CENTRAL TEXAS — Texas’ Commissioner of Agriculture Sid Miller has made public comments about Texas running out of water, and 25 News reached out to Miller to understand more about the issue.
"I think it’s real serious — I'm sounding the alarm because the largest user of water in the state is agriculture."
Miller says he’s seeing the impacts across Texas from the loss of crops and in some situation that leading to the loss of jobs, and some of the water concerns are due to the state’s rising population and new urban development.
"We're to a crisis point," he said.
The Texas Water Development Board predicts between 2020 to 2070, the state’s existing water supply, which can be relied on during a drought, will decrease by 18 percent this as they expect the state's population to grow by 73 percent.
"We lose about a farm a week to urban encroachment," Miller said.
Miller, with a long family history in agriculture and being a rancher himself, has taken his concerns to local and state leaders.
He believes Texans need to do more harvesting and recycling of local water resources — that even includes recycling wastewater and getting it to a higher quality that's available for human consumption, and improving water infrastructures in cities and towns across Texas.
"I’m the only state official that’s advocating for rain water harvesting — I brought down federal dollars," Miller said.
"I sent 90 communities money to replace all their antiquated water systems, half million dollars each — that’s almost half a billion dollars of water system improvements in rural parts of the state."
There are strategies to improve Texas' water supplies and resources especially in the event of a major drought — some of those plans can be found in the most recent state water plan released in 2022.
The report said billions in financial assistance has been closed on for projects in the last state water plan from 2017.
However, if strategies from the current water plan are not put in place the Texas Water Development Board predicts a severe drought could cause billions in economic loss over the next fifty years — impacting millions of Texas neighbors.
The Texas Water Development Board sent the following statement:
The regional and state water planning process, overseen by the Texas Water Development Board, evaluates population projections, water demand projections, and existing water supplies to identify potential shortages (water needs) under drought of record conditions. According to the 2022 State Water Plan, Texas’ existing water supplies—those that can already be relied on in the event of drought—are projected to decline by approximately 18 percent between 2020 and 2070. Through the planning process, regional water planning groups across the state recommend proposed strategies and projects that, if implemented, will help meet water supply needs over the next 50 years. In the 2022 State Water Plan, planning groups recommended approximately 5,800 water management strategies and more than 2,400 specific water management strategy projects to increase water supply.
The full 2022 plan can be read here, and additional resources about Cental Texas' water forecast can be read here.
