Here's the Austin-American article URL:
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/state-oks-50-year-water-plan-2035221.html

Points I gathered:
1) Worst dought on record was 1950-1957.
2) Worst single year dought is 2011.
3) Says: In serious drought conditions, Texas does not and will not have enough water to meet the needs of its people, its businesses, and its agricultural enterprises.
4) State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said that Texas has endured droughts in five of the past seven years and that the current one is likely to continue at least until next fall and may rival the one in the 1950s.
5) La Niña will also probably ensure rainfall remains minimal at least through June.
6) An acre-foot is about enough water to supply a typical household for a year.
7) the board heard that reservoir storage statewide is at a record low of 58 percent!!!

And
Facing large budget shortfalls, state lawmakers have made only about $1.4 billion available for future water needs.


So in the end I guess we need our on plan:

When you are fishing, boating or near a lake, be sure to pour all your bottled water into the lake and empty your bladder.

Good lord, you mean the solution to a problem really and truly is to PEE ON IT!

The TFF saves the day!!

26 new reservoirs needed! You suppose I can talk them into putting one of those in at the creek near my house?

Plus #1.

question is you willing to take half of whats your house is worth so they can doze it and build a lake?

Don't anyone worry, EPA or Sierra will find a endangered orange-spotted stripped-butt toad to kill the reservoirs in East Texas.

I learned a long time ago to buy on high ground. A lake on the creek near me would be walking distance, though...

What would you consider the cause(s) of the problem? Here is what I think the causes are:
1)Lack of rain - obviously
2)Overpopulation/overdevelopment in the watersheds
3)Wasteful water practices that are ingrained into our culture

I don't think that building new lakes is the best answer in all cases. In a drought like the present one, you would just have more low and near empty lakes. Plus they screw up a lot of good river habitat. Forever.
53 billion dollars. That's why the politicians love it. An opportunity to make a killing off of a crisis.

Facetious comments will not help. The water shortage is real. At least the state is admitting there is a serious water problem. A lot of the TFF members have their head in the sand, and do not understand the seriousness of the situation or the cause of the problem.

The full text of the plan is on line at the TWDB website.

The new lakes are given in a map in the publication. Most of the sites are in East Texas.

Good comment, Roadtrip. New lakes are probably not the answer.

A series of canals bringing water from abundant areas might be a better solution. Think of the jobs such a project would create.

with $53 BILLION I could find a way to efficiently desalinate ocean water, distribute it where needed AND have enough left over to buy a few things from Cabelas.

We need alot of reclaimed water treatment plants

I'm for it, but I want to see your plan first. Without knowing you, I'm a little leery that you may take the $53,000,000,000, buy your own country somewhere and forget about saving our Texas water supply!

I know that was facetious Smithaven, but just being funny in reply to Buzzard Breath. I do agree that our water shortage is real, but I don't have the answer. Population keeps increasing so more water is needed, but we do tend to use what we have without thinking there will be a time when we have not, so we all need to be more aware of the situation and not be wasteful.

We need rain.....thats what we need and not this seattle weather BS rain we have had in weeks past. Its gonna take a couple big azz hurricanes to replensih the state of Texas and we are going to need it soon. I know that sounds inconsiderate to those live on the waterfront cities, but truly that is the only thing that will ressurect Texas watersheds effectively. This years high pressure system that we had laying across Texas kept almost every tropical front from hitting us directly, they either went to Mexico or towards the panhandle. Hopefully this trend will end soon and Texas can get back to receiving those tropical fronts that bring the much needed rain each and every year.

I'm for it, but I want to see your plan first. Without knowing you, I'm a little leery that you may take the $53,000,000,000, buy your own country somewhere and forget about saving our Texas water supply!

Plan - A. Well publicized $1 billion dollar reward for efficient desalinating plant design. B. $1 billion dollar reward for engineering efficient distribution system. C. $50 billion dollars for construction and implementation. D. $1 billion for Buzzard Breath to act as 1 man oversight committee. APPLAUSE.

