Margaret and Robert Drake wanted to protect their Glen Rose ranchland — and the water that runs through it — from rapid development they saw expanding west from Fort Worth.
The sprawling, hilly 82 acres are home to a biodiversity of plants and wildlife with rainwater spilling down to a creek that eventually meets the Paluxy River, one of the many water sources that feeds a nearby reservoir.
Already, a housing development sits just 300 feet away from Drake Ranch. So in August, the couple donated the land to the Native Prairies Association of Texas to ensure Tarrant County’s urban growth doesn’t eventually take over.
With the Paluxy being a major local source of drinking water for Somervell County, Margaret Drake worries about how long it will sustain the area.
“It is a concern of mine,” she said. “This area is going to grow in the next few years, exponentially, and the water has to come from somewhere.”
North Texas is rapidly growing. In May, Fort Worth’s population surpassed 1 million , and Tarrant County residents are expected to reach a total of about 3.4 million in the next few decades.
Growth of that magnitude adds strain to the water supply, leaving local officials concerned about whether the region has enough to sustain more people and big development such as new data centers, golf courses and housing.
“As we stick more straws in the drink, the drink disappears faster,” Aledo Mayor Shane Davis said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a small city, if you’re Weatherford, or if you’re Fort Worth. The question is: Do we have enough water?”
The state’s economy risks losing about 785,000 jobs and about $165 billion in gross domestic product by the end of the 2050 because of water scarcity, according to the nonprofit Texas 2036.
The Tarrant Regional Water District’s resources provide water to 2.5 million residents, but that’s not enough to keep up, according to the state’s draft of regional water plans. Tarrant County will need over 673,000 acre-feet — which is about four times as large as the capacity of Eagle Mountain Lake — by 2080.
Accounting for the 15 other counties included in North Texas water planning — including Dallas, Denton, Collin, Ellis, Parker and Kaufman — the region will require over 3 million acre-feet of water by then.
While North Texas has received above average rainfall this year, a welcome bump to those using groundwater, questions regarding an adequate water supply remain.
Rainfall ultimately determines how much water is available in reservoirs, experts say. Because we cannot control the weather, Dallas-Fort Worth officials must focus on factors they can.
“The population is growing and growing very fast,” said Zach Huff, water resources engineering director for the Tarrant Regional Water District. “It’s our goal to be planning ahead, out in front of that, so that water supply never becomes a constraint to the community.”
Water conservation and reuse strategies will help. Those efforts could save the region 1.28 million acre-feet per year of water by 2080, according to the Texas Water Development Board. But even then, the North Texas area would still be short about 1 million acre-feet annually, according to projections.
That shortfall prompts local officials to seek new water supplies, monitor development and conserve water.
Easing water woes
Although Fort Worth is driving much of the area’s growth, people and business leaders are looking west.
Aledo’s population of nearly 7,200, for example, is about double the size it was in 2019, City Manager Mark McDaniel said.
“We’re not a huge town. That’s a big increase in a very short period of time,” McDaniel said.
The town’s officials are relieved it doesn’t rely on well water as much as smaller places on the outskirts, but know they must work fast to keep up with growth by building infrastructure big enough to transport sufficient water supplies to developers, McDaniel added.
“It can all happen. It’s just going to take some time to put into place,” he said.
Texas leaders are particularly “growth-minded,” but new developments come with a greater need, said Ken Rainwater, a professor emeritus at the Water and the Environment Research Center at Texas Tech University.
“People like to grow,” he said. “It just feels healthy, whereas if we decided not to grow, then we wouldn’t have to grow the stuff we have to provide.”
Fort Worth leaders say they recognize the challenge this holds for water availability. City officials project adding another 550,000 people from 2025 to 2045 throughout its service areas.
As the city pursues new businesses, water utility staff works closely with the economic development officials and developers to understand plans and site uses. Each new development must submit a water study that projects usage and the size of the transmission lines needed.
In Fort Worth, businesses and developers are not limited by the amount of water they need to support their operations. However, businesses have a built-in incentive to be efficient with water usage “because it affects their bottom-line costs,” city spokesperson Mary Gugliuzza said in a statement.
