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The post Who’s Wasting Our Water? appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Okinawan taco riceThe Tex-Mexplainer series explores the ingredients, techniques, history, and culture of Mexican food in Texas. Leo Davila, the chef-owner of Stixs & Stone taqueria, in San Antonio, had never heard of taco rice until his Korean girlfriend, Kendra Billinghurst, who was raised on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, mentioned the dish topped with ground beef, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. “It kind of reminds me of taco night at one of my white friend’s houses growing up,” Davila says, “except it’s on steamed rice.” I hadn’t gotten a chance to taste it until I was invited to Cafe Hana, in Irving, by co-owner Sara Nam. Her version, cooked by Okinawa-born employee Aya Ibuka, is a bowl of short-grain white rice topped with saucy ground beef seasoned with garlic,…

The post Not a Taco Salad and Not a Taco Bowl, Taco Rice Is Its Own Delicacy appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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An irrigation system on Glenn Schur’s farm, near Plainview.As Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? The rains don’t come like they used to, and Glenn Schur can’t rely on the once bountiful water beneath the clay loam soil of the South Plains—the largest cotton-producing area in the world. In the past, his pumps pulled up as much as he needed to irrigate his crops. But recent years have brought drier weather to Schur’s 2,500 acres near Plainview, a town of 20,000 between Lubbock and Amarillo. The Ogallala Aquifer yields less and less. “My granddad dug the well. My dad pumped the well,” said the 65-year-old farmer. “And I’m going to be the generation that capped the well.”The Ogallala,…

The post As the Ogallala Aquifer Dwindles, West Texas Farmers Face a Future Without Irrigated Crops appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Who's-Wasting-Our-Water-Development-Housing-Katy-SinkholeAs Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? Longhorns used to graze across the street from the house where Ozzy Tirmizi settled with his family in Katy, a western exurb of Houston. He grew up in southern Pakistan, but his dad’s job in oil and gas brought them to Texas in 2011, when Tirmizi was eighteen. Over the following decade, he watched as pastureland was paved over. Strip malls replaced the grass, and the bovine neighbors disappeared.In 2019, Tirmizi entered a doctoral program in geology at the University of Houston. He learned to measure changes in ground elevation by using data from orbiting satellites and started working with a professor who…

The post Thirsty New Subdivisions Have Made the Texas Groundwater Crisis Plain to See appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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The Roberto Bustamante Wastewater Treatment Plant, in El Paso.As Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? As climate change continues to shift eastward the dividing line between our nation’s arid plains and wetter climes, more of Texas will likely resemble the state’s desert regions in the coming decades. Cities will be forced to adapt to this new reality as they manage water resources. With only 9 inches of annual rainfall—compared with the statewide average of 27 inches—El Paso offers them a glimpse of the future.Until the late eighties, El Paso relied heavily on groundwater extracted from the Hueco Bolson aquifer. But after decades of overpumping caused water levels to plummet, municipal leaders changed course. Since the city implemented an aggressive…

The post El Paso Reuses Every Drop of Water It Can. The Rest of Texas Could Heed the Lesson. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Who's-Wasting-Our-Water-Fracking-Fresh-water-EnergyAs Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? Without water, there’s no fracking. Without fracking, there’s no twenty-first-century Texas oil boom. Water’s role is evident in the full name of the process—hydraulic fracturing.Drillers pump water, laced with sand and chemicals, deep into the ground to crack open the ancient rocks of the Permian Basin, releasing trapped fossil fuels from their primordial prison. About half of that water—three million barrels a day—is drawn from the region’s fast-dwindling aquifers. That’s enough to feed the faucets of more than 600,000 Texas households, enough for the city of Dallas.Water helped turn the Permian Basin into one of the world’s largest oil fields. Each day, more than…

The post Why Are Permian Basin Frackers Using as Much Fresh Water as Dallas? appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Who's-Wasting-Our-Water-Charge-Usage-PricingAs Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? To reduce waste, common sense suggests rescinding water’s current exception from the law of supply and demand. Typically in a market economy, if there’s not enough of a resource, its price goes up, encouraging conservation. Yet while water grows increasingly scarce, it remains relatively cheap.In Texas, unlike in most other states, we treat water both as a public good and as private property, depending on where it comes from and who’s pumping it. Landowners drawing water from their own wells pay almost nothing beyond the price of a permit and a pump. There’s little financial incentive to cut back on water use.The Legislature would…

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Who's-Wasting-Our-Water-Save-Like-San-AntonioAs Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? Thanks to a blind salamander, San Antonio became a national leader in water conservation. The eyeless, five-inch-long mass of virtually unpigmented flesh lives in the watery caverns of the Edwards Aquifer. It’s a pathetic-looking critter but no doubt a source of terror for the tiny snails and shrimp it feasts upon in its lightless subterranean home. The salamander and seven other species found nowhere else on earth depend on the health of the aquifer’s ecosystem.After the unregulated pumping of water threatened the salamander’s survival, federal authorities listed the amphibian as endangered in 1967. That act set in motion four decades of high-stakes lawsuits and…

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Who's-Wasting-Our-Water-Fix-Leaky-Pipes-Leaking-utilitiesAs Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? Every day buried pipes across Texas spill water into the soil, through breaks large and small. Roadwork and digging to lay fiber-optic cable often damage water mains. Extreme temperatures can shift the ground, creating fractures in decades-old lines. Some crack simply because they’ve met the end of their useful life—typically 50 to 75 years.Enough water seeps from these broken pipes each year to meet the needs of Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, Laredo, and Lubbock combined. It’s more than enough—186 billion gallons—to put Dallas County under a foot of H₂O.Texas should invest in repairing leaky pipes and replacing aging ones before paying for new…

The post Leaky Pipes Are Wasting Billions Upon Billions of Gallons of Texas Water appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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The problem with erik episode 6This is an early access episode, available to TM Audio subscribers only. Connect access to your TM Audio feed to the podcast player of your choice here. To troubleshoot any issues, access the FAQ here. Read the transcript below.“Oh, I think he feels remorse that he got caught. All criminals feel remorse, but I don’t think many of them feel remorse if they don’t get caught.”—Wallace LundgrenExecutive producer is Megan Creydt. The show is reported and written by Katy Vine, and written, produced, and reported by Ana Worrel. It was produced and engineered by Brian Standefer, who also wrote the music. Story editing and production by Patrick Michels. Additional production is by Aisling Ayers. Additional editing by Karen Olsson. Fact-checking by Jaclyn Colletti. Studio musicians were Jon Sanchez, Glenn Fukunaga and Pat…

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