Texas Ground water

[baleflipper]

Todays Austin paper had a story on the law suit about who owns underground water. The Texas Supreme court ruled that ground water is part of the property,just like timber or oil or other minerals. There will be a big mess trying to resolve all the water conservation districts right to regulate water now.
Boone Pickens,I think it was him bought up water rights around Lubbock,Will get richer selling water to cities that are running out of water.
The LCRA board voted last week to cut off water to rice farmers down river to have water for the cities up stream.
It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Now to drill a well a permit is required from Texas Water Developement Board with input from water conservation districts. It will be interesting to see how the state will regulate water after court ruling.
Any way you look at it its a mess. Aquifers water levels are steadly dropping. Rivers cant furnish cities with sufficent water. Rain fall is unpredictable.Folks keep moving here.
Some areas of the state have no ground water,surface water is all there is,no rain ,no water. I live in one of those areas.
I have seven large Earthern stock tanks on my place. Last year they all went dry. I had to tie into a rural water supply corporation line to water my cattle. the water meter cost $6500 to install. Folks keep moving here.Land is sold to speculators who cut it into 5 acre tracts and resell.
what a wreck.

 

[Kingfisher]

Todays Austin paper had a story on the law suit about who owns underground water. The Texas Supreme court ruled that ground water is part of the property,just like timber or oil or other minerals. There will be a big mess trying to resolve all the water conservation districts right to regulate water now.
Water Rights Law is real popular in school right now....

The LCRA board voted last week to cut off water to rice farmers down river to have water for the cities up stream.

I have not read the paper today but are you sure about that statement?

Now to drill a well a permit is required from Texas Water Developement Board with input from water conservation districts. It will be interesting to see how the state will regulate water after court ruling.
Any way you look at it its a mess. Aquifers water levels are steadly dropping. Rivers cant furnish cities with sufficent water. Rain fall is unpredictable.Folks keep moving here.
Some areas of the state have no ground water,surface water is all there is,no rain ,no water. I live in one of those areas.
I have seven large Earthern stock tanks on my place. Last year they all went dry. I had to tie into a rural water supply corporation line to water my cattle. the water meter cost $6500 to install.
THe meter cost that much ?? Did you have to do a road bore? Where are you located? Thanks in advance.

 

[baleflipper]

Read The Austin American Statesman.

 

[MartyJones]

"Boone Pickens,I think it was him bought up water rights around Lubbock,Will get richer selling water to cities that are running out of water."
Wrong. Boone Pickens won't be affected at all by the Day ruling. In 2011, Mr. Pickens sold all his groundwater rights (which were located east of Amarillo, not around Lubbock) to Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, guaranteeing its member cities a reliable supply for hundreds of years.

"Now to drill a well a permit is required from Texas Water Developement Board with input from water conservation districts."
Wrong. TWDB does not grant or deny well permits. Those are handled by local water districts. Those districts will be affected by the Day ruling only if their regulations are not reasonable. The current expressions of alarm from GCD's and their proponents is pretty revealing: they seem to be saying they can't regulate reasonably. There will be no onslaught of lawsuits because the Legislature has protected GCD's from suits by providing that anyone who sues a GCD and loses has to pay the GCD's attorneys fees. So you don't sue a GCD unless you're pretty sure you've got a good case. Otherwise, you'll literally lose the farm.

"It will be interesting to see how the state will regulate water after court ruling."
Wrong. The state does not regulate groundwater--that's the job of local GCD's. Let's keep the state out of this.

 

[JSCATTLE]

I saw last night that the lnva was only going to supply 80% of the water permits for rice and crawfish this year until we started getting all the rain . Eventually we will have meters on our wells so the gov. Can charge us by the gallon . Water will be worth more than oil in the near future . You can live with out oil but you can't live with out water .

 

[Bigfoot]

If i didn't misunderstand, my deer hunters told me they have to meter thier wells in florida. I would have thought Florida had plenty of water.

