot of this.
Speaker 3: I just would say yes. And looking ahead, State of
the State address is on Sunday. As you previously mentioned,
the Governor is going to come out with his emergency items.
Lieutenant Governor Patrick has said, we've got to go, we've
got to get moving on these things. And the House
is known typically for rolling a little bit slower, rolling
a little bit slower, and so it'll be curious to
see once the Senate because I have no doubt that
the Senate will hit the ground running and get going
on a bunch of these things. How quickly the House
will move, And I think if the House doesn't move
as quickly as the Lieutenant Governor wants it, then you
might see some of this tension start to build up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably safe to assume
that school vouchers will be an emergency item which will
allow the legislature to move more quickly. The I believe
as we are recording this, the Senate is having a
hearing on the bill, and I you know, once that
speech happens on Friday and I mean Sunday and it
is declared an emergency item, the Senate I would expect,
will move, you know, in early February to pass that bill.
So we could be in a situation where, you know,
this this aspect of the legislature is decided quite quickly.
So James, as already mentioned, on Sunday, you will be
doing your favorite Sunday activity of covering.
Speaker 3: You were Lord's Days people.
Speaker 2: You are jubilant.
Speaker 4: What else do you expect from that? What are you
watching for?
Speaker 3: I'm curious to see what we do with border stuff. Obviously,
Republicans have a partner now in the federal government, but
there's still a lot of money dedicated in the budget
for border security and immigration enforcement, so I wonder what
will happen there. I'm also curious there's always been this
ongoing issue of bail reform and I think election integrity.
I don't have a whole lot of insight into the governor,
but yeah, I'm curious about those issues because they've been
things that he's been very supportive of in the past.
But yeah, I'm kind of curious because there's been so
much focus on vouchers that I wonder what else he's
sort of been thinking about. And also, one more thing,
we talk about this sort of line that the governor
walks between, you know, traditional Republicans who are more business
friendly and think about things like infrastructure, which I know
we're going to talk about next, and the social conservatives
who want to fight a lot about LGBT rights and
abortion and all these things. Right, So I wonder what
he will signal in sort of his attempt to walk
that line.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of wanting to know what people are thinking,
we would also like to know what our audience is thinking.
We were interested in possibly answering some questions or topic
discussing topics that people send in. So if you have
any comments, questions, thoughts for the trip cast, things you'd
like us to discuss, shoot us an email trip Cast
at Texastribune dot org. If you happen to be the
governor and you're listening, you know you were also welcome.
Speaker 3: You are welcome in boxes invited too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, we would give you the you know, the
welcome of the century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you also don't have to be the governor,
so so right in all right, Well, we are going
to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors.
Speaker 4: Eleanor is going.
Speaker 1: To hop off because she has another speaking engagement, but
we're going to talk about water after that. See you later, Eleanor,
Thank you so much. Water grows our food economy and future.
Discover how Texas farmers make strides to make water last
for Texans now and for generations to come more at
Water Grows dot Org. Okay, Texas summers might seem hot
and dry now, but the worst it was even worse
in the nineteen fifties. Between nineteen forty nine and nineteen
fifty seven, Texas received between thirty percent and fifty percent
less rainfall as during normal years. The drought wiped out
half of the state's farming industry. More than a thousand
cities and communities had to implement water use restriction restrictions
during that time. It's now referred to as the drought
of record in Texas, and Texas uses that time as
a benchmark to measure the sufficiency of its water infrastructure
moving forward. Jeremy Maser, who is our guest right now,
director of Natural Resources and Infrastructure Policy at the Texas
twenty thirty six think tank, recently assessed that readiness and
the results were not encouraging, at least from my eye.
Jeremy is our guest. Welcome, Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 5: Matthew James, thank you so much for having me here.
It's great to be here this morning.
Speaker 1: Right, so great to have you. Let's talk about this
nineteen fifties type drought situation, because you wrote a report
on this, and you led the report basically saying that
we could potentially see some major damage we see another
drought like that in the future, lay out for us
that scenario, that sort of worst case scenario we could face.
Speaker 3: So we Texas.
Speaker 5: Twenty thirty six, we released a report assessing Texas water
infrastructure needs and those basically fall into two buckets.
Speaker 3: First, we need to expand.
Speaker 5: Our water supply portfolio for drought prone and growing state.
