Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Hello, friends. Welcome again to another episode of Conservation Stories. This is Tillery Timmins Sims with you again hosting a really interesting new friend of mine who I've followed from a distance for a while because he's informative and he's also very funny, and he talks a lot about things water, which is, like, major on my mind all the time. So let's welcome Robert Mase. Robert is the executive director for the Meadows center for Water and the Environment. Thank you for being on with us.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you for having me.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Well, I would love for you to give us some background. Okay. So I really. I mean, I did. I know about your career, but beyond that, I don't know a lot about you. So how did you get into water? Are you a native Texan, or did you get here as soon as you can? What is all that like?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So. So I was born at a very early age in Chicago, Illinois, at a very early age. And.
And.
And so. So I was. But I wound up growing up in rural Illinois.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Okay, your form.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: And I got interested in. In rocks, and I was good at math, and so that led me to pursue a degree in geophysics. And I thought I needed to go where the rocks were, so I wound up going to New Mexico. Techora.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Oh, that's where the rocks are.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yep, that's where the rocks are. It doesn't have all that icky green stuff growing all over that you have in Illinois. And then, you know, and the plan, loose plan at that point was, you know, go get a job as a geophysicist. And most geophysics jobs are in the oil and gas industry.
But while I was working on that degree, I had decided, you know, I wasn't feeling it for oil and gas and got more interested in water.
And so to a certain degree, my haircut kind of gave me my first job in water.
I was. I was in a goth electronic band.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: So, listeners.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Okay, I can picture it. I can picture it. Okay. Yeah. No, I can't. Okay.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: This is the true story. This is the true story. You know, if you're familiar with the band the Cure and Robert Smith, my hair looked like that. I wore eyeliner, wore black all the time. And I really wanted to get a job. I was washing dishes in cafeteria. I really wanted to get a job in a water lab, even though I already had my hands in water washing dishes.
And so I was complaining to a friend about this, and I said, who's going to hire me with this crazy hair? And he goes, well, you know, there's that lady on campus that has crazy hair. Grad student. Figure out who she works for and maybe get a job there, because if that professor hired her, then maybe she'll hire you. So she turned out to be in the hydrology department.
And then I took a look, and sure enough, the professor had a job posted for an undergraduate. And I went to my interview in full goth regalia, and I got the job.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: And some of the listeners might know it's Daniel B. Stevens, and he has a consulting firm that still exists today and has a presence in Texas. And by that point, I was it. You know, I was like, I really like the. Really like the topic and the people involved. And so I hung out, got a master's degree in hydrology and then came to Texas.
Followed a girlfriend here. She's now my wife.
Got a PhD at University of Texas. I'm still in electronic music. I play an instrument called the theremin. It's electromagnetic, and you play by waving your hands around it. So it's a perfect instrument.
It's a perfect instrument for a groundwater modeler.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So have you ever found that you can, like, take that same, you know, idea and. And use it to, like, witch water?
[00:04:27] Speaker B: I haven't.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Well, you know, have you tried it? Have you tried it?
[00:04:29] Speaker B: I don't believe in water witching, so.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Oh, my God, no. I can't believe it. What do you.
Well, I know a lot of people that have gotten within at least a mile. At least a mile.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: You know, the odds are in your favor when you're a water witch.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Well, especially if you're. If you're over the Ogalala aquifer. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, maybe. Oh, that's funny. Still, folks doing it, though. They still do.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: So for any of you who do not know what water witching is, I will let you fall down that rabbit hole on your own google.com.
oh, gosh. So I told you before we got started that I'm probably gonna ask some dumb questions. And the reason is because I have listened to you speak and we've been in conversations, and I've realized, like, I have made assumptions about things or I've heard things, and I really don't actually know how water works, and especially in the way getting from the ground down to the aquifer. Because the one point being when I said, like, the playas were, like, the only way we recharge, and you're like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the only way.
