The lost reservoir inside our water infrastructure

Water is shaping up to be a priority during the 88th Legislature. Texas weathered its fourth-most intense drought on record last year and entered 2023 with half the state still in drought. Spurred by this precarious situation, a group of House lawmakers recently...

Guadalupe runs dry with rainfall scarce

Despite the recent rain across the region, the Guadalupe River and a popular watering hole are in a sorry state. January usually sees 2 inches of rainfall in the San Antonio area. But it hasn’t even been close this year. The region has received just 0.47 inches of...

Environmental advocates push feds to investigate Texas’ enforcement of water quality

The Environmental Protection Agency says an informal investigation is underway after more than two dozen environmental advocacy groups submitted a petition against the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The petition alleges that state regulators are not doing...

New bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers wants to highlight the state’s fragile water infrastructure

A bipartisan group of state lawmakers plans to spend part of its time in Austin this year highlighting the state’s increasingly fragile water infrastructure. Texas Water Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on creating a sustainable water system in Texas,...

Flawed groundwater planning process puts Texans at risk

Texas’ process for protecting its groundwater resources is fundamentally flawed — lacking critical funding, science, and planning tools, failing to safeguard future groundwater supplies, and endangering both the water security of Texas communities and the property...

An ode to Texas’s disappearing swimming holes

I lived through the golden age of Texas swimming holes. Having spent my youth submerged in chlorinated pools in and around Fort Worth, I moved to Austin in 1973 and discovered Hippie Hollow before it was a county park and Barton Creek before a mining executive...