Texas is screwed.

[Ban my account ffs!]

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/20/371975/water-coal-texas-fracking-sanity-one-of-these-words-does-not-belong/

Unless some huge infrastructure projects get under way yesterday, Texas is likely to face reduced economic and population growth due to one very important, but scarce resource:  Water.

Currently Texas needs 18 million acre feet of water to satisfy industry, agriculture, and residential/commercial needs.  It has 17 million acre feet of water to dole out.

The outlook is bleak.  And please don't discount this because of the source.  Even if you don't believe man-made global warming will lead us to the apocalypse, the natural climate variables are shaping up to keep Texas dry for decades.

The prediction is that by 2060, Texas will need 22 million acre feet of water, but will have only 15.7 million acre feet available.  This is due to simple physics.  They are drawing down the aquifers so even if rains do return, the amount of water available in Texas will still decline as demand rises steadily.  The 22 million acre feet prediction takes into account significant per capita savings of water usage.

There is really nowhere for Texas to pipe water in from with the Great Lakes off limits thanks to international agreements.  And the aquifers are draining quickly.  Once they're gone, it will be an agricultural nightmare for the entire southern and central plains region.

Their only options are conservation and desalinization.  Conservation will be tough in conservative Texas (I know... the irony) where fracking for gas and oil is big business and requires vast amounts of water to do.  Essentially, water in Texas is going to become a very expensive, precious commodity and it will likely have a majorly negative impact on the Texas economy, dragging down growth rates and population growth well into the future.

While the state has received some beneficial rains in the past 2 months, the state is still in severe drought.  Despite the rains.. Texas is just now receiving slightly to moderately below normal rainfall instead of no rainfall at all, which was the case basically from Oct 2010 until Sept 2011.  During any drought, there are months or years where precipitation is normal or even above... but that isn't enough to replenish water sources and hydrological drought carries on.

I just don't see how the outlook is good for Texas at the moment.

[memphis]

Hardly unique to Texas. The whole SW has this problem.  Hey, Las Vegas, the Venetian probably wasn't the best use of what little water you have. But it wouldn't be the first time the region has this problem. Hopefully, Americans in the Southwest fare better than the Anasazi.

[Ban my account ffs!]

The Southwest could fare better because they have the Colorado River, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges.  During La Niña, a trough of low pressure is much more common in the western U.S. which brings loads of snowfall to the mountains with the exception of the mountains of NM and AZ. 

La Niña tends to be dry, however, in the southern plains because the flow of tropical moisture from the Pacific into Mexico and the southern U.S. is cut off.  The only Pacific moisture comes from the mid-latitudes which brings plenty of rain to the Pac NW and Northern California... but leaves Texas and Oklahoma and points west bone dry.  I dought AZ, NV, and SoCal will want to share their Colorado River water with Texas.

Further east, the western trough/eastern ridge pattern in the jet stream means lots of moisture is pulled north from the Gulf of Mexico.. so the Ohio and Tennessee rivers get soaked.  Maybe Texas can strike up a deal with those areas.

[Sbane]

So the mountains of Colorado and Utah get a lot of snow in La nina years or just about average? What about the central (lake tahoe and southwards) and southern sierras, which are also very important for California's water needs. There is also a lot of agriculture in the state.

[Wonkish1]

Two words: water desalination. Texas and Cali have a very good water future. Its states like Colorado where the water wars are going to be continuing for a long, long time.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Arizona has that big aquifer under Phoenix  that supposedly will provide them with a ton of water....

[Bacon King]

Two words: water desalination. Texas and Cali have a very good water future. Its states like Colorado where the water wars are going to be continuing for a long, long time.

Going by the estimates in the original post, Texas will have have a water deficit of 6.3 million acre feet per year by 2060; converting to more sensible measurements, that's a deficit of just over 5.6 billion gallons per day.

Now, consider that world's biggest desalination plant, in the UAE, has a maximum output of 130 million gallons per day. So for Texas to make up its water deficit with desalination plants, it would need to build 43 of them equivalent in output to the most productive one in the world. I think this probably counts under "huge infrastructure project getting under way yesterday," and I don't really think it'd be all that cheap either.

[Torie]

Two words: water desalination. Texas and Cali have a very good water future. Its states like Colorado where the water wars are going to be continuing for a long, long time.

Desalinization is very expensive. The meaning of this is that agriculture in Texas is going to decline is the main thing, if the numbers are real.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

These magic bullet solutions always sound too much like boosterism to me.

[Wonkish1]

Two words: water desalination. Texas and Cali have a very good water future. Its states like Colorado where the water wars are going to be continuing for a long, long time.

Going by the estimates in the original post, Texas will have have a water deficit of 6.3 million acre feet per year by 2060; converting to more sensible measurements, that's a deficit of just over 5.6 billion gallons per day.

Now, consider that world's biggest desalination plant, in the UAE, has a maximum output of 130 million gallons per day. So for Texas to make up its water deficit with desalination plants, it would need to build 43 of them equivalent in output to the most productive one in the world. I think this probably counts under "huge infrastructure project getting under way yesterday," and I don't really think it'd be all that cheap either.