So let's talk about that because, you know, we. Our little organization, Sarah, is trying to get owners interested in restoration of their playas. And we have had some positive and some negative pushback on that. I think some folks are afraid that if we're doing that work, then they'll lose, you know, the push for bringing water in from Louisiana or, you know, other things. It will distract from other, more immediate solutions. So tell. Tell me, though, like, how does it.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Work on the high plains first off on like. Like somebody. Somebody suggesting that. That, you know, increasing recharge would extract from another project. You know, water in Texas, there's generally not a silver bullet. No, it's silver buckshot.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: So that's a great way to put it. Exactly.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: You got to pursue a number of different things at the same time to, you know, cobble enough water together to solve your problems. So in terms of, like, how recharge works in the Ogallala, I mean. I mean, you're in part right, because before there was any agriculture, Playa lakes were the primary and maybe even the only source of recharge to the aquifer. And the thought on how that works is that since they're ephemeral lakes, they'll dry out between the big rainfalls, and you'll get big cracks in the bottom of the clays. And so when the rain comes and there's either going straight into the Playa lake or a little bit of runoff that comes in from the sides, that first slug of water will get down those cracks and bypass the clays. And so you'll get a slug of water to head on down to the aquifer that way. But then the clays, well, they'll block off those cracks. And then. Then you're pretty much praying for enough rain or enough water that the Playa Lake fills up enough that it gets beyond the clays on the edges, hits the sand, and then kind of like. Like overflow, like an overflowing dinner plate. So the water kind of starts leaking into the aquifer that way.
Conversation we had was like, you know, it's a modified system these days. So it's not just the ply lakes. It's also the fields in between.
There's parts of the Ogallala, not very many, but there's parts where the water table's rising down. For example, in Lamisa. And a study done by the University of Texas 10, 15 years ago, showed that you're getting increased recharge through fallow fields.
So before the plants are planted and the plants are growing, you Just have a plowed up field. There's nothing uptaking the water. And so a chunk of that rain that falls and winds up heading down to the water table.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: So is that, this is really interesting because you think about the fish, like for cover crops and for us, like to have a field that doesn't have anything on it means dust storm.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: And so is it because maybe they are setting aside acres there? Is that why, I mean, like, is because that is just bizarre to me.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: So it's just happening de facto. So it's like nobody's actively doing this. It just so happens, happens that, you know, when a farmer plows the field, there's a time gap from when they plow the field and the plants come in to where plants are taking a lot of the soil. So nobody's at this point, to my knowledge, and I'd be surprised nobody's doing it on purpose.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Well, I would say I don't think they're doing it for recharge. But I will tell you that there's a farmer that I know that will go to dry land crop when no one else can get a dry land crop. And part of it is. That's part of his kind of secret sauce, you know. So how much, how much are we talking about? How much increase?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Gosh, that's a good question.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: Is it localized in like one, one general, one section there that is just kind of unique? Is the soil the same?
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Where. So it's happening across the entire aquifer where there's agriculture, even the places that are being irrigated would be seeing this effect.
It piqued folks interest when Harvey Everhart. Have you ever met Harvey Everhart? He used to. He's a hoot.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: But he, he was the one that ran the district down there. I'm not forgetting what it's called, but that's run out of lamisa. And he would, he would, you know, carry a banner that pretty much said, you know, groundwater is still secret occult in La Mesa county because groundwater levels were rising.
And the reason you can see it rising down there was there's very little groundwater pumping.
In fact, the water levels have risen so much that folks can, you know, in certain areas can now irrigate with the Ogallala where before there wasn't enough saturated thickness. So, But I don't, I don't recall off the top of my head like how much more recharges increase.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Right. And that, that explains a lot right there because I was, I was thinking that you were saying, like they're they're irrigating and it's rising, but it's. It's recharging. But they're not. They're not. They're starting to irrigate. Which.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: Correct, okay. Correct.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: The other, the other, the other thing that's unique about down there is the distance to the water table is pretty.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Well, it is right there. You know, if you look at that county, that county is. I mean, it. That's Borden county area. So it's butting up right to the caprock. So to me, like the geology in that county, the more. The further east you go, it changes drastically. Right. You know, so, yeah, I don't know.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: And then going north too, it's like, you know, the aquifer gets saturated, aquifer gets thicker, the sediments get thicker. And then also the depth from the land surface of the water table is deeper. You're still seeing increased recharge, but it may not have reached the water table yet. There's. I've seen a number that, like the average time for water to get from the land surface to the water table is about 800 years. So if it takes that long for it to get down there, you know, some places it happens quickly, like Lamisa. Other places it happens longer in 800 years.
So in some cases, we're not going to see the impacts for a very long time.
