Dry Weather Predicted for Southwest, March through May (By Gary Cutrer)
Drouth, Water News
Prospects for drier-than-normal conditions for both March 2012 and March-May 2012 are elevated over the Southwest, the southern and central High Plains, the immediate Gulf Coast, and Florida, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.
Comments (0) Water Events in March (By Gary Cutrer)
Education, Water News Following are water events, meetings, seminars, etc., scheduled for March 2012 according to the Texas Water Development Board:
Texas Water Conservation Association 68th Annual Convention
March 7-9
Sheraton Dallas Hotel
Dallas, TX
Hearing on Appeal of Groundwater Management Area 12 Desired Future Conditions
March 7, 10:00 a.m.
Milano Civic Center
Milano, TX
Texas Rural Water Association Annual Convention
March 14-16
Fort Worth Omni Hotel
Fort Worth, TX
Texas Water Law Conference
March 22-23
Westin La Cantera
San Antonio, TX
Texas Alliance of Groundwater Districts Quarterly Meeting
March 27-28
Crowne Plaza Hotel
Austin, TX
Central Texas Water Conservation Symposium – Drop by Dropless: Managing Your Resources Through a Drought
March 30, 2012
LCRA Dalchau Service Center
Austin, TX
Comments (0) Texas Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Groundwater Rights (By Gary Cutrer)
Water Law, Water News, Water Use, Water Wells This press release from TSCRA says it all:
FORT WORTH, TEXAS – The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) today [Feb 24] applauded the opinion of the Texas Supreme Court in the Edwards Aquifer Authority v. Burrell Day and Joel McDaniel case regarding whether or not landowners own the groundwater below their land.
“The Texas Supreme Court has affirmed that landowners own the groundwater in place below their land and that it is subject to constitutional protection as a property right,” said Joe Parker Jr, rancher and president of TSCRA.
“This opinion is a victory for Texas landowners and will be important for generations to come. It also recognizes the important legislation, S.B. 332, that was passed by the Legislature in 2011” Parker said.
“TSCRA would like to thank the Texas Supreme Court for their diligent efforts in writing this opinion,” Parker continued.
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Comments (0) Ranchers, Farmers Cautiously Optimistic about Rains (By Gary Cutrer)
Drouth, Weather Heavy rains in Central and East Texas and soaking rains in West Texas fell the last two days. Some occasional showers and light but soaking rains have occurred since the first of the year with the latest rains doing a lot of good in West Texas and actually causing some minor flash flooding in the San Antonio and Austin areas.
Farmers are watching the skies closely in preparation for the upcoming planting season. Ranchers are thankful to have any moisture at all across grazing lands in Texas, even though much of the livestock inhabiting those pastures has been sold off.
Winter weeds are emerging and providing feed for goats and sheep still left out there. Winter wheat pastures are surviving now that the rain has come. This year is already an improvement over the tinder dry conditions of 2011 when spring winds whipped up a record number of wildfires across Texas.
With the prognostication that La Nina will continue to influence the weather of the Southwestern U.S. in the dry direction, ag producers are crossing their fingers that those predictions are wrong and that the occasional rains will continue.
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Comments (0) NWS: La Niña to Dissipate by May 2012 (By Gary Cutrer)
Drouth Pressure departures: El Nino vs. La Nina.
End-of-2011 predictions called for the La Niña Pacific Ocean phenomenon to prolong extreme drought conditions in areas of North America through 2012.
But now, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center is predicting a transition to “ENSO-neutral conditions during March-May 2012.”
ENSO stands for El Niño/Southern Oscillation
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Comments (0) Water News (By Mike Mecke)
Water News Authority Seals Water Deal With Pickens
By Kevin Welch Amarillo Globe-News Dec. 29, 2011
The largest water transaction in Texas Panhandle history became final Thursday. The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority paid wealthy oil and gas man T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Water $103 million for about 211,000 acres of water rights. The deal covers about 4 trillion gallons of water.
Amarillo is one of 11 cities that make up the authority. It uses about 40 percent of the water produced by the group and will repay that much of the bonds used to finance the deal. Lubbock is the other large member of the group that started out using water from Lake Meredith in 1965 to supplement the cities’ own supplies.
amarillo.com/news/local-news/2011-12-29/authority-seals-water-deal-pickens#.Txsr04HaYbY Continue Reading »
Comments (0) Rethinking water: Growing population, limited supply mean costs destined to rise, experts say (By Mike Mecke)
Drouth, Rural - Urban Water Issues, Water Politics Published: Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012
Is water too cheap?