You do acknowledge that we are talking about 2060 here, right? That is 50 years away. In the 1880s they projected that if horse ownership rates continued as they were that within a few decades that they would have a horse manure crisis in the cities of America(and by the way green house gas emissions from all those horses would be many multiples of what they are today). Then all of sudden these largely experimental motorized carriages began to actually take hold. By the time the Model T hit the idea of a horse manure crisis looked like the joke it was.

If you don't think this will be solved in 50 years then you must be thinking that you somehow happened on the exact time when our ever increasing march of innovation has just ceased and plateaued forever.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Two words: water desalination. Texas and Cali have a very good water future. Its states like Colorado where the water wars are going to be continuing for a long, long time.

Going by the estimates in the original post, Texas will have have a water deficit of 6.3 million acre feet per year by 2060; converting to more sensible measurements, that's a deficit of just over 5.6 billion gallons per day.

Now, consider that world's biggest desalination plant, in the UAE, has a maximum output of 130 million gallons per day. So for Texas to make up its water deficit with desalination plants, it would need to build 43 of them equivalent in output to the most productive one in the world. I think this probably counts under "huge infrastructure project getting under way yesterday," and I don't really think it'd be all that cheap either.

You do acknowledge that we are talking about 2060 here, right? That is 50 years away. In the 1880s they projected that if horse ownership rates continued as they were that within a few decades that they would have a horse manure crisis in the cities of America(and by the way green house gas emissions from all those horses would be many multiples of what they are today). Then all of sudden these largely experimental motorized carriages began to actually take hold. By the time the Model T hit the idea of a horse manure crisis looked like the joke it was.

If you don't think this will be solved in 50 years then you must be thinking that you somehow happened on the exact time when our ever increasing march of innovation has just ceased and plateaued forever.

I can bet that in 15 years, Texas will not have one desalination plant.  And they'll have a large water deficit.

So it'll be okay to move to Texas in 2060... but in the mean time, they're gonna go through hell.

[Wonkish1]

I can bet that in 15 years, Texas will not have one desalination plant.  And they'll have a large water deficit.

So it'll be okay to move to Texas in 2060... but in the mean time, they're gonna go through hell.

Not really if that is the case then the price of water increases until it prices high water dependent business out of business. There are many other areas where Texas has a low cost of living so watching as one rises relative to the rest of the country and others fall relative to the rest of the country isn't anything new.

And as water prices rise there becomes a high profit motive to build something like a water desalination plant.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

And as water prices rise there becomes a high profit motive to build something like a water desalination plant.

And as water prices rise, there will be added incentives to be more efficient in using water, or even abandoning some uses.  The problem is, I don't think the incentives to do either will be there until the aquifers start to run dry, at which point there will be a sudden shock to the system.

[Wonkish1]

And as water prices rise there becomes a high profit motive to build something like a water desalination plant.

And as water prices rise, there will be added incentives to be more efficient in using water, or even abandoning some uses.  The problem is, I don't think the incentives to do either will be there until the aquifers start to run dry, at which point there will be a sudden shock to the system.

Well there are incentives to do both. Be more efficient with it and innovate a solution. I would grant that municipal regulations that put a damper on a utilities ability to raise prices significantly as the water is running low may exasperate the problem(I don't know if this is much of an issue in a state like Texas), but the cost of extraction should rise as the water level drops, right?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

And as water prices rise there becomes a high profit motive to build something like a water desalination plant.

And as water prices rise, there will be added incentives to be more efficient in using water, or even abandoning some uses.  The problem is, I don't think the incentives to do either will be there until the aquifers start to run dry, at which point there will be a sudden shock to the system.

Well there are incentives to do both. Be more efficient with it and innovate a solution. I would grant that municipal regulations that put a damper on a utilities ability to raise prices significantly as the water is running low may exasperate the problem(I don't know if this is much of an issue in a state like Texas), but the cost of extraction should rise as the water level drops, right?

Most aquifers are only a few hundred feet thick, so except for the most shallow of aquifers, the added costs of drilling deeper to reach the bottom of the aquifer will be negligible.  Some places will be lucky enough to have another deeper aquifer that they could draw on, but accessing it would be a sudden jump in cost, not a gradual one.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I wasn't aware that Texas cities/towns had private water companies.

Here water is provided either through a well or through a municipal water system.  And you can bet that if water becomes scarce, cities will raise the rates to cover the cost increase.

As for the free market:  As I already said.. it isn't going to be good for Texas when two of their largest economic sectors get wiped out by high water prices:  Oil/gas extraction and farming.

No doubt they'll come groveling to the feds for assistance and states like Minnesota and Delaware will bail them out.  After they've scolded us for being libruls who like big gubmint, of course.

[Wonkish1]

Most aquifers are only a few hundred feet thick, so except for the most shallow of aquifers, the added costs of drilling deeper to reach the bottom of the aquifer will be negligible.  Some places will be lucky enough to have another deeper aquifer that they could draw on, but accessing it would be a sudden jump in cost, not a gradual one.

Interesting. I love learning interesting details like this. Thanks for pointing that out.