Should concerns arise, business and city officials work to identify solutions, Michael Henning, economic development manager, said in a statement.
“Sometimes, there are ways to address those concerns. Other times, it may come with the recognition that Fort Worth might not be the right location for that project,” Henning said. “If that’s the case, we’re up front with companies about those concerns.”
Tapping new sources
The fight for water has continued for decades as North Texas officials pushed to build the Marvin Nichols Reservoir.
Tarrant County mostly taps into reservoirs southeast of Dallas for water. Only about 20% comes from local reservoirs Eagle Mountain Lake and Lake Bridgeport.
About 250 miles of pipelines pump about 350 million gallons of water from the Richland-Chambers and Cedar Creek reservoirs to the Dallas-Fort Worth region on a daily basis.
That won’t be enough to keep up with growth, said Dan Buhman, chair of the Region C Water Planning Group for the Texas Water Development Board, representing the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
Over the next few decades, about 33% of North Texas’ water will have to come from new sources, according to the state’s draft plan. That could include those from the Red, Trinity, Sulphur or Neches river basins.
The proposed $7 billion Marvin Nichols project would flood about 66,000 acres of private property of northeast Texas forest and timberland. That area’s residents and its regional water planning group have fought the project, concerned the reservoir would result in loss of resources and wildlife habitat as well as hurt the local economy.
This summer, an agreement was finally reached between Dallas-Fort Worth and northeast Texas water planners.
Originally slated for construction by 2060, officials now plan to break ground on the reservoir in 2070 — not soon enough to be a solution for the growth of the next four decades.
The proposed construction date goes to the state water board for final approval in October.
Taking action
Developers, area city planners and state leaders are recycling water, updating plans, brainstorming new water laws and securing billions in funds to work through water woes.
For example, AllianceTexas — the fast-growing development that holds hubs for aviation, rail, technology and, soon, film — created a system that taps into water treatment reuse and harvested rainwater stored in ponds for its surrounding areas.
This spring, leaders from nine Wise County cities — including Decatur, Bridgeport, Alvord and Rhome — asked the Legislature to form the Wise Regional Water District. Creation of the district would have allowed its leaders to issue bonds to fund water needs, such as building transmission lines.
After the bill failed to pass, the group moved forward by forming the West Fork Public Utility Agency, which would collect funds from partnering entities and from water and wastewater sales, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Texas lawmakers did pass a measure going before voters in November aimed at addressing long-term needs with about $20 billion for projects over the next two decades. A newly created Texas Water Fund Advisory Committee would oversee the funds and is tasked with projecting aquifers and local control over surface water rights.
“With the dramatic population growth that Texas continues to experience, our water supplies are drying up, impacting Texans and communities across our great state,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a June release about the effort.
As for North Texas, Fort Worth updates its water master plans every 10 years to assess existing and proposed land usage, which illustrates population and employee growth, Gugliuzza said.
This data determines how large municipal waterlines need to be, when and where water storage facilities are needed, and when treatment plant expansions are required.
For example, in a Fort Worth City Council meeting in February, water department director Chris Harder announced plans to expand the city’s westside water treatment plant and transmission lines to provide up to 40 million gallons of water a day by 2026.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments is exploring more strategies aimed at balancing economic development and water usage as the Dallas-Fort Worth water planning group develops its water supply plan, said Susan Alvarez, environment and development director for the council of governments.
“We are starting to get more inquiries, particularly around data centers, both from an energy standpoint and also from a water use standpoint,” she said. Data centers require significant water to keep the high-tech facilities cool.
The council of governments assists Dallas-Fort Worth water planners with providing population and density data and developing regional wastewater planning.
Because there’s only so much water available and water rights can be limited, residents, businesses and city officials must be better about conserving, Alvarez said.
“We have some opportunities to reduce waste in both system design and operations,” said Alvarez.
Again and again, discussion of sustainability harkened back to Mayor Davis’ metaphor of many straws in one drink: supply and demand.
Higher education reporter McKinnon Rice contributed reporting.
Nicole Lopez is the environment reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at nicole.lopez@fortworthreport.org.
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