We can talk more about this later, but droughts are
part of the Texas experience. If you've been here for
a year, ten years, a century, you know we're drought
proman state. The second bucket of challenges we face relates
to the issues of aging, deteriorating drinking water and waste
water systems. And thanks of the Texas Tribune, you guys
have covered a lot of stories across the state from
East Texas to West Texas, even in the Valley of aging,
deteriorating systems that are failing, falling apart and leaking and
really becoming liabilities to the communities that they serve. But
starting with a drought issue and the need to expand
our water supplies. So in the nineteen fifties, we had
this drought of record, and that was the worst recorded drought.
Speaker 1: It's worse since like eighteen ninety five or something like that.
I started recording, Yeah, we started.
Speaker 5: Recording in eighteen ninety fourteen ninety five year righte. And
there were droughts around World War One and the nineteen thirties,
which is with the Dutch dust Bowl, But the nineteen
fifties drought was pretty unique in terms of its duration
and its severity. And what was remarkablet that drought It
really prompted two things to start happening in Texas. First,
it began our campaign of water planning and aggressively developing
more water supplies, principally water wells and reservoirs. But the
nineteen fifties drought also began this huge economic and cultural
shift in the Texas where we became we started becoming
less of an rural agrarian state, and a lot of
people started moving towards them the cities. And so I
think you know cities where the more majority of people
live today. That trend started during the drive up record
of the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Right And so you, like you said, you identified kind
of two different needs that the state has in order
to meet this. One is sort of finding new water
supply in the state. The other is fixing those broken
water and wastewater systems. The total that you put together,
I believe in this report or your team put together
is that we in order to do those two things
sufficiently to be prepared for a nineteen fifties type drought,
we would need to spend one hundred and fifty four
billion dollars over the next fifty years.
Speaker 6: That's right, Matthew. What we did is we looked at
the cost.
Speaker 5: Estimates in the state Water Plan as well as those
from the EPA on how much needs to be spent
over the next couple decades for fixing and rehabilitating, our aging,
deciorating drinking water and wastewater systems. And when we adjusted
those numbers, those cost estimates for inflation, we see that
the state is going to need to spend at least
one hundred and fifty four billion dollars over the next
half centuries on water infrastructure. But the good news is
we have some existing programs that are already working to
provide financial assistance, such as the Texas Water Fund approved
by voters and Propositions six last year, the State Water
Implementation Fund for Texas that voters approved eleven years ago.
But these existing funds are only going to be able
to provide according to estimates, about forty to forty five
billion dollars worth of long term financial assistance. Say that
emergan about forty to forty five billion dollars in the
long run of financial assistance, And so we're seeing that
there's going to be a big financial assistance funding gap
to just north of one hundred and ten billion dollars
of what the state really needs to pony up to
invest in order to fix our waterf structured challenges.
Speaker 4: How did we get so far behind? Here? Is it?
Speaker 1: I mean, Texas obviously a place that's growing a lot.
How much is this growth, how much of it is
under investment in the past. What's what put us in
this position in twenty twenty?
Speaker 3: And are we an out are we in an outlier
compared to other states?
Speaker 5: Well, I you know other I think what's unique about
Texas is, you know, unlike other states such as Florida,
New York, you know, Illinois, they really don't have drought
and water supply issues like we do.
Speaker 6: I think, you know, our water supply.
Speaker 5: Challenges are certainly analogous to what's being seen in the
desert southwest with California, Arizona, and New Mexico, which is
which is in the in the throes of actually a
mega drought right now. But I think also the issues
that we have with ageing, deteriorating drinking water and wastewater systems,
those are not just a Texas problem. I mean those
also exist in Florida, California, from from coast to coast.
Speaker 6: But Matthew, you asked, how did, how did how? How
is it?
Speaker 4: How has it?
Speaker 6: Why has it come to this?
Speaker 5: And I think there are several factors that have been
accelerating and aggravating our water infrastructure challenges. First, when we
look at the data, such as studies we've done in
partnership with the off state climatologists, we're seeing that droughts
and extreme heat are accelerating the strains on our water supplies.
The hotter it gets, the quicker your lakes and reservoirs
dry up.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 5: You know, the less rain that we have means that
there's less water in those surface water resources, but also
means that we're drawing a.
Speaker 6: Lot more from our groundwater.