Perhaps the most obvious indication that it is, said Michael Webber, a University of Texas professor who heads a research group focused on water and energy, is how freely we use it.
“A hundred years from now, your grandkids would ask you, `You sprayed what on your lawn? That’s crazy,’” Webber said.
Watering lawns will seem as crazy as throwing diamonds on our lawns; we’re throwing the world’s most important resource – clean drinking water – on the ground, Webber said.
The idea that water is too cheap is endorsed by several water planners and policymakers.
“Water right now is underpriced,” said Becky Motal, general manager of the Lower Colorado River Authority.
A growing population requires more water, which the state says can’t come from one source. Addressing the state’s water needs requires a range of solutions, most of which are expensive.
“For most of our recent history, we just treated (water) as if we had an unlimited supply of it. We’re finding to our dismay that that’s not true,” said Andrew Sansom, executive director of the River Systems Institute at Texas State University……………………………..
www.statesman.com/news/local/rethinking-water-growing-population-limited-supply-mean-costs-2133212.html
Comments (0) Authority seals water deal with Pickens (By Mike Mecke)
Drouth, Rural - Urban Water Issues, Water News, Water Politics $103M pact region’s largest water transaction
Posted: December 29, 2011
By Kevin Welch amarillo.com
There was talk of a “momentous occasion” and many thanks for making the largest water transaction in Texas Panhandle history final Thursday.
“I don’t think you owe me any thanks,” said wealthy oil and gas man T. Boone Pickens. “You paid for the water.”
The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority paid Pickens’ Mesa Water $103 million for about 211,000 acres of water rights, mostly in Roberts County in the northeast panhandle. The deal covers about 4 trillion gallons of water…………………………………………………………….
The water authority and Pickens have talked about water sales since about 1996, but the deterioration of Lake Meredith’s performance got everyone’s attention. Reaching a deal took nine months of serious negotiations after a phone call from Amarillo City Commissioner Jim Simms.
“He called and said ‘Lake Meredith’s drying up,’” Pickens said. “I got to feeling guilty. I didn’t want my family to say, ‘That’s one of the Pickenses that sold the water to Dallas.’”
amarillo.com/news/local-news/2011-12-29/authority-seals-water-deal-pickens#.TwNnIVZmkrp
Comments (0) SNAPSHOTS OF THE DROUGHT (By Mike Mecke)
Drouth, Weather SNAPSHOTS OF THE DROUGHT
Bill Dawson
October 23, 2011
A drought for the centuries: It hasn’t been this dry in Texas since 1789
There was only one other year in almost five centuries when Texas’ summer drought was as severe as it was in 2011, federal climate experts have concluded.
Instrumental weather records used to measure drought severity don’t go back much before the 20th century. (In Texas, they date to 1895.)
To establish a longer-range record, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory have analyzed tree-ring data and calculated how drought conditions dating back hundreds of years (to 1550 in Texas) ranked on the standard Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI).
Positive numbers on the PDSI represent wet conditions and negative numbers indicate dry conditions. The more severe a drought is, the lower its PDSI number.
Texas’ average PDSI this past summer (June through August) was -5.37 – the lowest, indicating the most severe drought conditions, since the start of the instrumental record in 1895.
And according to the federal government’s National Climatic Data Center, there was apparently only one other year during the last 461 years when Texas had a drought so severe.
Going back to 1550, the tree-ring reconstructions reveal that only in 1789 was Texas’ PDSI number so low, the center reported recently. (For our readers who don’t readily recall key historical dates, 1789 was the year when George Washington was inaugurated as the United States’ first president and also when the French Revolution started.) Here’s part of the National Climatic Data Center’s report:
The tree-ring record can put the droughts of the last century across Texas, including 2011, into a much longer perspective. The frequency of severe one-year statewide droughts appears not to have significantly changed between the “paleo” period (1550-1894) and the instrumental period (after 1895). Both the instrumental and reconstructed PDSI records indicate that “severe” or “extreme” statewide summer drought (PDSI below -3) occurred in about 1 in 15 years. “Extreme” statewide summer droughts (PDSI below -4) such as 2011 and 1956 are seen in about 1 in 40 years in both the instrumental and reconstructed records.
