Whiskey Is for Drinking, Water Is for Fighting: A Texas Perspective on the Issues and Pressures Relating to Conflicts over Water
![handle is hein.journals/text38 and id is 1025 raw text is: WHISKEY IS FOR DRINKING, WATER IS FOR
FIGHTING: A TEXAS PERSPECTIVE ON THE
ISSUES AND PRESSURES RELATING TO
CONFLICTS OVER WATER
by Suzanne Schwartz*
I. THE STATE OF TEXAS .................................. 1011
II. SURFACE W ATER ..................................... 1012
A. Re-Use ......................................... 1014
B. Interbasin Transfer ................................ 1015
C. Amendments/Four Corners ......................... 1017
D. Environmental Flows .............................. 1018
III. GROUNDWATER ...................................... 1020
IV. CONFLICT ISSUES IN PLANNING .......................... 1023
V. CONCLUSION ......................................... 1024
I. THE STATE OF TEXAS
The State of Texas has large quantities of water, but not where it is most
needed.' It has a rural, agricultural background, but a vibrant and continually
growing urbanization.2 Its people need to withdraw water from its rivers and
streams and want to fish and swim in them also.3 Its cities rely on the
discharged effluent of cities farther upstream, and those upstream cities want
to further use the water they have previously sent downstream.4 In short,
Texas has water conflicts.
The Texas Water Plan for 2002 projects that in a drought of record,
Texas's currently developed supplies of water will fall short of its projected
demands in some areas of the state.' The gap between currently developed
supplies and projected demands will increase through the fifty-year planning
period, with much of the increased demand coming from municipal use.6 This
growing demand from Texas's cities is driving much of the conflict in the state
-conflict between urban and rural or agricultural areas, conflicts among cities
* Program Director for the Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution, Austin, Texas. J.D.,
University of Texas School of Law.
1. See 1 TEx. WATER DEV. BD., WATER FOR TExAs-2002 at 63-68 (2002), available at
http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/publications/reports/State-Water-Plan/2002/WaterforTexas2OO2.pdf
[hereinafter TEX. WATER DEV. BD.]
2. Id. at 3-4.
3. See id. at 59-60.
4. See id. at 63-68.
5. See id. at 2-3.
6. See id. at 12.
1011](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/text38&div=40&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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