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Deep divisions emerged Tuesday on whether it’s a good idea for Texas to begin designing a network to carry water throughout the state.
The House Committee on Natural Resources held its first hearing on its interim assignment to study whether it’s a good idea to set up water markets and whether a statewide grid would be a good way to facilitate them.
Texas has been plagued by drought in the past and policymakers worry that population growth combined with climate change will make water even scarcer in the future.
“If we fail to plan, we’re planning to fail,” said state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio.
Markets in which water has been traded like any other commodity have been used as a way to assign a real value to water and create economic incentives to conserve it. Such markets appear to have succeeded in Australia, where 80 percent of water is used in agriculture, much as it is in far West Texas.
However, there is disagreement over how they should be set up.