All the proposed water holding basins in the world won't make one hill of beans if conservation is not practiced first --

Its like DUH !!! Texas resevoirs are at 50% capacity AVERAGED for all - some are nearing DRY states out west of Ft Worth, we have been in a prolonged SEVEN year drought and hot summers exacerbate that fact

IF it started raining an inch daily RIGHT now it would take a full THREE MONTHS to recharge dry grounds and refill watersheds - what rain has been received has been localized and has not had any appreciable effects to drought conditions.

Desalination is a good option but it would require HUGE OP EX,

Moving water from basins of plenty to keep reservoirs full is another tack, but Texas population keeps growing and wasting water, for every lake built we change the local climates and also destroy vegetation that cleans our air , removes some CO2 and provides heat sinks --

Our climate is changing, like it or not, WHO cares what the cause may or may not be -- we better have some of our best and brightest working on future water resources --

More lakes is only a bandaid to the ACTUAL problems Texas faces in water supply.

All excellent points Tony. Good discussion.

Matt ALL water coming into metro area waste treatment IS already processed and returned to watersheds --

The MAJORITY of the flow in the Trinity below DFW right now is gray water, the flow of Village Creek (Lake Arlington) is treated sewage -

Same goes for the Sabine Watershed, Colorado watershed, and to an extent the Brazos watershed --

The MAJORITY of water flow ANYWHERE in Texas at the moment is TREATED SEWAGE


That water is ALREADY returned, so rain or aquifers are the next pure source and most major springs have ceased to flow right now --

knock,knock is anyone listening?

Need more waste water to drinking water treatment plants. Most of Texas treated sewage requires returning it to watersheds so nature can finish the job. So let's skip that step and make more plants that go from waste water straight to drinking water.

Too bad we can't have houses built in such a way that waste water from the sinks & showers (NOT the toilets!) gets diverted into ones irrigation system - can't help but think that small-scale things like this would have an enormous impact.

You can. Lots of folks already doing this.

I would like to see your stats backing that bit of info. 90 inches of rain in 3 months would cause unprecedented flooding, even starting with a drought.

aerobic septics do it with ALL the water

$53Billion so we can have carpetgrass lawns and golf courses?

Fully HALF the consumptive use of water in he state goes to those uses. We could save a huge amount of water by making some rules with respect to how people landscape their lawns in low rainfall areas and how golf courses are irrigated and where they are built.

Are they trying to add in the amount of revenue from fishing and other lake activities at these new lakes? I could only see them drawing more bodies to Texas waters which is more $$$$$.

There has been attempts to build these "new" reservoirs for the last 15 years, and they have been shut down every time by the environmentalist who claim it will destroy the natural habitat, so now the state has a good excuse to build them and say the hell with them by pleasing the rest of the state population. They will not solve the underlying problem of the natural minute climate shifts we experience in this country based on the global wind patterns.
With that said the bigger issue is that this is a nation wide issue, that will never be addressed. If anyone remembers how California and Florida/Southeast both went through severe droughts in the last 10 years, while the midwest & northeast have had torential rains, snows, and flooding, there needs to be a national grid system to distribute water similar to the distribution of electricity... Now who pays for it and who governs it and all the typical political BS, that's a problem for them there experts...

We are just now seeing the TIP of what will be the most serious problems facing states water supplies. Typically all states develop these PIE IN THE SKY water plans that are unsustainable and cost far more than they are worth, both economically and environmentally. Water wars have been ONGOING in several cross state water sheds for some years now - Georgia, Alabama, Florida are one prime example, and even Texas is now SUING Oklahoma for access rights to Oklahoma stored capacities -

Our politicans really don't have a CLUE how serious this problem ALREADY is - but at least they are talking about it thru the courts

Sure I would love to see more static dead lakes (not) I am a fishing finnaddict, but I just can't see that producing more big holes to go dry will help - additionally in times of drought we loose huge numbers of trees and other air cleaning foliage - and even more when we inundate millions of forrested acres of bottomland -

A state agricultural report today estimated 500 MILLION mature trees lost as a result of drought and wildfires this year.