Speaker 5: And so what's happening with the weather has been accelerating
the strains on water supplies. There's also the issue of
population and economic growth. If you talk with water policy people,
they're going to say there's a lot of people coming
to Texas and they're not bringing water with them.
Speaker 6: That's true, but there's also.
Speaker 5: A a unique expansion in water intensive industries in Texas
as part of the Texas economic miracle, where you have
a growth in the energy sector, semiconductor manufacturers, data centers,
just to name a few, that all have to use
water resources in order to work. And the state's political
economy as such is that's very attractive for these industries
and businesses to move here, which is good economic growth
and jobs, but that's also accelerating the strains on our
water resources. And then the last issue is Matthew's you
pointed to in your question. The state's financial assistance policy
has been incremental over time, and so what we haven't
really seen as a sustained, concerted, reliable effort to address
these long term funding needs for water infrastructure.
Speaker 1: You touched a little bit on the economic impact of this,
and I want to dig a little bit deeper in there.
You you talk about it a little bit in your
report about how a lot of the big infrastructure commercial investments,
industrial investments in the state recently have been accompanied by
communities where those investments have happened really, you know, taking
big steps to increase their long term water supply, things
like the Samsung plant north of Austin and things like that.
One of the things you really talk about is that
if this is felt, you know, I mean, you know,
we've seen communities go through water crisis. Is you truck
in water from other places, you get water bottles and
everything like that. But what you could really see is
a reluctance for companies and organizations to invest in the
state if that water is not done. You say, if
we see another nineteen fifties strought, we could see losses
annual GDP losses of one hundred and sixty billion dollars,
nearly eight hundred thousand jobs lost, and what you describe
as a potential exodus from the state if we don't
address these needs. What does it actually look like for
Texas if we don't meet the water demand needs going forward?
Speaker 5: There's extraordinary downside risk if we fail to develop the
water infrastructure that we need a lot of that's described
in the report that I wrote with Texas twenty thirty six.
Speaker 3: Also, it's explored in more.
Speaker 5: Detail by a report by Gabe Collins with A Baker
Institute at Rice University, who we also partnered with to
explore the economic costs and benefits of water infrastructure investment,
and so we know what would likely be the potential
economic losses in terms of millions of jobs lost, a
diaspora of people leaving the state looking for opportunity and
potentially water elsewhere, and not to mention the one hundred
and sixty plus billion dollars per year in GDP losses,
which were comparison is worse than the economic losses observed
during the COVID pandemic and the Great Recession. But there
are some fascinating examples that we point to in our
report of what inadequate water infrastructure has meant for other economies.
Australia saw some negative growth in its GDP during the
Millennial Drought between the early twenty and twenty fifteen. Same
thing for Cape Town, South Africa. And there are some
fascinating examples from the rest of the world of how
not only you actually realize and see this economic downturn,
but there's also cases of businesses and industries shutting down
and not working anymore absent absent drought and reliable water
supplies are increasingly becoming a part of the economic development
equation in Texas. When I've been talking with state leaders,
a lot of them are saying, like, Hey, we're talking
with companies they want to come to Texas. They're like
so many things here. The question we're getting asked is
if we have enough reliable water.
Speaker 1: Right And we've seen this in some ways kind of
already start to play out in regions this day. The
talk a little bit about what's happening in the Rio
Grand Valley.
Speaker 5: The Rio Grand Valley comes in and out of trouble
almost like every two years.
Speaker 6: I mean twenty twenty two. August of that year, the
water levels in.
Speaker 5: Lake Amistan and Lake Falcone were at precipitous lows, and
city managers were looking at emergency measures they may have
to implement in order to avoid cutting people off of water. Fortunately,
a tropical depression came over, put a bunch of water
in the river, saved the day for a little while.
But again in twenty twenty four, low water conditions in
the Rio Grand Valley have begun to precipitate some real
economic consequences. Notably when a year ago the Santa Rosa
sugar mill closed, and that is a business that provided
you know, over five hundred jobs within the region and
about five hundred million plus in regional GDP. In addition
to seeing that that that farm close, were the sugar
cane farm closed, we're also seeing that we're also hearing
that the citrus industry is under duress due to drought conditions.