The other bad thing about. Well, the other. Not another bad thing. The other key detail about this water is it does tend to be more saline. So particularly in the areas that are pumping groundwater and irrigating, some of that's going down during the fallow periods. And because there's already stuff dissolved in that water, it's getting partially evaporated, it's kind of increasing the salinity.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: So if you're looking at an average of 800 years, is it worth working on the plies, are they right? Is it worth restoring our playas?
[00:12:55] Speaker B: I think, you know, when I was at the Water Development Board, I had a boss who grew up in the high plains. I was very interested in looking to increase recharge and to. And using the plies as a way to do it. I won't tell you how because it was. You would find it horrifying. But actually I will tell you how.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: The idea was V ditch through them.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: And allow them to drain kind of straight down to the aquifer.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: I've heard of that.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: And the. We did some calculations like if every playa in the state was V ditched, you know, how much would that increase the recharge. And again, I'm sorry, I apologize. I forget the exact numbers, but. But it by no means was like solving the overall problem. Yeah. Because we're pumping six times the rate.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: It's.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: The water's coming back in as our best estimate at this point.
But at the same time, you know, it's golden. I'm not golden. Silver buckshot.
So certainly, you know, restoring playas can be part of that solution.
And then. And there's, I think, as you know, there's other reasons to restore plots as well.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, absolutely. Well, and we may not be here, you know, when we see benefits. I think some. Some people will, depending on what their pila is sitting on top of. But I don't think that that's necessarily the. The motivator for a fast, easy answer is not necessarily what anyone thinks is even possible. So it's like in Clovis where they talk about they've got like a five, you know, five different methods for getting water to that city, you know, and so they're just using the first one right now is going to get them 40 years down the road. That's their goal. We're just going to use this. Right. This is going to get us 40 years. That's our goal. You know, and so every year they implement those water easements. It's like four years.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Did you say four or 40?
[00:14:50] Speaker A: 40. 40.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: 40.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yes. Okay.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: That's better than four.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: No, no, yes. So every year that they implement this easement program gives them four years of water for the municipality. So for Cannon and for Clovis, So, yeah, it's kind of a 4 to 1 return. So that's their, you know, plan is. And that gets us down far enough down the road to have, you know, worked this next part of the plan.
So basically, you know, it rains and then the water goes slowly back down. Where there's no grass, it goes faster. Where there's no plants or anything to.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Take it up, not so much faster as it. It gets past the plant. So it's like. It's like you're. Like you're trying to sneak past the bouncers.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Okay, gotcha, Gotcha. Okay.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: So plants act as bouncers, you know, like, on a statewide basis, 86% of all the rainfall that falls on the state gets taken up by plants and put back up into the atmosphere. So out of every 100 gallons that falls out of the sky, 86 gallons get taken up by the plants and put back up into the atmosphere. Some of that's also Direct evaporation from the soil surface. And so that's why the plants act as bouncers for the water molecules.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Okay, so. But that also is part of the cycle because then eventually that's what comes back in the form of rain.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:18] Speaker B: It's not a bad thing.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: It's just a fact.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Right. It's kind of a fact of how the system works. So then you have 14 gallons left to work with.
And usually again on a statewide basis, you know, maybe one. One and a half gallons makes it past the root zone and heads on down to the aquifer. And so when you have. When the. When you plow a field and it's fallow, you've gotten rid of the bouncers. So you can just kind of head right in.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Right. But you've also got rid of what makes that transpiration that causes more rain. Right, right, right.
Is that correct?
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Yes, yeah, that's correct.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: You impact that cycle as well.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: It's a temporary thing. Right. Because farmers planning.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Right, right, yes, sure.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: And that's why, you know, it is.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: A temporary well, and there's a lot of push right now for people to do cover crops. And, you know, when you're doing that, you're actually preventing. Well, you know, you're. You're actively putting bouncers in to keep those bouncers there, you know.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Right. But I'm not proposing that, you know, plow up the high plains and let it sit because there's other reason. You know, plant coverage.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: The dust storms or nutrients and things like that.
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it just goes back to that whole. There's no. Nothing has no consequences. Everything has some kind of consequence and how impactful we are as humans, you know, even when we're doing the best that we can, you know, we are making an impact. Thinking through how do we balance, we like to say, quoting my friend Mike Hightower, who you may know. I don't know, New Mexico.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: Okay, Mike. So he said recently, sustainability is a word no one can define. Stewardship is a verb, and it makes you responsible. And I like that. So that's what I think about is like, how do we steward what we have, you know, in the best way possible. So now I now am at a fifth grade level on how water gets back to the aquifer.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: It's all about Willie Nelson and the bouncers.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Okay, I'm gonna remember.
