A major event in water resources planning and management at the state level was the release during 1966 of the Texas Water Plan by the Texas Water Development Board. The $3 billion plan which would serve municipal, industrial, irrigation, and recreation demands, proposes fifty-three new reservoirs, modification of six existing reservoirs, and construction of two salt-water barriers. It contemplates supplying nearly a million acres of land in the lower Rio Grande Valley with irrigation water by means of an aqueduct which would tap the surplus waters of eastern Texas. In addition, it emphasizes water quality in streams, bays, and estuaries.
The planning effort in many ways was the most ambitious ever undertaken by a state. It involved two years of study by a substantial staff and numerous individual consultants and consulting firms. It broke new ground by bringing concepts of economic demand to bear at an early stage in its analysis of irrigation and recreation, and by its attention to factors other than physical structures. The plan included recommendations for institutional changes, financing, research, and continuing management activities by the Texas Water Development Board staff.
During the summer, hearings were held on the plan's proposals. As a result, the Texas Water Development Board decided to make several further analyses, including possibilities for conducting surplus waters to the High Plains of Texas. The High Plains area faces imminent exhaustion of its groundwater, which has supported irrigation development of millions of acres over the last two decades. While this problem had been strongly recognized in the planning, it was decided at an early stage that it would be uneconomical to lift waters from humid east Texas the two or three thousand feet which would be required to convey them to the Plains. Not surprisingly, there was much objection to this conclusion on the High Plains, and further studies of the economics of transporting water to the region are now under way. The plan revealed the plight of the High Plains of Texas perhaps more clearly than had ever been done before. One result is that the state is now pressing to be included in studies of the water redistribution proposals that are discussed on page 6.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1967 issue of Resources magazine.
