Abbott: ‘Need for speed’ in action against BLM

The state is reaching a point to where something quickly needs to happen to resolve the land dispute between Texas landowners and the Bureau of Land Management, the top elected official in the state said Tuesday evening. Wichita Falls-native Gov. Greg Abbott was in Wichita Falls to be the keynote speaker at the Americanism dinner, sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America's Northwest Texas Council. Before the event, though, he met with a few landowners in danger of losing their land the BLM claims it has owned since the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. A map was placed on a table that displayed where the landowners' property ends according to historic deeds, and where the BLM says that boundary is. Abbott said he began fighting the federal agency when he was Texas' attorney general before being elected governor in 2014. "What I got to see tonight were further changes in the way the BLM is doing a land grab of Texas property," he said. "So I'm getting even more information that will empower Texas to take the next appropriate steps to protect our landowners." In question are about 45,000 acres along a 116-mile stretch land along the Red River from Doan's Crossing in Wilbarger County to Stanfield in northeast Clay County. The BLM says a treaty with Spain and U.S. Supreme Court cases in the 1920s justify their claim, but landowners and surveyors in Texas disagree...more

Feds: Austin-area salamanders' endangered listing could cost $29M in developmental impacts

Possible designation of critical habitats for the Jollyville, Georgetown, Salado and Austin Blind salamanders could cost $29 million in developmental impacts during the next 23 years, according to a draft economic analysis released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Jan. 25. The designation of critical habitats has been a concern throughout Williamson County as officials fear the measure could hamper development in the area. The $29 million figure accounts for impacts to possible development, transportation, mining, and species and habitat management activities in the proposed habitats, but it does not cover water management activities, utility projects and livestock grazing activities, according to the analysis. Williamson County Commissioner Valerie Covey, who serves on the board of the Williamson County Conservation Foundation, said the science and economic impact do not justify listing the salamanders. "I believe the decision should be science-based, and the science does not prove or substantiate the need to list the salamander," Covey said. "So when you look at that and you look at the financial impact it's going to have on our county, it frustrates me greatly to see that a decision is going to be made for political reasons, not science-based."...more

Drought Fuels Water War Between Texas and New Mexico

 by Sandra Postel

    As climate change alters rainfall patterns and river flows, tensions are bound to rise between states and countries that share rivers that cross their borders.
    In the Rio Grande Basin of the American Southwest, that future inevitability has arrived.
    Last week Texas, suffering through a devastating drought, filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court alleging that New Mexico is failing to live up to its water delivery commitments under the 1938 Rio Grande Compact.
    Texas charges that New Mexico’s pumping of groundwater in the region below Elephant Butte Dam to the New Mexico-Texas border is reducing Rio Grande flows into Texas, thereby depriving the state’s farms and cities of water they are legally entitled to under the Compact.
    Texas v. New Mexico is likely to be but one of a string of disputes that erupt as drought causes water supplies to dwindle and water-sharing pacts devised in wetter and less-populated times can no longer hold the peace.
    One of the great water myths is that rivers and underground aquifers are separate and distinct sources of water.  In reality, rivers and groundwater are often intimately connected.  Groundwater provides the “base” flow that keeps many rivers running during dry times. For their part, rivers and irrigation canals leak water into the subsurface, recharging the aquifers below.
    In dry years, when surface supplies run low, farmers often turn to underground water to replace or supplement their irrigation supply.  That’s what New Mexico farmers downstream of Elephant Butte have done during years of drought and low river flows.
    In the Mesilla Basin, for example, groundwater is the primary source of irrigation water for about 5,000 acres, but is a supplemental source of supply for more than 70,000 acres.  So in dry times, groundwater withdrawals ratchet up.
    According to an article on the impacts of groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande Basin published in this month’s Ecosphere, a journal of the Ecological Society of America, during the 2004 drought, when federal officials curtailed releases from Elephant Butte Dam, pumping from the Messila Aquifer rose to twice the long-term average.
    The drought of recent years has elicited a similar response from farmers, and groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande Valley has increased markedly. But how much this pumping has affected flows into Texas is in question.
    The current bi-state conflict began in 2007 when Texas farmers complained that New Mexico was extracting too much groundwater.  To avoid an escalating legal fight, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which operates Elephant Butte, worked out an agreement with two irrigation districts in Texas and New Mexico to give Texas more river water to make up for New Mexico’s groundwater use.
    That agreement didn’t sit well with New Mexico officials, however, and three years later the state filed suit against the Bureau, charging that the deal gave away too much of New Mexico’s Rio Grande allotment to Texas and would cause $183 million in damages to the state’s agricultural economy.
Texas shot back with the lawsuit filed last week.

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Texas files Supreme Court suit against New Mexico over water rights

In the continuing conflict over water resources between two neighboring Southwest states, for example, officials from Texas filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court last week in its dispute with New Mexico over water rights of the Rio Grande. The people and governments of three states and two nations have stake in water from the river, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) says New Mexico is violating the 1938 Rio Grande Compact that governs how water is shared by Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. In a statement announcing the legal action, TCEQ Commissioner Carlos Rubenstein called the action unfortunate but necessary. “It is unfortunate that we have had to resort to legal action, but negotiations with New Mexico have been unsuccessful, and Texas is not getting the water that it is allocated and legally entitled to,” Rubinstein said. Texas and New Mexico have been squabbling over the water of the Rio Grande since 2008. According to complaints filed by Texas officials, they are charging New Mexico water officials with failure to control groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande River basin south of Elephant Butte Reservoir, which has reduced surface water flow in the river as it makes it way to the Texas-New Mexico border. The complaint claims such action prevents Texas farmers and municipalities who depend on the water, including the City of El Paso, from receiving their allocated rights to the valuable resource. Officials from the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office have responded by accusing Texas of what they term “water rustling.”...more