So how does the 2011 summer PDSI (-5.37) compare to the worst one-year paleo-droughts? We first need to consider that the tree rings are imperfect recorders of past drought, and so the reconstructed values have confidence intervals (or “error bands”) associated with them. When this error band is taken into account, there is only one value in the paleo record, 1789 (-5.14), that can be said to be equivalent to the 2011 observed value. Thus, 2011 appears to be unusual even in the context of the multi-century tree-ring record.
The current drought in Texas has been unprecedented relative to the century-long observed record in a number of ways: the record-low precipitation, the extreme summer heat, and the enormous wildfires. The tree-ring record of PDSI confirms that, in a much longer context, the 2010-2011 Texas drought is an extraordinary event.
And it appears no relief is in sight, the federal Climate Prediction Center said last week in its Winter Outlook for December through February:
With La Niña in place Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and parts of surrounding states are unlikely to get enough rain to alleviate the ongoing drought. Texas, the epicenter of the drought, experienced its driest 12-month period on record from October 2010 through September 2011.
– Bill Dawson
Image credit: © pixonaut, iStockphoto.com
www.texasclimatenews.org:80/wp/?p=3355
TEXAS CLIMATE NEWS
November 3, 2011 | A magazine about climate & sustainability
October 23, 2011
Comments (0) Guadalupe Basin Strategy Proposals – Draft (By Mike Mecke)
Legislation, Rivers & Creeks, Rural - Urban Water Issues, Uncategorized
(These are some ideas I have proposed in our Stakeholder Committee’s report writing – they will be developed, or dropped or whatever over the next six months. Every major river basin in Texas is going through this process, so get involved locally. Anyone have any good ideas or changes? Please post them if so……. thanks, Mike
DRAFT STRATEGY PROPOSALS DRAFT
GUADALUPE RIVER BASIN & BAYS
STAKEHOLDERS COMMITTEE
AUG. 2011
OVERVIEW
As the population of the basin continues to grow, it becomes even more important that ALL people – from headwaters to estuary – become as conservative of their water as possible. Climate Change, it seems, as evidenced by more frequent, serious droughts and intense heat waves is more rapidly forcing these changes upon our basin and state.
Every gallon or acre foot that is conserved is one less that will be needed from the rivers in the basin, or from the aquifers and springs which feed them. Texans are just scratching the surface of maximum water conservation – we have long prided upon our being conservative people – now we must prove it again in how we manage our most precious natural resource. Agua es Vida!
Fortunately, we have numerous options or strategies available in order to improve our basin’s catchment, its rivers and the ways we affect these resources.
Such as:
CONSERVATION – both agricultural, rural and urban dwellers.
RAINWATER HARVESTING – on homes, public buildings and businesses. Additionally, applications on streets, parking areas and farm and ranch lands can catch and hold rain and stormwater for recharge, human use and agricultural benefits.
RIPARIAN ZONE & WETLAND RESTORATION AND STEWARDSHIP – Proper stewardship of riparian zones on the basin’s creeks and rivers can build up the in-bank water holding capacities which serve to maintain base flows during dry periods and provide a healthy riparian habitat for both aquatic species and other wildlife. Floods are reduced and water quality improved as well as other benefits.
Restored and healthy wetlands on the rivers or on the Gulf provide not only the cleansing actions desirable for inflows and a very productive wildlife habitat, but also protection for inland communities from hurricanes.
DESAL of SEA WATER or BRACKISH GROUNDWATER
WATERSHED or “CATCHMENT” STEWARDSHIP - It is a proven fact among hydrologists, rangeland specialists and other field water personnel, that a well-managed, healthy watershed not only provides a desirable livestock and wildlife environment, but increases groundwater penetration and recharge, reduces floods and other benefits.
On many karst limestone watersheds, as are common across the Hill Country and Edwards Plateau, selective brush management and subsequent improved rangeland management, has proven to sometimes increase ground recharge and springflows. Normally, ashe juniper (cedar, mountain cedar) has been the target brush species, but in other cases water thirsty mesquite or redberry juniper control has also produced desirable hydrological benefits. There are numerous cases and studies that have given rise to these efforts from San Angelo south to San Antonio.
ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS – Permit buy-outs, dry year irrigation options, WW effluent dedications, riparian well buy-outs, cooperation and coordination with key riparian Groundwater Districts and Headwaters Groundwater Districts to improve and maintain spring flows, etc.
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