Flood resilience means thinking upstream, Texas A&M professor tells US Senate committee

Texas A&M University at Galveston Professor Sam Brody testified in a recent U.S. Senate hearing on reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), urging the committee to not only reauthorize the program, but expand it using existing sources,...

Texas is drying up. We better protect our groundwater.

It is obvious to any Texan that we are in a horrific drought. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than 80% of Texas has been facing drought conditions most of the year. Extreme or worse drought now covers 51% of the state. The drought is hurting water...

Don’t go with the flow

Do areas on your property look like this—sparse vegetation and very little topsoil? Hill County soils are notoriously thin. At one time, this spot likely had lots more soil and vegetation. What happened? Hard to tell exactly, but it’s likely due to a combination of...

The Odessa water outage underscores a growing problem: Aging pipes in Texas cities are getting more fragile

Odessa city officials are still investigating what caused a massive water line break that left the city without water for 48 hours last month. But they’ve shared one important detail: The water line was about 60 years old. “Aging water systems are common throughout...

Five things to know about drought in the American West

Harsh and unrelenting. But also transformative? The dry conditions blanketing much of the American West are setting records nearly every week. Lakes Mead and Powell, the country’s largest reservoirs by capacity, dropped to new lows this year. The Great Salt Lake did,...