I'm gonna remember. Okay, so now let's give me a fifth grade education on the Water Development board. Can you do that? Like just a history of this, because what I have found is there are a million different water organizations in Texas and it is hard to know who's doing what and why.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: There's a lot.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: So the Water Development Board, as you mentioned, it's a state agency. It was created after the drought of the 1950s, which is is mains the state's worst drought of record as measured on a statewide basis, it scared the hell out of the legislature. And so once they created the Water Development Board and it's primary purpose, and even today its primary purpose is financing water projects. So the Water Development Board is a bank that provides low interest or lower interest loans to ensure we have enough water for the future. The board also coordinates the state and regional water planning process. So the board puts out the state water plan and provides funding to the 16 regional water planning groups across the state to look at our current supplies, how much we're going to need, what are we going to do to get more water. And then the part I worked for when I was there was the science section. So the board for a very long time has been collecting data on the surface water and groundwater resources, provides technical support for water planning, develops the groundwater availability models. But I was shocked like, like as a hydrogeologist when I went to go work for the board, all I knew was the hydrogeo geo. The hydrogeologic side of things. And I was a bit shocked to get there and go, wait a minute, this is a bank.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of bean counters there. Yeah, right. And I know like I've heard a certain politician refer to like the fact that like we just, we've had this, but we haven't really funded it well enough to implement a lot of the things and some of the ideas too like that are probably more modern and ideas that need to be tried can't get funded because they're not already part of the plan. So you know, I don't know, I've seen, and I'm not pointing fingers at anybody, but I'm just like, I feel like sometimes you, you create an agency to address a problem and sometimes it becomes this monster of its own and you wind up funding the monster as much as you are actually, you know, creating the answer to what we need.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Well, you know, and I'm a homeboy on this, right, because I worked there for 18 years. So take that into account on what I say. But in the board's defense, you know, they're non regulatory and the legislature is also, I would say, cautious about telling people what to do.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Oh, yes, for sure.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: So. So the planning process, you know, is. Is at this point, didn't always used to be that way, but the planning process now is controlled by local stakeholders in terms of deciding where. Where do they think the water is going to come from? And those are the folks that vet those solutions and shoes rather. Rather than somebody at the state.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: That's a good. That's good. And I mean, I have. I'm not saying. I know that. That what I'm saying is true about the board. I know it's true about some other agencies. I know that it is definitely true about them. But I guess more of a question like, is that what we have now? But the answer you, as in your. In your capacity and being in the inside, you're saying no. And actually it's really. There's a lot more local control of it that prevents that kind of thing from happening.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: There is, but I mean, there's. I think maybe part of what's feeding the, you know, maybe the impression that that's kind of what's going on is that, you know, the water business general is a very conservative business.
There's. I was at a think tank up in. In Frank Lloyd Wright's wing spread in Wisconsin, which was super cool. There was. And we're basically there to talk about resilience during drought. And somebody there representing water utilities and he made. He made comment that stuck with me. Since he goes in the water utility business. We have an unofficial slogan, me second. You know, nobody wants to be the first one to do the innovative thing. And it's also true for farmers and producers.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Oh, no, absolutely. And one of the things we spend a lot of time in is produced water. And that, you know, that kind of sums up. No, you go first.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Yeah, you go first.
And there's good reason for that. I understand why people do that. Because there's risk. Right? We need the tried and true.
But at the same time, there's also folks out there that are willing to do something innovative. You know, both farmers.
It just takes a while for the new ideas to take hold. People need to be convinced.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Out here on the Texas plains, water is everything. And there's a resource that's as vital as it is fragile.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Our Playa Lakes.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: These lakes are nature's reservoir, catching rainwater to recharge our aquifer and provide lifelines for wildlife. But naturally, now they need our help. In collaboration with the Texas PI Lakes Conservation Initiative and the Cargill Global Water Challenge, Sarah has started the. Our legacy is tomorrow's water initiative to inspire and work with landowners to restore and protect our Playa lakes. Each playa we save helps secure a sustainable water future for the generations that will be coming after us. Whether it's. Whether it's improving soil health, restoring habitats, or recharging groundwater, we are committed to making a difference. Together, we can build a legacy that we can all be proud of. To learn how you can join in, visit the Playa Lakes Restoration Initiative page.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: On the SARA website.