[Wonkish1]

I wasn't aware that Texas cities/towns had private water companies.

Here water is provided either through a well or through a municipal water system.  And you can bet that if water becomes scarce, cities will raise the rates to cover the cost increase.

As for the free market:  As I already said.. it isn't going to be good for Texas when two of their largest economic sectors get wiped out by high water prices:  Oil/gas extraction and farming.

No doubt they'll come groveling to the feds for assistance and states like Minnesota and Delaware will bail them out.  After they've scolded us for being libruls who like big gubmint, of course.

If you think water prices are even remotely a concern in oil extraction your sorely mistaken take a look at F*ing middle east man. They can pump anything they want into those wells to get the oil to rise up; it doesn't need to fresh water.

Texas is going to be continuing to grow for a long, long time and probably at a faster rate than the rest of the country. You bet against the economy of Texas going forward be prepared to lose your shirt.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I wasn't aware that Texas cities/towns had private water companies.

Here water is provided either through a well or through a municipal water system.  And you can bet that if water becomes scarce, cities will raise the rates to cover the cost increase.

As for the free market:  As I already said.. it isn't going to be good for Texas when two of their largest economic sectors get wiped out by high water prices:  Oil/gas extraction and farming.

No doubt they'll come groveling to the feds for assistance and states like Minnesota and Delaware will bail them out.  After they've scolded us for being libruls who like big gubmint, of course.

If you think water prices are even remotely a concern in oil extraction your sorely mistaken take a look at F*ing middle east man. They can pump anything they want into those wells to get the oil to rise up; it doesn't need to fresh water.

Texas is going to be continuing to grow for a long, long time and probably at a faster rate than the rest of the country. You bet against the economy of Texas going forward be prepared to lose your shirt.

Hydraulic fracking requires water and the vast majority of new oil discoveries will be accessed by fracking.  I think I'll stick with my bet and keep my shirt.

[Sbane]

I wasn't aware that Texas cities/towns had private water companies.

Here water is provided either through a well or through a municipal water system.  And you can bet that if water becomes scarce, cities will raise the rates to cover the cost increase.

As for the free market:  As I already said.. it isn't going to be good for Texas when two of their largest economic sectors get wiped out by high water prices:  Oil/gas extraction and farming.

No doubt they'll come groveling to the feds for assistance and states like Minnesota and Delaware will bail them out.  After they've scolded us for being libruls who like big gubmint, of course.

If you think water prices are even remotely a concern in oil extraction your sorely mistaken take a look at F*ing middle east man. They can pump anything they want into those wells to get the oil to rise up; it doesn't need to fresh water.

Texas is going to be continuing to grow for a long, long time and probably at a faster rate than the rest of the country. You bet against the economy of Texas going forward be prepared to lose your shirt.

You need to calm down. A bet against Texan agriculture looks good right now but it wouldn't be a good idea to bet against the tech industry in Austin!

[Wonkish1]

I wasn't aware that Texas cities/towns had private water companies.

Here water is provided either through a well or through a municipal water system.  And you can bet that if water becomes scarce, cities will raise the rates to cover the cost increase.

As for the free market:  As I already said.. it isn't going to be good for Texas when two of their largest economic sectors get wiped out by high water prices:  Oil/gas extraction and farming.

No doubt they'll come groveling to the feds for assistance and states like Minnesota and Delaware will bail them out.  After they've scolded us for being libruls who like big gubmint, of course.

If you think water prices are even remotely a concern in oil extraction your sorely mistaken take a look at F*ing middle east man. They can pump anything they want into those wells to get the oil to rise up; it doesn't need to fresh water.

Texas is going to be continuing to grow for a long, long time and probably at a faster rate than the rest of the country. You bet against the economy of Texas going forward be prepared to lose your shirt.

You need to calm down. A bet against Texan agriculture looks good right now but it wouldn't be a good idea to bet against the tech industry in Austin!

I am very calm! I'm starting to wonder why people think I'm pissed off in some of these posts. Okay I swear on occasion, but that doesn't make me pissed. I'm usually the pretty jovial type.

And I wouldn't bet against Texas ag. Beef cattle is looking pretty damn good these days. And ag in general is one of the hottest growth markets around. Now clearly I wouldn't buy at these valuations, but its still got a good run ahead of the industry for a decent while.

[Joe Republic]

Hardly unique to Texas. The whole SW has this problem.  Hey, Las Vegas, the Venetian probably wasn't the best use of what little water you have.

You forgot to mention the Bellagio as well.  But really, the water usage for those hotel gimmicks is negligible next to the general consumption in the metro area.

There are currently two medium-term strategies to solve the problem here.  One is a planned pipeline that sources from a deeper point of Lake Mead than the current two, which are at risk of sucking air as the lake's water levels have dropped over the past decade.  The second plan is to draw water from the tables upstate.  This would be costly though, and the rural communities are fighting this plan tooth and nail.

Anyway, back to Texas.

[Simfan34]

NAWAPA!

[All Along The Watchtower]

For the record, Texas is, IMHO, one of the worst models for development.

[Wonkish1]

For the record, Texas is, IMHO, one of the worst models for development.

Care to place a bet on that?