And I think the Rio Grande Valley is becoming a
bit of a canary in the coal mine for Texas
in terms of describing what can happen, when, what will
go wrong, and what economic horrors will be visited on
your region if you have insufficient water supplies.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the two quick kind of
areas that need investment very quickly. One, as we already
mentioned water supplies. You know this actual water you know
that the state needs to draw from. You've you listed
the water supply deficit as being nearly six point nine
million acre feet of water. For people to understand, one
acre foot serves around two to three houses per year,
So if you're six point nine million acre feet short,
you're talking about somewhere around like seventeen million your short
the shortage being about enough to serve seventeen million houses
per year. In that realm. Of course, it's more than
just houses that draw from the water. It's you know,
in industry and agriculture and everything like that. But what
are the solutions there? I mean, obviously you need to
invest money, but is that money to build reservoirs like
desalination like what is what actually needs to be built
and done in this state in order to get to
where we need to be for that supply.
Speaker 5: So our six point nine million projected six point nine
million acre foot water supply deficit comes from the most
recent state water plan prepared by the Texas Water Development Board.
What needs to happen is the state needs to invest
in a broad, diversified water supply portfolio. And some of
these projects are going to be the same types of
water supply technologies they used in the Roman Empire, your
groundwater wells and your reservoirs. But I think a lot
of those types of easier water supply projects relatively easier
are I mean, a lot of those have already been built,
and so there's not a lot of easier water to develop.
I think we're going to have to lean into technology
innovation and water supply diversification in order to meet that
six point nine million, six point nine million acre foot
water supply deficit, and so we're going to be talking
about greater water conservation. I think water reuse in recycling
is exciting that can be done, that can expand the
water supply portfolio.
Speaker 6: And we're also going to.
Speaker 5: Talk about desalination, seawater and brackish water. But also we
need to have a bigger conversation about moving water from
the water rich areas of the state to the areas
that needed the most.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's where I think some of the politics
come into play. It's not just is there support to
spending this kind of money, right, It's like whenever there's
an idea to build a reservoir in the state, there's
a lot of landowner resistance. Whenever a company, you know,
whether a city wants to pipe in water from you know,
across the state, you hear a lot of concern about
the local uh, you know, the people who are local
there saying, you know, why are they taking water away
from our community?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Exactly how much of that is a hurdle? Do you
feel like in addition to just the spending, and.
Speaker 3: Also with desalination, I mean, how effective is desalination, and
is there concern from lawmakers about the efficiency of desalination,
like going forward, like if you invest billions of dollars
in desalination, Yeah, how efficient will that?
Speaker 5: Actually, well it's a Matthew will start with you, then
James will talk about de cell and so you know,
I've followed water policy and the legislature for the past
twenty five years. And what's interesting is like all of
those water policy fights are regional and local.
Speaker 6: They don't really break down on partisan lines.
Speaker 5: And there are some regions that are fiercely protective of
their water resources for good reason. That supports the regional identity,
that supports their regional economy, and the prospect of moving
water from one part of the state to another is
easier say it said that done. The same thing with reservoirs.
I mean, there have been some reservoirs on the books
for decades that have still not been built, but are
are just politically challenging to develop, owing two concerns about
water supply development or even condemning condemning that land. James,
you asked about desalination and what are what are legislators
thinking about desalination? I would say that Over the past
twenty years, there has been a growing crescendo of interest
in dec salnation among within within the within the House,
incentate leaders in the legislature. Desalination has the benefit of
being a little bit more drought proof. There's I mean,
unless a meteor hits it, there's always gonna be water
in the Gulf of Mexico, which is a good thing.
But it's always been expensive to do in energy intensive
and so I think the the load demands of desalination
plants are something that need to be taken into consideration,
especially as we have increasing load demands across our electric grid,
as our economy and population continues to grow. There is opportunity,
there is promise in desalination. Will it be the panacea
or silver bullet that solves every region's problems? That that
probably We're probably not at the scale and position to
do that yet, But desalination is going to be playing
more of a robust part in contributing to a water
supply portfolio.
Speaker 1: And then the other part of this to actually maybe
the more expensive part of this is just the pipes
that are in the ground across Texas are crumbling. They're
starting to break down, some of that is in fact
worsened when drought comes and it causes the ground to shift.
But I mean, you've identified ninety five billion dollars to
fix broken water and waste water systems. There's an astounding
amount of water leaking out of pipes in Texas that's
causing waste and causing us to need more supply.