[00:24:39] Speaker C: Let's keep Texas water flowing strong for the future. Visit Serra Conservation.
[00:24:49] Speaker A: So what I. One thing I liked about you, Robert, and is your approach. Like, you said something about how if you turn water off on the high plains, you have an economic disaster. You just can't do it. Do you have some thoughts, ideas? Like, are you hearing some things that are happening that you're like, I think that this is a good idea. I'm glad people are trying this and doing this, or are you as. I mean, I think we will be out of water, like, if we don't stop doing. Like if we don't do something, we're going to use all the water. I'm not saying that we might not have figured out how to bring somewhere water from somewhere else by then or something else, but do you have any ideas? Are you hearing things that you think are legitimate ideas?
[00:25:34] Speaker B: It's. Do you want me to talk statewide? Do you want me to talk about the High Plains?
[00:25:38] Speaker A: The High Plains in particular?
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Okay. Y'all have some serious challenges.
And I've. I've not yet heard a collection of silver buckshot that would. Would solve everything. I think. I think maybe the first point I might make is that y'all won't run out of water. You're gonna run out of big water.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Right? So may not. Maybe not. I guess I say, like, maybe not for municipalities, but you're talking about 3 million acres of irrigated crops.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Yes. I think irrigation is going to have some serious problems. Models are suggesting, you know, that the southern High Plains will be rare for someone to be able to irrigate at the end of the next 30 years. The region is in the cusp of running out of water for irrigated agriculture. The second state water plan, which came out in 1968, proposed bringing water from the Mississippi river over. If folks wanted to do it, that was the time to do it, I think. Cause that was like a totally different time in this country in terms of environmental regulations. And it was also a time of big projects like that moving water. Think of how far California moves water to itself these days, I never say never.
But the chance of that happening, the likelihood is, I think, extremely small.
And you want to get, you want to get a neighbor, neighboring state riled up, tell them Texas coming for their water.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Right? Well, and I think I've heard reference that like, like we've. They. That Texas has been there to talk to them about it and found out we weren't the first to come ask. And so, you know, I'm like, there's probably other people, people that are going to be, you know, we're not gonna be the only people looking for water.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Well, here's the other thing that's kind of. And I've kind of followed these big import projects. I'm a little bit of a student of them. You know, that big drought 2011 to 2015. I was getting seriously call or two a day about bringing the Mississippi to Texas.
And, and at that time, you know, I mean, it certainly, you know, it felt it's feasible. It's, you know, you can engineer it, no question.
And in the Mississippi, the flows were good. Well, since that time, the Mississippi river has been struggling. So it's not the river that it, that it used to be. The other issue is AG needs cheap water.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Exactly. That's what I keep saying too, is like, yeah, somebody's like, well, we haul all around. And I said, yeah, we pay for it a big gas, but do like.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the, you know, somebody would have to subsidize that thing. The state or the federal government or both. I never say never because it's like, you know, maybe there's a point in the future where, you know, food security becomes a really big deal. And we've got this great AG land that doesn't have water. All we need to do is figure out how to move water over there. Maybe that happens at that point. But the politics of trying to move water from another state to here is very difficult.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: So that I guess is 30. When you think about 30 years, that means definitely. I mean, I could be possibly alive. My grandma would live to be 100.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Yeah, we might see it.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: We might see it happen, you know, but it almost still feels like, you know, there's kind of this, like, you can't see me if I close my eyes. You know, like, what do we. How do we convince people that it's a good idea to really be making some and plans? You know, we were interviewing somebody else earlier talking about, you know, folks that are, you know, doing innovative things. And I mean, I, I'm seeing them, you know, Lacey's one of them people trying to diversify and, you know, do different things that will help them to not be as dependent on irrigation. But when you're talking about, let's just say we decide we're going to diversify in, bring in different types of manufacturing. But a lot of that stuff requires water, too.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: When you start moving to, say, an industry that can pay a lot more for water, that does open up some possibilities. Now, Arizona has been having serious water problems with the Colorado River.
