Along a rural stretch of U.S. Route 183 in the Red River Basin, the once expansive Lake Kemp has receded to less than 25 percent of its former glory. Exceptional drought conditions have reduced this reservoir and others in the basin to cracked red clay inhabited by sun-bleached vegetation and struggling wildlife. Wichita Falls, which has been living with drought conditions deemed by experts to be worse than the 1930s Dust Bowl Era, holds the dubious honor of being the largest city in Texas threatened with running out of water. Water reservoirs have been hovering at about a third of capacity for months on end, resulting in stringent water restrictions and sinking city revenues.
An emergency drought scenario like this one is exactly what lawmakers, strategists and business leaders in the Metroplex are working hard to avoid. Yet this situation is reality for residents living a mere 120 miles northwest of Fort Worth.
"The reservoirs that supply the Fort Worth area are 74 percent full, and if you head out west of Wichita Falls, they are 30 percent full," says Dr. Robert Mace, deputy executive administrator for water science and conservation at the Texas Water Development Board. "So you are lucky you are on the wet side of that line. West of that line there is a dramatic difference in how the reservoirs are reacting to the drought."
Wichita Falls and other parts of Texas stricken with extreme drought conditions stand as a warning for the rest of the state, and North Texas in particular, that proactive steps need to be taken to secure adequate water sources for the coming decades.
Tarrant Regional Water District currently serves 1.8 million residents in more than 70 cities across 11 counties, including Fort Worth, Arlington, Mansfield and the Trinity River Authority. In order to better meet demands, TRWD attempted to obtain water from Oklahoma's Red River watershed under the Red River Compact, a congressionally backed agreement allowing for interstate water sharing. However, on June 13, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the bid and upheld Oklahoma's law forbidding out-of-state water sales.
"The court ruled on it, and we will move on and work from that," Mayor Betsy Price said in response to the ruling. "It just makes the fact that we have to look at conservation all that much more imperative. Ultimately, we will have to look for other sources of water, new pipelines, new reservoirs, and they get costly. That's why conservation is so critical to help keep costs down and preserve the water we do have."
In 2011, almost the entire state experienced exceptional drought conditions. Despite dramatic improvement since then, 85 percent of the state remains in some phase of drought, and 60 percent falls into the severe, extreme or exceptional category.
"There doesn't seem to be any El Niño event in the forecast that would lead to a really wet winter to help break the drought once and for all," says Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas state climatologist and Texas A&M professor. "Over the long haul, both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are in patterns that generally favor dry conditions for Texas, so it is not surprising that we've been having problems with drought for several years now."
Dr. Mace agrees, "Natural cycles tied to sea surface temperatures suggest that we're probably 15 years into what typically is a 30-year drier period on average for Texas. We are not out of the woods yet, and it is likely that severe short-term droughts are going to hit the Dallas-Fort Worth area for the next 10 to 15 years."
Areas like Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin are on the "hinge" between dry west and wet eastern part of the state.
"What we've seen is this pattern over the last 10 years, where [hinge cities] get these short-term intense droughts, and then we get a good year. Then the cycle repeats," explains Dr. Mace. "What we have seen over the past two years is that we're not quite getting the good rainy year in between the short-term drought. Those drought years are connecting up."
Stacked drought years can create a water deficit that is hard to overcome. The longer the drought drags on, the greater the long-term impact, which is why the rain enjoyed by the Metroplex last year was not enough to stall the City of Fort Worth and Tarrant Regional Water District from instituting "stage one" water restrictions in June. (Stage one restrictions kick in when water reservoirs drop below 75 percent capacity as part of the city's emergency water management plan.)
"As dry conditions continue, the stream flow and the water coming into the reservoirs stay below normal because the ground is dry," says Dr. Nielsen-Gammon. "Any rain that falls starts off by making the soil wet, and it's only the leftovers that feed the streams."
Ongoing drought conditions are only part of the water supply equation affecting the Metroplex. Dallas-Fort Worth also logged the largest population bump in the nation between summer 2011 and 2012 and has grown by an impressive 4.3 percent since 2010 to more than 6.7 million, according to census information. The City of Fort Worth is expected to be home to more than 1.5 million citizens by 2050, and water demands are expected to double.
"We have got to learn how to conserve what we have today so that we can extend our current supply," says Mayor Price. "Small changes in the way we use water, reducing waste and reducing landscaping water can have a big influence on our future needs."
