Texas Water Shortage

Austin is currently under Stage 2 water restrictions. This means residents of Austin cannot wash their cars at home, cannot have charity car washes, restaurants cannot serve water to a table unless it is requested by the customer, and lawns can only be watered on certain days of the week.

Cities and towns around the state of Texas have similar watering restrictions to Austin. Texas is running out of water. Coupled with the growing population and recent droughts, if actions are not taken now, there will be serious problems for the people of Texas in the future.  Texas Tribune wrote that recent reports found that Texas would be short 1-2 trillion gallons of water by 2060 if we did not change our watering ways. While these reports make a lot of assumptions, like that there will be agriculture expansion, and some of these assumptions may not play out, currently the aquifers are dropping quickly. Some of the biggest drops in the past sixty years have been recorded for the Ogallala aquifer.

Texas needs to start building more infrastructure to conserve water. The one problem: Cities are losing money because of water conservation. The Texas Tribune reported that Fort Worth lost an estimated 11 million in water sales because of water conservation. This is a big conflict of interest. While Texas must start to conserve water and build water conservation infrastructure for the future generations living in Texas, it is not the optimal thing to do now. Cities could instead make money letting their citizens use all the water they want, which would hurt people in the future, or they can do things like raise the rates of water, which will hurt people now.

If we do not face the future Texas water shortage now, we will be in trouble in the future. We must make sure Texas has the things it needs to still be prosperous in the future. This includes taking actions to make sure everyone conserves water and building infrastructure, like water treatment plants, to help save water.