A few weeks ago, the Texas Water Development Board put a number on what many of us in rural Texas have been feeling for years: $174 billion. That’s what it will cost to build and repair the water infrastructure this state needs over the next several decades — and that number likely climbs closer to a quarter trillion when you factor in flood control and wastewater. Stack that against the state’s current plan — about a billion dollars spread over 20 years — and you start to see the gap.
Perry Fowler has spent years working on this issue through the Texas Water Infrastructure Network, and he called that gap "a drop in the bucket." I sat down with Perry recently on the Texas Rural Reporter podcast, and he was blunt about what the numbers mean. Texas has committed $1 billion a year in dedicated funds to water infrastructure — $20 billion over 20 years. Last session, the legislature appropriated an additional $2.5 billion, and over the last two years the Texas Water Development Board has awarded roughly $4 billion more through its existing programs. It sounds significant. But stack it against $174 billion in identified need — or the roughly $15 billion Texas spends on highways every single year — and the gap is hard to ignore.
But the size of the number isn’t even the hardest part of this conversation. The harder part is what it forces us to ask: who is supposed to take responsibility for fixing it? Community water systems across rural Texas were built and have been maintained by local governments using local tax dollars and user fees. We paid for them. The faucet turns on because of local people, local decisions, and local dollars — and for generations, that’s been the purest form of local control.