Speaker 4: Tell us a little bit about that situation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So this this is data from the Texas Living
Waters Project, which which found that our aging, deteriorating, leaking,
drinking water systems leak enough water five hundred and seventy
two thousand acre feet to be exact to fill a
major state reservoir like Possum Kingdom up north, like Buchanan
here in central Texas. So our inefficiencies alone are just
shoving water supplies out the window, and so we're waste
a lot to begin with. But then we have these
bigger issues of aging, deteriorating and failing systems. And the
Tribune has done a great job of providing coverage of
incidents that have ocurred over the past few years, such
as the boil water notices and water condamination in the Rato.
The thirty five year old trunk line that broke in
and Odessa, leaving the town without water for forty eight hours.
Even the system failure in Zavala. Y'all's coverage of these
water system failures has been impressive and it provides very
good anecdotal data with regard to this bigger problem of
systems that are operating well past their useful life and
are really becoming economic liabilities to these communities.
Speaker 1: And the EPA has estimated that this cities need about
sixty one point three billion dollars in financial assistance over
the next twenty years, so about a little bit over
three billion dollars a year to help address some of
these issues. The past four years, that average was around
two hundred and seventy five million, So we're talking about
the need being identified being about ten times what is
currently being spent per year in the state. So it
all sort of comes down to, I think, no matter what,
there's a lot of money that needs to be spent here.
We talked a little bit earlier two point five billion
dollars identified in the budget or the proposed budget from
both chambers this year. Your report in fact called for
five billion. That's also what Senator Charles Perry, who's been
kind of taking a lot of the lead on this,
particularly in the Senate, on this issue called for Are
you worried about the political will to actually get this done?
I mean, it's just hard to commit money in a
fiscally conservative state like this.
Speaker 5: So yes, we recommended that, you know, there'd be a
five billion dollar initial endowment for the Texas Water Fund
and the consideration of approving a one billion per fiscal
year revenue dedication to that fund for the decades to come.
The two point five billion that the House and Senate
have initially approved for water infrastructure is an extraordinary good signal.
This is the highest appropriation we've ever seen the state
make for water infrastructure, more than the one billion dollars
for Prop six last year and the two billion dollars
for the Swift And so the legislature is already sending
a bright, clear, strong signal that they want to prioritize
water infrastructure investment. But that two point five billion, which
hopefully we can go higher to five, it's not going
to come close to closing that one hundred and ten
billion dollar water infrastructure funding gap. And so that's why
we think that dedicated funding which we already use for
state parks and we already use for state highways. That
financial strategy is a kind of model that we need
to use in order to tackle our water infrastructure challenges.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that in recent years with transportation
with state parks things like that, the legislature has essentially
made it so that's automatic that a certain amount of
revenue coming in goes to that, like you say, dedicated fund.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and these were constitutional amendments that were approved by
voters in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen that would dedicate
state sales and severance taxes to the state Highway Fund.
Speaker 1: So what do you feel like is the biggest like,
what worries you the most about this? What's the biggest
hurdle that's going to have to be crossed to going
from to raise the confidence in our kind of long
term expectations for water.
Speaker 6: In the state.
Speaker 5: I think the House and Senate leadership have sent a
great signal thus far. I mean, two point five billion
dollars for water infrastructure. It's a lot of money, great start,
and we should end them for their leadership on this issue.
Getting to yes on a revenue dedication is going to
be the challenge. And at Texas twenty thirty six, we've
been working with Chambers of Commerce eedcs, the business and
industry community and helping make the case for the legislature
on why water infrastructure investment is so important for economic
growth and development. Most people in the legislaturead I'll say,
everyone really likes the benefits of the Texas economic miracle,
economic growth, population growth, jobs, good stuff is happening here.
They want that to continue, and they know that in
order for that to happen, you have to have three things.
One qualified workforce, two dependable electric grid, and three reliable
water infrastructure. But if we want to have that reliable
water infrastructure, that's got to be dedicated funding for it.
Speaker 6: I think that's going to be.
Speaker 5: It's certainly an uphill fight, but it's not an instrumental,
insurmountable policy discussion for this session.
Speaker 4: All right, well, we will watch and see how it goes.
Speaker 1: Thank you Jeremy for coming and explaining this complicated but
important issue to us. Thank you to our producers, Rob
and Chris, and thank you to our sponsor water Grows.
Once again, if people have comments, questions, things they want
us to discuss, tripcast at Texastribune dot org.
Speaker 4: We will be back next week