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it would make a huge difference folks
we’re making the decisions would get out
and see just how special Texas rivers
are in Texas bays are I have to believe
it would change the way they approach
decisions really understand what’s at
stake so I grew up in North Texas and
town of Munster and the closest river
was the Red River didn’t get out there a
lot it was a pretty magical place and
actually it was just kind of far enough
away that it seemed kind of mysterious
and this is different
it’s wilder more scenic and the area
around town the farmland was a lot more
going on in terms of Wildlife
studied Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
as from an undergrad degree and I’m
going to law school worked with a
attorney who was doing a lot of fights
against reservoirs that were really
about trying to protect the rivers from
unneeded projects it just made a lot of
sense to me and it gave meaning to doing
something to protect the natural world
and pass it on to future generations
kind of haven’t looked back
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Rivers in Texas
so 150 years ago Texas didn’t really
have natural lakes we had rivers and we
had limited water demands and people
would divert water from the rivers and
they needed as the population has grown
and the water demands have grown the
ability to just meet those needs by
pumping out a river during dry years
wasn’t adequate so we started building
reservoirs putting dams on the rivers to
catch flow so that during those dry
periods you’d have a lot of water and
storage that you could then pump out and
apply to use and we have now built about
200 we call the major reservoirs in
Texas when we first issued water rights
in the 1800s the 1900s and we didn’t
really think much about what are the
environmental implications of giving the
right to take that much water out of the
river and have literally you know issued
rights to take out more water than there
will be in the rivers during drier years
if we’re not careful we’ll drive the
rivers you know we’ll lose the the
health of the river which will also
affect what happens to our bays and
estuaries on the Gulf Coast because they
rely on those river flows to keep them
healthy
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we have a water planning process in
Texas where we project water needs about
50 years into the future project needs
for municipal and industrial and
irrigation remaining all those things
but we don’t project what is the
environment what’s the environment gonna
be like in 50 years we plan to meet
those all those other needs but not the
need to have healthy rivers and healthy
bays and you know that’s crazy I I can’t
imagine that the people of Texas think
it would be okay to just wipe out our
rivers in our bays I you know I just I
don’t think that’s how Texans approach
things but it’s kind of below the radar
we’re not thinking about it drops are
Droughts
kind of a complicated phenomenon and
their natural event we have droughts
they’re gonna happen but what happens
with water management is that as we’re
capturing river flow we worsen those
natural droughts we make the low flows
lower we make the duration longer
because we’re capturing water and
reservoirs or we’re taking it out of the
river we’re diverting it for human use
and so it’s that combination of things
that really drives the river very low
and that’s a time when some organisms
that can’t move freely you know they’re
gonna they’re gonna dry out and gonna
die and parts of the river are gonna dry
up 2011 was incredibly intense drought
very low rainfall kind of unrelenting
heat reservoir elevations were down
water was just evaporating really really
quickly and we weren’t getting rainfall
you had portions of the Guadalupe there
was no flow you know that’s extreme and
for the bays really what happens is the
salinity levels get high when you don’t
have enough freshwater and then
he starts building up and that’s really
bad for a number of organisms I just
can’t tolerate that it can just decimate
the oyster population a certain amount
of that in the system can recover but if
you take it too far if we push it too
far you may not and then you know we’ve
lost the oyster fishery people tend to
think about it during drought and then
we forget when it rains we kind of start
getting lazy in our habits start being
wasteful about water use again we just
can’t afford to do that we’ve got a
limited amount of water we’ve got a
rapidly growing population and if we’re
going to continue to have flowing rivers
and healthy bays we have got to use
water as efficiently as we can still put
way too much on long we have leaky pipes
or distribution systems just lots of
things that we do where we use water in
a really wasteful way and it’s just way
too precious to treat it that way
and on the state level we have to make
River protection part of our water
planning we plan for all these water
needs we don’t plan for healthy rivers
we don’t say well you know how much
water does the river need to stay
healthy and let’s plan to provide that
water because if we don’t plan for it
we’re not gonna have it we’re gonna fail
what’s really got to happen is that
people have to speak up and they have to
talk to their government officials and
say you know what I care about this I
want to see rivers taken care of there’s
Conclusion
this tendency to you know to focus on
economics which is incredibly important
but in the process we tend to forget
about how important the natural beauty
and natural attractions of Texas are in
that economic growth if we waste that I
mean it’s going to cost us not just
ecologically but it’s going to cost us
in terms of the economy
I’m not just doing it for a job I mean
it cuz I care
I feel like there’s so much at stake
yeah it’s really hard and I have to
remind myself
everyone smile I mean this is the long
battle about the short one and there’s
still a lot of good that can be done a
lot can be protected and some other gets
lost in the way it’s sad it’s not the
end of the fight and keep going too much
at stake
and quit
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you
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