knoxtom said:
Corpus is in serious trouble and will run dry this summer or next.
The desalination plant was not approved because they did not have energy capacity to run it. Desalination takes a HUGE amount of energy and they choose air conditioners and refining over water.
Water in the system does not make it to the corpus lakes.
The aquifer is running very low. If water were not being grabbed to run fracking up north then they would have more water in the aquifer, which would mean more in the river system. The rule in Texas is that whoever gets the water first owns it (Capture) so the guys up north are grabbing all they can and using it to push out oil. That means Austin and San Antonio don't have as much in the Edwards aquifer and they take more surface water, which means less for Corpus.
The State of Texas was approached 6-8 years ago with a plan to trade unused highway funds to Louisiana for water running into the Gulf of Mexico, which would then be piped to Austin and San Antonio. At the time Louisiana had a Democrat governor and the Texas Governor said he wouldn't cross the aisle. Even when told it was a 50 year solution for Central TX and central gulf water problems, he refused.
Water politics in Texas is in a bad place and is run by some bad people. And since using water is more profitable for oil, they get it over the commoners.
A couple years ago I thought about writing a book about the water wars in Texas. People think it is an issue for the future but this stuff has gone on for the last 20 years and the proverbial **** is about to hit the fan. Texas is in BIG trouble. There are so many band aids on the system right now.
I listened to hours upon hours of the comments and responses before the council voted not to proceed with the desal plant design, and the lack of energy to operate it was not a topic of discussion. Social justice and who was going to foot the lion's share of the bill were much larger concerns and ultimately drove the vote against it. The increasing price estimate and lack of understanding about why definitely drove the discussion, and Kiewit did not send a rep to the meeting to defend the fact that the cost escalation was a direct result of CC's everchanging demands for changes to the design. When you ask them to double the output of the plant, and then nearly double it again, and then decide to put all of the utilities underground, guess what, the price is going way up. It was later suggested here, by Schmelba I think, that Kiewit didn't show up because they wanted out of the mess the project was going to be. The city has since voted to revive the project design process, but with a new contractor procurement.
The water being pulled for fracking from the edwards is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount being pulled to keep grass green and swimming pools filled. The vast majority of the water being sold for fracking is coming from the Carrizo Wilcox and Evangeline aquifers. The state of the Frio watershed is much more about ongoing drought than excess water use, though groundwater pumping in the western edwards is increasing. The rule of capture was largely done away with in 99 with the bill allowing the establishment of groundwater conservation districts to manage and permit groundwater extraction. They are weaker than they should be and there is an effort underway to find ways to strengthen their ability to limit wasteful water usage.
There is plenty of excess water in Lake Toledo Bend available for transfer to other basins without having to pay Louisiana anything. But the cost of building conveyance to get it anywhere it is needed is not currently worth it. There was a prop passed last fall to make a billion dollars available for shovel ready water projects, including conveyance construction. But so far, the cost to construct conveyances from there to where it is needed is too much to make it worth it.
