CONROE, Texas - The Texas Water Development Board has announced Lone Star Groundwater Conservation District as the recipient of the 2012 Texas Rain Catcher Award in the government category. The award was presented February 28th at the Board's meeting.
The TWDB recognizes excellence and innovation in capturing water from rainfall that might otherwise be wasted. Lone Star Water's General Manager, Kathy Turner Jones, believes the award will help promote the group's mission to conserve water in Montgomery County.
TAGD's second-annual Texas Groundwater Summit will be at the San Marcos Embassy Suites August 27-29, 2013. Registration available soon! For more information visit our Texas Groundwater Summit page.
Save the date for Groundwater Day at the Texas Capitol! We are planning to visit legislators and their staff on February 27th to let them know about TAGD and the good work done by GCDs across the state
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March 11-17, 2012 is National Groundwater Awareness Week! Visit the National Ground Water Association's website for more information. To find out what organizations are participating in National Groundwater Awareness Week in Texas, visit here. Some of our member districts, like Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, are promoting this week with special programs. We'd love to hear what you're doing in Texas to commemorate this important week! Check out TAGD's facebook page and National Groundwater Awareness Week's facebook page for more information and updates.
The Texas Supreme Court has issued its opinion in the EAA v. Day and McDaniel case, affirming the opinion of the court of appeals. The full opinion can be found here.
Early voting starts next week! Interested in learning more about Proposition 2, the ballot initiative implementing SJR 4 from the 2011 Legislative Session? Visit TWDB's Prop 2 Information Page or Texas Infrastructure Now for detailed information.
To summarize, the proposition, if approved, will allow TWDB to provide additional funding opportunities for local water infrastructure projects in Texas. It does not create state debt and is self-supporting, meaning the bonds would be issued only to provide funding requested by local communities, and then the entity benefiting from the projects will repay the loans, and thus the bonds. This initiative passed the Legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support.
October 1st means the start of a new fiscal year for TAGD, and this year we are excited to welcome new officers and committee members for two year terms. To see who will be serving, please check our Officers and Committees pages.
TAGD is so incredibly grateful to its 09/10 and 10/11 Executive Committee Members: Jim Conkwright, Mike Mahoney, Kathy Turner Jones, Kirk Holland, Lonnie Stewart, Janet Adams, Scott Holland, Ron Fieseler, Joe Cooper, and Gary Westbrook, as well as all TAGD Committee Members. We appreciate all the hard work and dedication more than words can say. Without these members, TAGD could not operate as it does. THANK YOU!!!
By Farzad Mashhood, AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Texas could be in the midst of a drought the history books have never seen, meaning water planners need to prepare for worse than what they've seen, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said Thursday.
The current drought could last until 2020, because the region's climate is in the middle of a 20- to 40-year dry phase, Nielsen-Gammon said.
TAGD's 2011 Legislative Wrap-Up has been published in the Texas Water Journal. In addition to TAGD's summary, the journal includes legislative updates from Ken Kramer of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, Jason Skaggs of Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, Billy Howe of the Texas Farm Bureau, and Dean Robbins of the Texas Water Conservation Association. The issue also includes a peer-reviewed article about the statistical relations of precipitation and stream runoff for El Niño and La Niña periods by Raymond M. Slade Jr. and T. Edwin Chow.
To read the journal, go here.
For Immediate Release August 24, 2011
Contacts: Kirk Welch, North Plains Groundwater Conservation District 806-935-6401, Norman Martin, Texas Tech University 806-742-2808, Quenna Terry, NRCS 806-791-0581
A Texas Panhandle-High Plains conservation project has been awarded a federal grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The Texas High Plains Initiative for Strategic and Innovative Irrigation Management and Conservation (the Initiative) will receive a $499,848 Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) to show farmers how to save irrigation water and extend the economic viability of their operations. The Initiative is designed to demonstrate strategic irrigation and crop system management technologies and practices, resulting in water savings across the region and best practices that are applicable nationwide in regions facing similar resource concerns.
The Initiative is a collaborative effort between the USDA-NRCS and North Plains Groundwater Conservation District, High Plains Underground Water Conservation District, Texas Alliance for Water Conservation (TAWC) and Texas Tech University. Until this joint application for funding, the member organizations of the Initiative were working on two separate irrigation efficiency demonstrations, the TAWC in Hale and Floyd counties in the south plains, and North Plains Groundwater Conservation District in the in the northern panhandle counties.
Press Release from Texas A&M News and Information Services
COLLEGE STATION, Aug. 4, 2011 – As Texas continues to bake in record heat, the drought news for the state continues to be bleak – Texas is now in the midst of its most severe one-year drought on record, according to John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas State Climatologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.
Preliminary reports from the National Climatic Data Center indicate that July 2011 was the warmest month ever recorded statewide for Texas, with data going back to 1895, Nielsen-Gammon reports. The average temperature of 87.2 degrees broke the previous record of 86.5 degrees set in 1998. The June average temperature of 85.2 was a record for that month and now ranks fifth warmest overall.
July 28, 2011 By: Kay Ledbetter
AMARILLO – Four meetings highlighting three primary corn irrigation projects in the North Plains have been scheduled in August by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Texas AgriLife Research and the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District.
“These projects are the epitome of agricultural cooperation as both AgriLife Research and AgriLife Extension collaborate with the local groundwater district to address frontline, pressing needs in production agriculture,” said Nich Kenny, AgriLife Extension irrigation specialist. “We are addressing all ranges of corn irrigation and working to collectively make an impact on the area.”
Mella McEwen
Midland Reporter-Telegram | Posted: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 5:15 pm
With Gov. Rick Perry signing into law legislation making Texas the first state to require disclosure of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, the Railroad Commission has begun the process of writing the rules for those disclosures.
The three railroad commissioners - Chairman Elizabeth Ames Jones, David Porter and Barry Smitherman, directed staff at the commission's July 11 conference to have a proposed rule ready by mid-August for a 30-day public comment period. Commissioners indicated they plan to hold a public hearing on the proposed rule in Austin during the public comment period, which will get underway when the rule is published in the Texas Register.
Chairman Jones said in a statement, "This rule will provide the additional assurance to the public that a common sense disclosure policy affords, and it will provide operators uniformity and reliability regarding the disclosure process for all wells that are hydraulically fractured in Texas. I hope we can have the rule ready for implementation before the end of the year." The rule, she said, is expected to formalize the best practices already expected by the commission and will codify "what is being done voluntarily by many companies."
From the Executive Summary: In 2009, the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) undertook a study of water use in the Texas mining industry, looking at current use and uses projected over the next 50 years. The study was commissioned by the TWDB and essentially prompted by the increase in shale gas production (using hydraulic fracturing) across the state. The report, issued in June 2011, estimates that the state used approximately 160 thousand acre-feet in the mining industry in 2008, including 35.8 thousand acre-feet for fracking wells. BEG also predicts that the state's overall mining and oil and gas water use will peak between 2020 and 2030 at approximately 305 thousand acre-feet.
The full report can be read here.
