Environmental justice and sustainability have both become major concerns for water resource management, particularly with recent federal emphasis on environmental justice under the Biden administration in the United States. Texas, like many U.S. states, lags behind the federal government in this emphasis. While many localities have made progress in some respects—for example, some major Texas municipalities have included equity and sustainability metrics in their recent climate action plans—others have not. This has left a patchwork of persistent water management and availability issues that are exacerbated by extreme weather and worsening impacts of climate change. We provide a review of many of Texas’s water equity and sustainability challenges, both now and in a more extreme climate future. These include water access, affordability, contamination, flooding, drought, and aging infrastructure. For example, many Texas counties rank highest in the nation for flood risk, including coastal counties with high populations of disadvantaged communities and counties containing populations that live in persistent poverty in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Additionally, approximately 44,000 Texans, or about 0.4% of the state population, lack access to complete plumbing facilities in their homes. The costs of water infrastructure leaks (estimated at about 51 gallons of water per day statewide) are shared across customers of all income levels, though they place a disproportionate burden on low-income customers. We then assess existing statewide and local policy and planning efforts and gaps in addressing these concerns in Texas. We focus particularly on the role of efforts to incorporate community voice—the ideas, concerns, needs, and expertise of impacted community members, dismantle causes of injustice, and improve equity in spending. If communities are not intentional with future development, new water infrastructure could continue to perpetuate existing harms. Thus, we provide a research agenda and recommendations for addressing some of the policy and planning gaps and persistent environmental justice issues. We aim to help water managers and policy makers identify and dismantle sources of inequity, particularly through including community voice.

The Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance outlines the opportunities present in the Texas Hill Country to use recycled water to alleviate the burdens placed on the Edwards and Trinity aquifers by focusing on the present state of recycled water use in Comal County, Texas. The impacts of population growth, prolonged drought, and wastewater disposal on water sources in Comal County are analyzed along with current sources of water reuse to show where recycled water can be utilized effectively. Reclaimed water systems in seven municipalities across Texas are analyzed as case studies to provide examples for further implementation. Water reuse is integral to protecting water supplies and ensuring counties in the Hill Country can adequately protect the health, safety, and quality of life of current and future residents. Water reuse is a vastly underutilized tool in the effort to manage water supplies in the Hill Country, and there are a variety of authorization, financing, and implementation opportunities present in the region to take better advantage of this resource.

Editor-in-Chief ’s Note: September 1 of every odd-numbered year is the date when most new legislation from the most recent session of the Texas Legislature typically goes into effect. With this in mind, the Texas Water Journal invited seven organizations that work closely with the Texas Legislature to provide their take on the changes to Texas water policy and law that were made during the 2023 session. The opinions expressed in these summaries are the opinions of the individual organizations and not the opinions of the Texas Water Journal, the Texas Water Resources Institute, or the Bureau of Economic Geology.

In recognition of the unique hydrologic functions they serve, certain stream segments in Texas have been designated as ecologically significant. In this study, we evaluated low flow trends in seven hydrologically unique stream segments spanning three climatic divisions in Texas from 1970 to 2019. Despite increasing mean annual temperatures, there are no trends in low flows or other hydrologic variables in the East Fork of the San Jacinto River in the Upper Coast climatic division, likely due to local moisture surplus effects from the Gulf of Mexico. In the Edwards Plateau climatic division, annual low flows and annual baseflows are decreasing in the South Fork of the Guadalupe River, the Sabinal River and the Frio River. While increasing mean annual temperatures appear to have a role in the drying of all three of these stream segments, increasing annual potential evapotranspiration may be an additional driver in the Sabinal and Frio Rivers. Analysis of the Standardized Streamflow Index indicates that all seven stream segments experienced their worst streamflow droughts in the 2010s. As such, the watersheds draining to the gages on these stream segments have minimal anthropogenic impacts, suggesting the influence of climate on the observed stream drying.

