TEXAS MONTHLY partnered with StateImpact Texas and KUT News to take a close look at how the state can manage a growing population amid a shrinking water supply. Listen to reports from NPR’s John Burnett, Texas state photographer Wyman Meinzer, and more audio and online reports.
As much as anything, the Texas economic miracle depends on water. Lots of water. So what are all those power plants, refineries, and factories going to do as the state gets drier and drier and drier?
The future is likely going to require us to move large amounts of water from wet but sparsely populated places (a.k.a. East Texas) to thirsty, booming cities. Good thing there’s a plan for that. There is a plan, right?
Over the past year, state photographer Wyman Meinzer has roamed the Big Empty, documenting the drought’s toll. Will he ever take another pretty picture?
Bad as the current drought is, it has yet to match the most arid spell in Texas history. Nearly two dozen survivors of the fifties drought remember the time it never rained.
The Lower Pecos River rock paintings were created four thousand years ago by a long-forgotten people. But their apparent message may be as useful today as it was then: Follow the water.
As last year’s historic drought reminded us, Texas has always lived life by the drop, just a few dry years away from a serious crisis. With our population expected to nearly double over the next fifty years, this situation is about to become more, not less, challenging. This month we
The first serious coverage of water in TEXAS MONTHLY came just a couple months shy of our two-year anniversary, in a story by Greg Curtis entitled “Disaster, Part I. Lubbock is running out of water.” (A companion piece, “Disaster, Part II,” argued that Houston was sinking into
Along the Houston Ship Channel the water is eight feet high and risin’.
West Texans are going to have to figure out what they’re going to do when the well runs dry.
More anecdotes from the "Don’t Mess With Texas” campaign.
If you’re a half shell fanatic like me, you’ll be just as alarmed as I was to hear that oystermen in Galveston Bay—the source of some of the country’s most delicious mollusks —are still struggling to make it after Hurricane Ike.
A tidy look back at 25 years of “Don’t Mess With Texas”— the most successful anti-littering campaign in world history.
The spill in the Gulf is just the latest in a string of catastrophic regulatory failures that prove how incompetent government is. And how important it is.
My mother trained me to be a naturalist in our suburban backyard, one bird call at a time.
Our natural resources are under greater threat than ever before. Meet three very different people who are doing something to save Texas. Literally.
The hybrid of my dreams.
Why does a rich Houston investment banker spend his days traveling the globe, preaching to the uninformed and indifferent that the world’s supply of crude oil is in steep decline and the end of life as we know it is very, very near? Maybe because it is.
How Texas can become the world’s clean energy leader.
And you’re going to need it, eventually, since Texas’ most precious natural resource is being depleted at an alarming rate. His plan is to pump vast amounts from his land in the Panhandle and pipe it to parched cities like El Paso and San Antonio—for a hefty price, of course.
Offshore drillers are finding mammoth reservoirs in places that were once considered barren, which is why the Gulf of Mexico is booming again.
George H. W. Bush has given Texas the Republican convention—and little else.
A year has passed since Hurricane Ike slammed into Galveston, but my hometown is still reeling from a storm without end.
More than 300 million trees died in Texas in 2011 due to extreme drought conditions
Three Texas metropolitan areas landed on Travel + Leisure's list of America's dirtiest cities.
Former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Stehn didn’t want to get involved in a lawsuit against the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. But when a U.S. marshal showed up in his driveway, he realized he had one more chance to help out his beloved, endangered whooping cranes.
A number of the critically endangered sea turtles are being monitored by the National Resource Damage Assessment, which is studying how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impacted the animal is underway on Padre Island.
Should nonproducing oil rigs be demolished, or are the habitats marine life have built around them too valuable to compromise?
A global helium shortage has U.S. senators looking at new legislation to preserve the resources coming out of federal reserves near Amarillo.
Land Commisioner Jerry Patterson, former Galveston legislator A.R. Schwartz, and TEXAS MONTHLY's Paul Burka all blast the Texas Supreme Court for last week's ruling.
For more than 75 years, rice farmers in Matagorda County and elsewhere along the Gulf have shared the waters of the Colorado River with urban residents in the Hill Country. But with city centers booming and an almost-certain drought ahead, the state is being forced to choose between a water-intensive
The Asthma and Allergy Foundation just released its "Spring Allergy Capitals" survey, which put McAllen at number two and San Antonio at number nine.
Wade Steffen, a champion steer wrestler, was arrested after TSA officials found $337,000 and photos of rhino horns in his carry-on luggage at the Los Angeles airport.
The Republican congressman from Tyler says an oil pipeline radiates heat, making it a popular "date" destination for caribou.
Columbia Packing Co., a meatpacking plant in Dallas's Oak Cliff neighborhood, has been accused of dumping pig blood into Cedar Creek, which feeds into the Trinity River.
The Texas Tech atmospheric climate scientist who wrote a chapter on climate change for Newt Gingrich's forthcoming book was shocked to learn the GOP hopeful had scrapped her contribution.
The EPA announced new mercury emissions rules that please environmentalists, but the timeline and potential price tag worries industry officials.
It was a bad year to be a tree in Texas. The drought alone claimed half a billion trees, and now eminent domain threatens a 100-year-old oak planted by one of the founders of League City.
Biologists are worried that the U.S.-Mexico border fence adversely impacts endangered species and other animals.
The drought leaves nothing untouched. This week the ongoing drought impacts the state’s groundwater, state parks, and horses.
From Abilene to El Paso to Amarillo, see photos of the snow that lightly coated North and West Texas.
The feds have postponed their decision on whether to add the dunes sagebrush lizard to the endangered species list until mid-2012.
It will be remembered as the year of smoke and devastation, as drought-fueled flames wreaked unprecedented havoc across Texas, from Bastrop County to Possum Kingdom. A photographic and oral history of the 2011 wildfires.
No state has defied the federal government’s environmental regulations more fiercely than Texas, and no governor has been more outspoken about the “job-killing” policies of the EPA than Rick Perry. But does that mean we can all breathe easy?
The senior editor on why Texas has taken the lead in fighting new EPA air pollution regulations and what will become the fuel of choice for the next generation of power plants in Texas and around the country.
The drought leaves nothing untouched. This week the ongoing drought impacts the state’s Christmas tree production, grapes, quail, and peanut butter sandwiches.
Summer's over, but the drought may never be, and it's affecting everything from tourism to pecan pie to horse welfare.
This blistering summer has left Texas drier than a piece of gas station jerky. It was so hot that planes couldn’t take off from airports and train tracks were bent out of shape. And while Governor Rick Perry prayed for a downpour to end the drought, officials in Llano turned
The Texas Tribune reporter on writing about the drought, learning about landscaping trends in Midland, and recognizing just how precious water is.
As the drought tightens its grip on Texas, its effects are being felt everywhere, from rivers to reservoirs to the formerly verdant lawns of Midland.