 

[Anonymous]

I've head rumors of meters on wells but so far it's not an issue here. And it shouldnt be when the state sells the water right to companies like zephyr hills to bottle the spring water by the millions of gallons a day. And thats not the only company.
It's a heated topic. And it's going to bite us land owners in the azz soon as the aquifer level is steadily dropping. But as long as the state sells the water rights so the richi riches can have their bottles water it's ok

 

[Pineland]

Here is a summary of the case.

http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/h ... 080964.pdf

There are still going to be some more lawsuits come out of this because the Tx supreme court did indeed rule that the groundwater beneath our property is now indeed ours, but they side stepped a few issues and sent some issues back down to lower courts.

They still held that the state has the right to regulate water.

One of the issues is going to be what fair compensation may be if they limit your use or take water from you.

While the ruling affirmed property owners rights to be compensated for regulation that limited their access to groundwater, it also reaffirmed water authorities' ability to control water use. That left some gray area in terms of how much regulation may be acceptable and where compensation will be warranted.

 

[cross_7]

water in west texas has been a hot topic as of late.

"The High Plains Underground Water District adopted rules in July that will require meters for wells and will limit the amount of water pumped per acre for irrigation," said Mark Carroll, AgriLife Extension agent in Floyd County

from what i have heard farmers will be limited to 15" of water per acre per year( about 25000 gallons for an inch over 1 acre x 15 times, times 120 acres (most pivots cover 120 acres. do the math)
i had a place sw of lubbock that in the winter time i had plenty of water, but during the summer my neighbors had 5 circles running and i only got about 1 gallon a minute and i burned up 2 pumps because i'd run out of water.

lubbock and amarillio aquired the pickens water field but there are lots of other places that are in trouble.
lots of little towns that don't have enough water or funds and brought in a prison for the federal money and jobs only to find out the prison uses more water than the town.
the further southwest you go the worse it gets

Desperate to drink, West Texas turns to wastewater
DRINKING WATER
|By Ed Lavandera, CNN Correspondent
Desperate times call for a tall, cool glass of creativity in this patch of West Texas where water is scarce and quickly disappearing.

But a plan to pump millions of new gallons of drinking water into the system has many people across West Texas holding their noses.

This week construction started on a $13 million water-reclamation facility. That's a fancy way of describing a treatment plant that will turn sewage wastewater into drinking water.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Water is going to be a big issue for us in East Texas we got it and the rest of the state want's it.

 

[baleflipper]

In regards to treating sewage water to reuse. I spent 43 yrs working as an Electrician to support my cows and farm.
The last 20 years were mostly water and waste water treatment plants with an occasional power plant remodel.
In the early 90s I worked on a waste water treatment plant in Austin as electrical superintendant. We did an experimental project to reclaim water. The water coming out of the finished product pipe was cleaner than the water that the upstream water plant took in to process.
I can only say what my experience has taught me. The water in most rivers is picked up upstream of the town ,treated and used by people,The sewage is released after treatment down stream of that town.Next town down river does the same.
In effect water is all ready being recycled. The city of Austin and the LCRA had a law suit over the city not putting the recycled water back into the river.LCRA said the water was only rented to the City and if it was not put back in the river the next town down stream would come up short on water. The City of Austin and the LCRA came to a settlement.The reclaimation plant was dismantled. Austin Built another fresh water plant up stream with a water allotment to cover the amount that the city wanted.
The LCRA got into waste water treatment for a while. The reason was there are many rural water districts that pump water out of the aquifer. If that water is directed through sewage treatment plants to enter the Colorado river this gives LCRA more water to sell to towns down stream. They have since decided to get out of the waste water plant business.
In my opion the people working in water and waste water keep us all safe from massive disease out breaks. They are most often under paid and over worked.

 

[Brute 23]

There will be alot of things go on in water in the next couple of years. In the next 10yrs there will be a spider web of piplines across Texas like the oil and gas industry has but for water. You will also see it traded like oil and gas as a commodity.

