AUSTIN, Texas — The state Senator tasked with the unenviable responsibility of tackling the state’s water crisis wants voters to get on board with the plan this November.
While some of the details are still being ironed out, and no specific legislation has been filed yet, Senator Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, covered the contours of the plan with us on Inside Texas Politics.
If the plan is approved, Perry plans to propose an alternative to the highly controversial Marvin Nichols Reservoir. State leaders say Marvin Nichols is necessary to provide water for fast-growing North Texas, but landowners strongly oppose the plan to flood 70,000 acres in East Texas to establish the reservoir.
Sen. Perry says both the Texas Senate and the Texas House have $2.5 billion earmarked in their base budgets to jump-start the state’s water initiative.
But beyond that, the Republican wants voters to approve a $1 billion constitutional amendment this November.
“Hopefully I’ll garner 100 votes because it’s a constitutional amendment, 100 votes that will dedicate a specific source of revenue for water supply development into perpetuity basically with an option to renew it about every 10 years,” the Republican told us.
In general, lawmakers plan to use that funding to take a “shotgun approach” to address the state’s water shortage.
That includes replacing old infrastructure that allows significant amounts of water to be wasted through leaking water lines.
Beyond that, lawmakers will look at desalination plants, rainwater harvesting, building off-channel storage to capture water during high rainfall events, and even building more lakes and reservoirs.
One example of a new water supply would be the proposed Marvin Nichols reservoir in northeast Texas.
But that project has been stalled for years because many landowners don’t want it, and critics say it would crush the timber industry in east Texas.
Sen. Perry says lawmakers can’t solve that battle, so he indicated the best plan moving forward might be to scrap the reservoir and use the plan lawmakers are formulating right now instead.
“I call that particular reservoir ‘imminent domain purgatory.’ It might happen. I know for a fact, with confidence, it’s not going to happen in the next 10 or 15 or 20 years. And I know that that region needs water sooner than that,” said the Republican.
And Sen. Perry broke some significant news during our interview when he told us the plan he’s working on would provide an alternative to a Marvin Nichols reservoir if voters approve the plan in November.
“It will literally bring in about 1.1 million acre-feet to be distributed through three pipelines, specifically, Tarrant County, Dallas, moving over to Wichita Falls, where there’s another reservoir in conversations. There will be a 330,000-acre feet pipeline moving that per year,” the Senator unveiled on Inside Texas Politics.
However, because conversations are ongoing, Senator Perry could not tell us yet where this new source will come from.
That news, he says, is a few weeks away.
“I think probably by the end of February, mid-March. My counterparts in other places are having the same conversations we’re having about possibly purchasing water. All the political fronts look good. The stars have aligned,” said the Republican. “And here’s the nice thing. We aren’t competing with someone’s property and we’re not competing with someone’s water right. It’s a really nice set-up for us and Texas needs to be very aggressive in getting access to any and all water that they can take on.”