As Texas Dries Out, Life Falters and Fades

“Texas is going to get hotter and drier,” said Malcolm Cleaveland, a professor at the University of Arkansas who led the researchers. Indeed, rainfall modeling shows that rising temperatures and more arid conditions over the last few decades are likely to increase in the 21st century.

Editor's Note: Wishful thinking aside, the signs and scientific studies show that mother nature, climate warming and Texas' exploding population are on a colossal collision course. The age of plentiful water has passed us. As it is, the water supply is barely keeping up with the state's current population. What will it look like in 20 or 50 years? A completely new way of thinking and planning is needed to manage the huge challenges ahead. Protecting, not over extending or exploiting, our natural water resources will be among the biggest challenges. So far, the response from our elected policymakers is coming up dreadfully short.

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Reprinted from the New York Times
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By Richard Parker
Published Aug. 13, 2011

WIMBERLEY, Tex

THE drought that grips Texas is a natural disaster in slow motion. Life itself slows down, falters and begins to fade.

Out here, in the low hills west of Austin, the ground under my boots is split and cracked, the creek below the house bone-white and dry. Even the Blanco River’s usually cool, spring-fed water is warm and still.

Droughts have come to Texas before, but this time it’s a killing heat that grips the state. Even the tough, rangy whitetail deer are starting to die. Last spring, an old, dark-faced doe that comes around from time to time stood in my front yard, her body plump with pregnancy. But her ribs were starting to show; the fawn inside was unlikely to make it far past birth.

Folks around here say this is unlike any drought Texas has ever seen. In a way that’s right; it’s the worst single drought year on record. But, as scientists now tell us, historically droughts here can last decades. Worse, when the rain does fall, it evaporates faster and faster as the American Southwest become drier, threatening to turn Texas into desert. As bad as this year’s drought is, the long view tells us that things could get much worse.

The drought is already changing the way we look at the land, the way we do business and live our lives. All over Texas, the country’s largest beef-producing state, ranchers are selling off herds early, losing millions of dollars, or hanging on just to watch the animals die for lack of water. Thirsty cows can even die from too much water; dehydrated and moved to water, the cows gulp it down too greedily, bloat up — and keel over dead.

On the Storm Ranch, 6,000 acres of rolling Hill Country, the saplings are dying for lack of roots long enough to reach for deep water through the caliche and limestone soil, like the older Spanish oaks and southern maples. “I haven’t seen it this bad in a long time,” said the ranch’s owner, Josh Storm.

Richard Parker is a journalist in Texas who writes for McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.