Texas voters approved billions to help the state address water supply needs, but Tarrant County-area leaders concede more resources are needed to keep up with growth.
Earning the favor of 70% of voters in Tuesday’s election, Proposition 4 requires the state to allocate $20 billion for water projects over the next two decades.
Those can include flood mitigation, new water sources, wastewater treatment plant expansions and conservation.
While significant, the new money is not enough for needs across the state though it will play a major role in keeping water affordable, said Dan Buhman, Tarrant Regional Water District general manager, after election results.
“State funding has saved us millions of dollars,” he said. “It’s an important investment that the state makes in our water supply reliability and affordability.”
In the weeks approaching the election, local officials expressed concern about the need to do more to secure new water sources.
“(Prop 4) is only a drop in the bucket,” said state Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth, during the Fort Worth Report’s recent 1 Million & Counting Growth Summit. To keep up with the city’s increasing population, he stressed, “We have a long, long way to go.”
Among the largest challenges to securing water supplies are costs and the amount of authority given to local officials, Buhman said at the event.
The local water district’s resources provide water to 2.5 million residents in the North Texas area, but that’s not enough to keep up with needs, according to state projections. Tarrant County will need over 673,000 acre-feet of water — which is about four times as large as the capacity of Eagle Mountain Lake — by 2080.
The state’s new funds to address that need will help overcome some of the cost as that money goes to the Texas Water Fund, which was created by lawmakers in 2023 to address the state’s rapidly growing population, water demands and aging transmission lines.
However, building expensive new reservoirs — the natural or human-made lakes used to store water — may still be difficult to accomplish. Such projects, which can top billions of dollars, often face opposition due to land acquisitions and environmental impacts.
“What we saw this last legislative session is the desire to invest money, but also a desire to kill water ideas,” Buhman said at the event.
For example, a failed bill would have required the Texas Water Development Board — the agency responsible for statewide water planning — to scrap reservoirs from planning if construction had not begun within 50 years.
That would have included the Marvin Nichols Reservoir, a project that’s been in planning for the Dallas-Fort Worth area since the 1960s but has faced ongoing pushback from communities in the East Texas area of the state where it is planned to be built.
Tarrant County officials consider projects in other parts of the state, but costs for new water resources skyrocket the further they are, Buhman urged.
“Our duty is to provide water at a reasonable cost,” he said at the summit. “If the state can invest money … and participate in that increased cost … that makes a lot of sense to me.”
How does Proposition 4 work?
By 2027, officials must allocate the first $1 billion of state revenue that exceeds $46.5 billion in sales taxes annually to the Texas Water Fund.
About half of that money set aside each year will be dedicated for major projects, such as fixing leaky transmission lines, wastewater and desalination plants, flood control and new reservoirs.
The Texas Water Development Board administers the Texas Water Fund, directing dollars toward projects for local communities.
Texas’ population is projected to grow by 53% between 2030 and 2080, from 34 million to 52 million, according to state estimates.
Securing resources and fixing broken or deteriorating water systems are among the state’s greatest needs, according to a report from nonprofit think tank Texas 2036. Addressing those needs requires $154 billion in funds within the next 20 years.
Now, state water board officials must determine which communities have the greatest need for the new fund, creating competition.
Earning a chunk of the annual $1 billion could largely help some of the new projects being planned at the water district, such as new reservoirs and out-of-state resources.
“All of those (projects) are eligible,” Buhman said. “It will just be a question of which ones the (state) wants to fund.”
Nicole Lopez is the environment reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at nicole.lopez@fortworthreport.org.
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