Quit watering your damn yards!

Texas needs to stop growing because it can no longer support itself with the resources that the state can provide. The main factor for needing to limit growth in Texas has and will always be water. Water is the number one necessity needed for humans to stay alive, crops to grow, and livestock to stay healthy. Due to global climate change and burning of the Amazon for the past ten or so years, Texas summers have broken record temperatures and droughts have just gotten worse.

Last summer, Texans got a glimpse of what’s to come for the future, and just how bad things can get if they continue to use and waste water at record amounts. One of many areas to run out of water is close to Austin, the Capitol of Texas. The Spicewood Beach area for a while had been selling their water to other areas needing water. They then found themselves not only unable to sell water, but running out of water for the people who live in the community and need it to survive. Because of ill planning, Spicewood Beach and others had to then have their water trucked in, rising rates to make the water even more expensive and putting pressure on local areas low on water as well.  Spicewood Beach was officially the first town in Texas to run out of water which was not an accomplishment that many had wanted to be known for. With all of Texas being in a drought, no one really had water to spare, and yet water was being trucked all over the state in what became a vicious water transfer cycle with no end in sight.

Katherine Hayhoe with Texas Tech University says “What climate change is doing is its increasing our temperatures and higher temps means faster evaporation. So you need more water to provide the same amount of irrigation for crops, which is what you’re seeing here in Texas, and many places around the world.”

I heard in the news today that Disney is looking to expand into Texas for a new theme park. Is that what Texas really needs, another theme park which wastes tons of water during the peak summer season? “But it creates jobs” many would argue, “It would help the economy”. If Disney put their new park in a state with plentiful water supply, then we could move the already overpopulated crowd of residents in Texas to that other state. If we keep bringing in Big Business, in the next 10 years Texans will be paying triple prices in water because it will have to be imported from other states.

Some say drill the wells deeper but all that is going to do is drain water quicker. The problem is there is no regulation on underground water supplies, and aquifers so people can use as much as they want. Others would be limit population growth, or actual punishment for those who don’t abide by water restrictions, but for those, someone has to regulate it at all times. One of the best suggestions to fight the water shortage has been rain water harvesting, but if all Texas harvest the rain water, what will replenish the lakes and aquifers?