Texas toasts but will it conserve?
How hot is Texas? Really hot. Hot enough to bake chocolate-chip cookies on your Chevy鈥檚 dashboard.
Dallas is expected to hit 106 degrees today, a record. The city鈥檚 10-day forecast reads like this: 106, 106, 105, 103, 103, 104, 103, 103, 103, 104. 鈥淏ig D鈥� has had 39 straight days of temperatures over 100 degrees. The state鈥檚 largest city will burn past its all-time record for 100-plus degree days in a row (42) this Friday.
But it鈥檚 not just the heat, it鈥檚 the dry that鈥檚 producing the biggest worries. Texas is now in the midst of its worst-ever one-year drought, according to John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. One-hundred-degree-plus temperatures will be 鈥渢he norm鈥� in Texas within a few decades, and 115-degree days 鈥渨on鈥檛 be surprising,鈥� he says.
Right now much of the Lone Star landscape has gone all crispy and brown. Nearly three-quarters of the state is experiencing severe drought.
Reservoirs are shrinking dramatically. Lake Nacogdoches in east Texas recently dropped so low it exposed debris left by the crash of space shuttle Columbia in 2003. Agricultural losses to crops like corn, wheat, hay, cotton, and sorghum are estimated to be in the $7 billion to $8 billion range.
What's more, the state鈥檚 large oil industry is making more and more use of fracking, a water-intensive hydraulic-fracturing technique, putting it in growing competition with agriculture to use the available water.
Meanwhile, the state鈥檚 population grew by 4.2 million in the last decade, the biggest gain of any state.
All this might make you suppose that Texas, given that it has money to spend and a big need for water, might be a leader in developing innovative new approaches to water conservation.
The answer: Not so much.
The state can point to some individual bright spots, though they don鈥檛 add up to nearly enough. They include Dallas鈥檚 鈥淣ew Throne for Your Home鈥� program that subsidizes the purchase of water-saving toilets.
Since the 1980s, San Antonio has reduced its per capita water use from 225 gallons per person per day to 122. (Dallas is still at 240 gallons.) Even though San Antonio鈥檚 water department serves 67 percent more customers today, water usage hasn鈥檛 grown at all.
The traditional Texas solution to a water shortage has been to find more, mainly by damming up the state鈥檚 rivers. While many parts of the United States are tearing down their dams, for both ecological and economic reasons, Texas wants to keep building them. According to the US Army Corps of Engineers, the state has 7,173 dams higher than six feet. California, the most populous state, has 1,468. Alaska, the biggest state in area, has 96.
Dams not only can be costly public works projects to build, they come with other less-obvious costs. People and homes may have to be relocated; productive (and revenue-producing) land is lost under water, and wildlife habitats are destroyed.
No doubt Texans will learn how to cope. New watering techniques and drought-resistant plants can help its agriculture weather a changing climate. Xeriscaping (low-water-use landscaping) can beautifully replace some of the lawns kept green only with prodigious use of precious municipal water supplies, just as it has in other arid climates. (Irrigation for landscaping accounts for about half of total water usage during summer months in Texas.)
Big Spring, Texas, is taking things to the next level. It鈥檚 building a $13 million waste-treatment plant that will convert 2 million gallons of cleaned sewage back into clean, drinkable water, a step beyond the use of recycled 鈥済ray water鈥� on lawns, golf courses, and decorative fountains. (The 鈥測uck鈥� factor will have to be overcome. Maybe the fact that astronauts in space have been using such systems for years will help.)
Texans have an innovative spirit. They have an opportunity to turn a problem into an opportunity by showing the rest of the US 鈥� and the world 鈥� how to prosper in a hotter, drier climate.