Matt Greske, director of government affairs for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, is concerned about ensuring water supply needs not only for a growing population but also the business community. To help secure future water supplies, Greske and other community leaders are backing recently passed state legislation known as Senate Joint Resolution 1, which voters have the opportunity to ratify in November. SJR1 approves a one-time withdrawal of $2 billion from the state's rainy day fund for a "water bank," allowing the state to loan money to municipalities and water districts for projects supporting Texas water needs.
"It is predicted over the next 50 years that we are going to be well short of our water needs, not just for drinking but also for manufacturing," Greske says. "For us to balance this huge population boom that we've had and continue adding jobs and top talent and continue having people move to the state, we need to have that secure water source. I think that's a prudent use of our money-to allow citizens to have a good quality of life."
Critics of the legislation say the measures are fiscally irresponsible and worry about the environmental impact of proposed water projects. Greske maintains that conservation remains a top priority for North Texans, and this funding is necessary for the economic health of the region.
"If you have a project approved for design and environmental impact and finally get the funding approved five years later, we've already had population growth in that five years. So it is addressing a need we had five years ago, not a need we have going forward," Greske explains. "When there is no real funding for it, over the years the price tag for implementing a plan grows. This is going to be a more proactive approach. Water districts around the state already have plans in place for their regions, and this will allow them to engage with state leaders to discuss the importance of their projects."
In recent years, the Metroplex has been criticized for depleting water resources compared to cities such as San Antonio and El Paso, but Linda Christie, community and governmental relations director at TRWD, disagrees. She explains that the misconception is based on per capita water use statistics collected by the Texas Water Development Board. Those stats do not effectively distinguish between residential and industrial water use.
"The DFW metroplex is an economic engine for the state, and they do not have the same industry or commercial use in San Antonio and El Paso that we do," Christie says. "Our residential numbers of consumption compared very favorably with San Antonio and El Paso."
Statewide and regional water plans remain focused on continuing water conservation strategies but also are looking at expansion to ensure water supply meets future demand. To meet current local demands, some water is being pumped from East Texas into the Metroplex. Expansion plans in Tarrant County include building more pipelines and new reservoirs, but the price tags for both are large, as are the timetables for completion.
The TRWD also has a wetlands water reuse project that is the first of its type in the nation. After completion, it should provide close to 3,000 acres of habitat that will double as an eco-friendly water filtration system adding approximately 115,000 acres to the water supply. Conservation remains the lowest-cost solution with the least environmental impact.
"What water conservation does is it buys us time to make smart choices going forward about how we want to develop future resources," says Mark Olson, conservation and creative manager at TRWD. "Initially, water supplies were sufficient through the year 2030, but lower water use is allowing us to extend that timeline beyond what we originally thought…Any amount of water that we can save today is going to be a good thing for the whole community." To put it in perspective, water saved through conservation costs about $0.25 per 1,000 gallons. Compare this to the cost of water from reuse, pipeline or new reservoir sources, which ranges between $1 and $3 per 1,000 gallons.
In the spring, the TRWD conducted an exhaustive study of water conservation programs nationwide, ranking the most efficient and easy-to-implement strategies that could be adopted from other programs. Mandatory twice-a-week watering proved to be the top strategy in the study, resulting in significant savings annually.
For instance, in 2011, total outdoor water use accounted for approximately 50 percent of all TRWD water supplies. During the summer months, water use more than doubles due to outdoor watering, and half of that is deemed to be wasted as a result of overwatering or runoff.
"One of the misconceptions that people have when it comes to watering their lawn is they think their lawns need more water than they really do," explains Olson. "So this twice per week watering strategy is just a good idea. What it does is create a healthy lawn. There are studies that show that on average homeowners give their lawns two or three times the water it really needs."
There was an 8.5 percent decrease in water use (or 5.8 billion gallons of water) the last time twice-a-week water restrictions were in place in DFW, and Mayor Price hopes the reduction is even more substantial this time.
"We probably wouldn't be at our 75 percent trigger [for drought restrictions] yet if we had stayed at twice a week watering this entire time," says Christie, referencing Dallas, which has been using twice-a-week water restrictions nonstop since 2011 as a conservation measure.
Because conservation remains a top priority, the TRWD and city leaders are focusing their efforts on outreach to raise awareness about the challenges affecting the water supply and to make water conservation a daily habit.
"If we encourage native plants, zeroscaping and green building, we are all going to be better off," says Mayor Price. "We have got to educate people. It's something we all need to focus on doing so we don't waste what we have. Our water is precious."
