Apparently ignoring climate change has consequences because even Texas state officials now admit that we’re running out of water.
In a true Leopards Ate My Face moment, Agriculture Commissioner (and sentient cowboy hat) Sid Miller rang a warning bell this weekend, telling WFAA: “The limiting factor is water. We’re out of water, especially in the Rio Grande Valley… Our tomato production in the Valley is just about gone.”
Meanwhile, if you check out Miller’s Facebook page, it’s full of Boomer memes — no offense, folks — celebrating oil drilling, along with cringe-worthy jokes about climate change. Yep, we’re all trying to find the guy who did this. (Oh wait, is that also a cringe-worthy meme, now? Damnit.)
“We lose about a farm a week in Texas, but it’s 700 years before we run out of land,” Miller told the station’s “Inside Texas Politics” show on Sunday.
(We don’t know what he meant by “700 years before we run out of land,” either. Welcome to Texas politics.)
As for solutions, Miller suggests capturing stormwater and reusing treated water (which is a nice way of saying “drinking toilet water,” which was tried in Wichita Falls a decade ago.) Miller also says we should improve the efficiencies of irrigation and other delivery systems, increase storage capacity and add new reservoirs. (Maybe we should even arm our reservoirs? Think big, Sid!)
And, stop the presses, but Miller even thinks that his beloved oil industry could do more.
He wondered, with a timid, “please sir, more gruel” obsequiousness, if the state might consider using brackish water for fracking instead of, you know, the drinkable kind.
For the uninitiated: Water issues have long been a problem in Texas, and they’re getting worse. Earlier this year, the Texas Tribune reported on the plight of South Texas farmers and the constantly drying-up Rio Grande River. The Tribune reported that the Valley stands to lose more than $495 million this year in total crop production. Oh and Texas’ last sugar mill in McAllen recently closed because, you guessed it, a lack of water. Super.
Spoiler alert: According to Texas Monthly, we’re wasting a lot of it.