For every greenspace we pave over or cover with water we "change" the local climates - it becomes HOTTER in summer, and colder in winter

Environmental wacko's of which I am NOT one - will give you a laundry list of WHY more lakes are not a good thing -

Good fishing holes for thirty years YES, but looking at long term, NO.

Interstate,Interbasin transfer from sources of plenty, to arid regions are options that need to be looked at, but they also bring new sets of problems - can you say asian carp, florida exotics, zebra mussels, rusty crawfish, giant salvinnia, or any host of invasive water weeds and unsuitable invasive fish and mollusks?

water, water, everywhere and no NATIONAL plan for conservancy or supply.

For every lake built in Texas mitigation fund should be supplied to plant like numbers of trees lost as a result of inundation --

Water does NOT manufacture oxygen !!!

all the plants and algae in water create quite a bit of oxygen. unless you kill all the plants with herbacides and grass carp a few more lakes woulndnt hurt as long as the gov. uses the lands it has already taken into its possession and not confiscate more. I live in east texas and live in a small community with 3 small private lakes 50 80 and 200 hundred acres the state came in a month ago and and took pics of lakes. then odered the drains be opened and water levels kept at that current level which is below full pool. If we do not comply 1000$ aday fine per lake. Now that we have rain we are not allowed to let the lake rise 2 feet to the spill way.

Vascular plants and most algae types are net consumers, not producers of oxygen in most freshwater lakes. Hence the annual oxygen depletions in weedy lakes, and not so in lakes not weed covered. Adding grass carp, and/or proper, timely treatment with herbicides actually increases the lake's oxygen budget, not decrease it.

I did not know that the heavy hand of the state (TCEQ?) was able to force landowners to pull water from their lakes. Now THAT is invasive government.

I'm currently filling my 30 acre reservoir at my fish farm from the bayou. It rained enough for the first time in many months to run the pump, and I'm catching every drop. I've a permit for 750 acre-feet, but only need about 200 or so to fill up the reservoir and the farm. As long as I remain within the confines of my pumping permit, the state cannot force me to do anything. Discharging water back to the stream, now that is another matter altogether...

Construction of new reservoirs in Texas presents a problem due to the sites most of these lakes can be built on. Almost every lake is built or planned in and around river channels (to fill them) and as such inundate high (ecological) value bottomland hardwood forests and habitats. These are crucial to such things as the songbird population in North America, endangered species here in Texas, and as part of the precious few remaining pristine areas of our state.

We need to be very careful in reviewing where such reservoirs are to be constructed and try to reach some sort of balance between human need and a halfway conserved environment.

About half the water consumed in Texas could be saved by banning golf courses and carpetgrass lawns West of I 45. A lesser amount could be saved by forcing golf courses to be more conserving and using waste water to irrigate with and the same for carpetgrass lawns where it doesn't rain enough to keep them alive.

I brought this up a month ago.

Desalinating sea water is really simple and cheap.
You just boil sea water and collect the steam.

I still think its the only effective solution to the problem of water-shortage for public use. Each month, more and more folks from around the country are realizing how Texas is doing much better compared to the rest of the country so they're moving down here.

Desalination makes for a good source of drinking water, but is very expensive in terms of energy use. Running a huge still to produce millions of gallons of fresh water will cost tremendously and might work for high value uses, but not for irrigation, watering lawns, and filling pools.

With increasing energy costs, that will only get more expensive. Now, if a desalination plant can be set up as a cogeneration project using waste heat to evaporate the water, that might make more sense. Might even be a method to employ solar power in a meaningful way.

At any rate, we (Texans) will need to have a better plan than we've got right now as the population will continue to grow into the foreseable future, as will our need for freshwater.