In part it's because the flows in the Colorado river are going down, but in large part it's due to Arizona agreed to be junior to California rights on the river for California's support in getting federal funds for Arizona to move Colorado river water into the state.
And now they're paying the price because, like, they will get shut off completely before California starts getting shut off. And so they've been frightened. A couple weeks ago, I talked to a team at Arizona State university that's received $20 million from their state legislature to look at innovative water technologies. And one of the things that they're looking at is atmospheric water generation.
So you have one probably, if you have an air conditioning, when it's dehumidified, it's dripping water out that PVC pipe out somewhere on your house, or if you have a window unit, it's dripping off the back. That's a form of atmospheric water generation. That's one way of harvesting moisture from the atmosphere. But there's other kind of chemical ways, some other physical ways of doing it. So they're looking at the viability of that.
And I, you know, I've heard about that technology for over 10 years now, and I've been a little suspicious of it. I mean, I know it works, but it's very expensive. But, but get this. When Formula One was in Las Vegas recently, they used atmospheric water generation that generate some of their water to clean the track. And so, so if you can do this in freaking Las Vegas, right? Yeah, you know, you could, you could do it. You could do it anywhere. And, and then talking to these guys too, they're like.
And I hear these stories also locally here in the Central Texas area that, you know, if you're, if you're in manufacturing, the water is a cost, but it's typically a rounding error cost. And so they can afford to pay a lot for water. And not only that, like atmospheric water generation, you know, there's going to be humidity in the air, and so it's a resilient supply. We've been doing work here on the Meadow center on looking at rainwater harvesting.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Yes, I was going to ask about that.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: You know, and that can be a reliable supply as well. Obviously it's easier to do in Houston than it is in Lubbock, but you can get a firm drought proof supply of rainwater that maybe doesn't make up all your water needs, but it can chunk it.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I have seen some of those. That data and I do think that. I think it's a shame we don't have more of that going on here, especially when it's Austin. I think that they're requiring that on their new buildings.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: And didn't they say at that water meeting that they're like, they're saving so much water, they're not pulling water from one of the certain rivers that they were pulling water from or something like that?
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So like Austin has a new library, and then also there's a new permitting center and they collect rainwater and air conditioning condensate in both of those buildings. And then one of the buildings actually has an on site wastewater treatment plant. So they're also treating the wastewater that comes out of the drains of the building. And in the case of library, which doesn't have the wastewater treatment plant, they've reduced their use of the Colorado river water by 90%.
And then when you throw in the on site wastewater treatment, they reduce it 95%. There's a school here outside of San Marcos, we call it a one water school. So they collect AC condensate, they collect rainwater. They also do on site wastewater treatment and they've reduced their use of the trinity aquifer by 90%.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Now, we do get more rain here than Lubbock. And so.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: But you do, you do. But we do get rain here and we should take advantage of it because a lot of times it comes so fast and so hard that, you know, it just. It's just so much runoff. Oh my goodness. And especially Lubbock, we. It's like a flood zone, you know, it's kind of dangerous to drive around.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Another neat thing about rainwater is like when you do rainwater and you're collecting all of the water, you know, there's a little bit you lose because it's sticks to the roof or maybe splashes. But the vast majority, it's yours.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, even if people were just, you know, using it for lawns and stuff like that, you know. But I know that.
I know enough to know that what municipalities are using is, you know, not nearly as substantial as what we, you know, need for agriculture. And so.
And I know that there's folks in ag that are working, working diligently to improve varieties and come up with different solutions of ways to continually reduce the amount of water that we depend on. But if you're gonna grow stuff, you need water. I mean, that's just how it is. They need. Plants have to have water. They do. Okay, so here's a question for you.
Cloud seeding. What is it and does it work?
[00:35:30] Speaker B: So cloud seeding theory behind it is you drop.
I think it's silver chloride, but you drop some. Some particles into a juicy cloud. It has a lot of water, and. And those serve as point upon which, you know. And actually, when. When it rains, there's like, dust up there that the water and the cloud collects to, and then it kind of gets enough weight, then it falls as rain. And so now you're just providing more of these places for water to collect to.
So that's how that works in terms of does it work. The, you know, the physics are all there.