Seadrift is located on the Texas Gulf Coast with a population of 1,364 people as of the 2010 U.S. Census. In 2012, the city started operation of a $610,878 wind turbine, dedicated to its wastewater treatment plant. The city hoped to save $25,500 yearly using wind energy to displace some of the plant’s electrical demand. The plant’s average load is 0.05 million gallons per day, requiring 236,000 kWh (8.05*108 BTU) yearly. The paper details how Seadrift used manufacturer curves to predict turbine energy production, and how preliminary geotechnical, economic, and environmental analyses help design renewable energy projects. From 2012 to 2015, Seadrift saved $15,928 per year, with yearly wind energy production of 155,738 kWh (5.31*108 BTU) and net present value of $211,493. This study shows how government agencies and rural communities can collaborate to find economically viable solutions to water-energy nexus challenges in Texas and beyond. Citation: Mbarga AHA, Rainwater K, Song L, Theodore C, Williams WR. 2021. Economic Analyses of the Seadrift Wind-Aided Wastewater Treatment Plant Operations. Texas Water Journal. 12(1):42-57. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v12i1.7096.

Editor-in-Chief's Note: The Texas Water Journal invited The Honorable Jayne Harkins, P.E., U.S. Commissioner for the International Boundary and Water Commission to share her thoughts on water deliveries from Mexico to the Rio Grande. The opinion expressed in the resulting commentary is the opinion of Commissioner Harkins and not the opinion of the Texas Water Journal or the Texas Water Resources Institute. Citation: Harkins J. 2020. Commentrary: Fact vs. fiction on Rio Grande deliveries. Texas Water Journal. 11(1):130-132. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v11i1.7120.

Regulating Water Security in Unconventional Oil and Gas is a collection of articles authored by professionals from disciplines as diverse as agriculture, zoology, law, and economics. The book takes a multidisciplinary look at how issues related to water for unconventional oil and gas production affect water security of a nation, state, community, or sector of industry—and possible pathways toward regulations that balance economic development with the human right to water. The authors examine what other regions have been experiencing to illustrate some of the common difficulties and differing perspectives, challenges, and solutions being attempted. Authors’ contributions are presented in four parts, making the dense subject matter digestible. Citation: Foster J. 2020. Book Review: Regulating water security in unconventional oil and gas. Texas Water Journal. 11(1):61-63. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v11i1.7114.

The current phase of oilfield water infrastructure buildout in the Permian generally emphasizes each operator or midstream provider building its own water transportation and disposal systems. Accordingly, the overall market is balkanized and inefficient compared to the performance a more interconnected system could achieve. A hydrovascular grid in the Permian Basin could lower oil & gas production costs, conserve scarce freshwater by promoting greater recycling and reuse of produced water, help mitigate seismicity risks, and facilitate movement of produced water at large scale for use outside the oilfield. The paper realistically assesses the barriers to such integration. It concludes by offering a set of practical ideas to overcome these challenges and help transform oilfield water into a resource for West Texas and Southeast New Mexico. Citation: Collins G. 2020. Oilfield Water Infrastructure Connectivity: The Case for a ‘Hydrovascular’ Network in the Permian Basin. Texas Water Journal. 11(1):15-31. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v11i1.7102.

Despite transboundary water resource management issues being a source of tension between neighboring states, little research has addressed what causes cooperation or conflict between differing governments along borders. For the most part, natural hydrological boundaries do not fall easily within political boundary delineations, so governance structures and management approaches are often very different once political jurisdictions are crossed, underscoring the importance of proper management of transboundary water resources. In order to better understand what drives cooperative or conflictual behavior among transboundary stakeholders, a cross-sectional study was conducted along the Texas-Mexico border. Questionnaires were collected (N=168) from Texas water managers along the southern border on issues related to their Mexican counterparts. The results revealed that a lack of trust for binational counterparts is correlated (p<0.001) with a decrease in willingness to cooperate; likewise, as trust decreased, perceptions of risk increased. This approach can help identify a plausible intervention strategy that could target activities that build trust between individuals on both sides of the border to mitigate individuals’ perceptions of risk. Citation: Sansom L. 2019. Transboundary water sharing: risk perceptions held by Texas border decision makers. Texas Water Journal. 10(1):101-111. Available from: https://doi.org/10.21423/twj.v10i1.7095.