Texas has alot of water. It lacks the infrastructure to move it from one place to another. That is changing quickly. ;-)

 

[cowboy43]

Why not build a series of pipelines from where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers merge, the two largest rivers in the USA and the largest flooding rivers, when they are in flood stage the water could be transferred to the Southwest and West as far as the Colorado River and into California and Nevada in so doing all the reservors could be kept full. a sir charge would be added the water users bills to pay for the pipeline system. It would be more beneficial than going to the moon or mars and probably at less cost and the millions of water users would pay the bill. Americans have to start thinking big like our forefathers if this Country is to survive. Our infrastructure is crumbling from lack of thinking (out of the box)

 

[James T]

There's still talk around here of the taxes being assesed to water wells. The town water is already insanely expensive.

 

[Caustic Burno]

Why not build a series of pipelines from where the Missouri and Mississippi rivers merge, the two largest rivers in the USA and the largest flooding rivers, when they are in flood stage the water could be transferred to the Southwest and West as far as the Colorado River and into California and Nevada in so doing all the reservors could be kept full. a sir charge would be added the water users bills to pay for the pipeline system. It would be more beneficial than going to the moon or mars and probably at less cost and the millions of water users would pay the bill. Americans have to start thinking big like our forefathers if this Country is to survive. Our infrastructure is crumbling from lack of thinking (out of the box)

You are on the right track IMO on moving water from one area to the next it create's job's and revenue's for state's that may not be as affluent as other's. Now this is where the fly get's in the onitment it becomes interstate and is regulated by Congress. You can only image the mess and cost of this in a few year's as they generated a new tax entity. They are already taxing Oil/fuel, tobacco, alcohol, and firearms to death now they can add water.
We can only sustain X number of people on Y ground it is simple math. Either you have to control the population
( another discussion) or have to find a more conservative way of life. We are already paying out the nose for energy due to government regulation's, it is no different than the tax on tobacco. Plum scarey when you have to decide how much water you can afford for the week. The government currenty taxes a gallon of gasoline on average at 48 cent's a gallon I have no clue at what is is on alcohol per gallon would most likely scare me to death. I just can't see an advantage to more governmental interference in our life's.

 

[dun]

The idea ofpiping water around will cause more problems then it solves. Take look at the Owens valley in california, water is piped to losangeles. Or the Salton Sea in california, the ColoradoRiver hasbeen robbed so much that the Sea is almost dried up and much of the river down stream is almost dry. Water piped to loasangeles and sandiego did that. The water drawn off for agriculture may find it's way back into the ground water, but much of it evaporates.

 

[1wlimo]

How many are using methods of water conservation?

The Keyline system http://www.yeomansplow.com.au/yeomans-k ... system.htm

Harvesting rainfall from roofs, deep tanks or ponds in you pasture etc. Depth reducing the surface area and there fore evaporation rates.

As the price of water has risen in the UK, there are now more businesses harvesting water from their roofs. When grain prices were low there were some farmers in the East where it is dry (22 inches a year rainfall) looking at covering some of their land in plastic to harvest rainfall so they could grow vegetable crops on the rest.

 

[Brute 23]

http://bluewatertx.com/projects.html

 

[Dave]

For years California has wanted the water out of the Columbia River. Washington and Oregon wont let them have it. Sure there is a lot of water that runs into the ocean everyday but there are also issues created by removing that water. There is already a huge amount of water removed from the Columbia for irrigation. As was said earlier a lot of that water evaporates. This is evident in the increase of rainfall in the areas downwind of the irrigation projects. That may not be a bad thing. But it does show just one of the effects of water removal. And up here salmon in the rivers is a huge issue. Start removing water from any river and the tribes, EPA, state and Federal fish and wildlife, and a whole lot of other people get their backs up real quick. One of the fastest ways I can think of to find ones self in court.

And for those who aren't aware of it. The Columbia is not just a little stream up here in the Northwest. It is the 6th largest river in the world.

 

[Brute 23]

There are better sources of water than pulling from rivers and such. At one point San Antonio wanted to flood a pretty good area down river so they could have a resivor to pull from and pump the water back to SA. :bang: That is so rediculous its not even funny but its cheaper than the other options and thats all they were concerned with.

If you choose to move to an area like SA that is well know for its water issues... its no ones fault but your own. Be ready to pay the price. Its not the rest of our resposibilty to provide for you.