And up until recently, I would have told, like, if you'd asked me this question a year ago, I'd have been like, oh, there's no scientific data that shows that it's doing much. However, there's some recent work out of Colorado that is showing theoretically it should. It should be doing it. But a lot of times these projects don't quite test the methods in a scientific way.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Well. Well, I will tell you, you know, I did watch this last Twister movie with my son, and they were apparently, you know, destroying tornadoes by shooting some kind of explosive or something up into them. So now we've seen it in the movie, so we know for sure it can happen.
Well, thank you so much. Let me ask you something. Is there something you want people to know about water in Texas?
Does it matter, like, the little that we can do?
[00:37:13] Speaker B: I think maybe people in Texas and maybe even people in the High Plains. People in the High Plains clearly know the value of water, but maybe they don't know this. Is that how important the Ogallala is as a water resource to the state? Ogallala is something like 64% of all the groundwater that's pumped in the state.
And, yeah, we have 32 aquifers, major minor aquifers, and nine major ones. And the Ogallala is alone 64%. And not only that, when you look at all water resources in the state, including rivers and reservoirs and lakes, The Ogallala is 40% of the state's water supply.
So although clearly this is an issue for the high plains and the farmers in some of the communities, but this really is a statewide issue as well because, you know, when the Ogallala is. And it has been drying up, but you know, when it gets to the point that irrigated agriculture is devastated south of Amarillo, that has economic consequences for the state as a whole.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, yeah. And also, you know, places that are already, you know, trying to get water from other sources and bringing those in, you know, like to know that that's for the amount of water that we have here for municipalities is meaningful.
But. And so for other municipalities that aren't sitting on top of the aquifer. Yeah, that's something for us to be aware of because water, you know, they say, is for fighting. Okay, so one more question to go to. Leave us on. And so at the groundwater conference, the groundwater district conference there was made mention of a Supreme Court case, Mississippi and Tennessee, I think, and the Supreme Court ruled that order is a shared resource.
What is the impact of that kind of Supreme Court decision on Texas being the only state left? Right, that this is what I, what I understand. We're the only right of capture state left.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: There's, there's. It's arguable there are some others. They're mostly the Northeast, where they tend to be water rich. That, that still apparently I'd lectured my students about this last night. So.
Okay, there's like another. There's another half dozen states that I say theoretically, because whenever I dig deeper into this stuff, I'm kind of find. I don't exactly agree with the interpretation. But anyways, there are some others, although in Texas, when you have a groundwater district, it's superseding the rule of capture.
So there is a chance at least of changing rule of capture in that case. But back to the US Supreme Court case, this was a case where trying to think of what the town city is, but city in Tennessee that borders up on Mississippi, big, huge Kona depression lowered water levels due to their pumping across state line. And Mississippi was suing for pretty substantial damages for them capturing their water. And I'm not, I'm not an absolute expert on this case. So my interpretation of what the court said was that it kind of remanded it down to the lower courts, but it's. But the court suggested that if, if it came back to them that they would kind of do a fair allocation of the water kind of similar to what they do when there's fights between states on surface water. And so that would be, you know, the federal courts adjudicating shared groundwater resources between states. And that's the first time that they've indicated that they would do that.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Yeah, because I looked it up and started just kind of reading through the, what I could find online. There's like 15 pages of that I took from it. Like, you know, they had to share it equally.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: What's interesting is like, generally the federal government has made out of groundwater type stuff. So. And there's a number of western states, Texas included, that's like, you know, like. Yeah, you don't want to be inviting the feds to come in and settle these things because it kind of opens up the door perhaps to, you know, federal control or partial control of these aquifers.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, well, interesting.
I'm not even a lawyer, but we will have a lawyer, a water lawyer on this podcast.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Okay, good.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Ask them and see what they think.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: I'm probably 20% full of crap on that answer.
Keep that in mind.
[00:42:22] Speaker A: Expert on water, but not the law. That's funny. Well, Robert, thank you very much. I appreciate it so much and thanks for educating us and on the importance of water and increasing my third grade understanding of our water cycle, but also just the importance of really how, how vital this, this area is not just for us, but for the entire state.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Well, thank you for all that that you do. And I'm, I'm so glad that we got to meet each other and it's.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Good to have been fun. It's been fun. It has been. Well, friends, thank you for joining us for another episode of Conservation Stories. Look forward to visiting with you and other friends again next time. If you would do us a favor.
Rate and review share. It's a free, free thing that you can do, but you contribute to us by doing so. Appreciate it very much by.
