Facing extended drought, Texas policy makers focus on water planning

Stunted corn due to extended drought. Photo: Tim McCabe, National Resources Conservation Service

An article in today’s New York Times paints a surprising picture of bipartisan support for planning in Texas–a state known for neither planning nor bipartisanship. With a two-year drought continuing and being called the third-worst in the state’s history (the worst was in the 1950s), there is interest in tapping the $2 billion rainy day fund to address infrastructure improvements to grapple with water shortages. Currently, according to the article, “As Texas Bakes in a Long Drought, Water Becomes a Focus for Legislators,” there are eighteen public water system in Texas that are projected to run out of water within 180 days if the drought doesn’t abate. In the long term, the Texas Water Development Board projects that by 2060, the state will have a water deficit of 8.3 million acre-feet—a huge amount, since one million gallons equals just over 3 acre-feet.

David W. Orr, Ph.D

David W. Orr is Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies & Politics, Emeritus. He also served as “Counselor to the President” of Oberlin College for ten years. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of three others. He has authored over 220 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications. In the past twenty-five years he has served as a board member or adviser to ten foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bioneers, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

He is currently a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Children and Nature Network, and the WorldWatch Institute. He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, leadership awards from the U.S. Green Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012), and a lifetime achievement award from Green Energy Ohio and the North American Association for Environmental Education. He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years,” as “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and as one of “52 game-changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design +Construction in January, 2016. He was instrumental in the design and funding of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center. He is the founder of the Oberlin Project and a founder of the journal Solutions. His current work is on the state of American democracy.