Texas has a dry line that starts in East Texas and starts to phase out around Dallas. There, you can see the rich trees. Move west, and by the time you get to west Fort Worth 60 miles away, it is scrubland and dry savannah.
Part of the water shortage is supply - the area had two natural lakes plus the Trinity River 50 years ago. They’ve built a bunch of artificial lakes, but environmentalists stopped several projects to the south and east in the name of wildlife 20 years ago. Now, no new water supply is built but population is still growing.
We had enough water for three million - now there are six million. We can’t build new lakes, we can’t build pipelines to bring it down from Oklahoma, we aren’t allowed to send illegals home and ask others to stop moving in.
On the upside, around a third of the water is used in irrigating laws. Get people to rip out the pretty green laws that work on the East Coast but are water hogs in a dry area formerly known as the Great Desert, we’d have margin. Stop planting all these trees to look like home and mimic Arizona’s xeriscaping, and you have more water for people. Limiting the installation of swimming pools would help.
Recycling waste water for irrigation and, after lots of filtering, people could probably use it. But that shouldn’t be necessary yet.
I want to rip out my horrible weed infested lawn in North Fort Worth. On a recent trip to Canberra, Australia, which has a similar climate to North Texas, I was impressed by their lack of lawns. Instead they had all different colored gravel with small gardens and rose bushes. It was beautiful and the small flower gardens require much less water.
The criminal invaders from Mexico are notorious for recklessly wasting water. During the summer of 2011 drought, a Mexican a few doors down was running a miniature waterspray park for his little ninos and ninas nearly every day. I went down and, shall we say, had a little "talk" with him and set him straight. No more problems from that guy but I'm keeping a careful eye on him and he knows it!
“Get people to rip out the pretty green laws that work on the East Coast but are water hogs in a dry area formerly known as the Great Desert, we’d have margin. Stop planting all these trees to look like home and mimic Arizona’s xeriscaping, and you have more water for people. Limiting the installation of swimming pools would help.”
Your answer is wrong. You correctly list the ways environmentalists have artificially created a shortage. Then you begin to list ways that people must be forced to critically change their life to comply with the shortage they create.
That’s like fighting gang drive by shootings by requiring new houses to install bullet proof windows. You aren’t addressing the actual problem.
That energy would be better spent making the supply what is should be.
Texas doesn’t need more dictatorial rules on how people can live, it needs more freedom.