Dallas Blog

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David Kozlowski had a photo selected as photo of the week over on the KERA art and seek blog. It's a cool photo too.

I read Worst Hard Time last year about the Dust Bowl. It was a terrific read. Animals choked on the dust, there was static electricity in the air as a result of the dust.

We continue to waste water at a terrible rate. I recall a discussion last week about drought tolerant plants.

R

Actually Dallas itself is pretty well situated. Further, we get a good amount of rain here. The biggest concern regarding water supplies exist for our suburban neighbors to the North. They are the ones drawing down Lavon. Dallas doesn't use Lavon.

The newest lake serving Dallas is near Hugo OK. There is a lake there that feeds into the Red River. The Red River is useless for water--the sand and particulates make it too difficult to clean. But this water in Hugo will significantly add to our water supply.

You might as Boyle and Lowry in Irving/Las Colinas about this lake. The OK state gov't is fighting to keep this water though they don't really seem to need it now, and they have a district and appeals court ruling upholding the Dallas claim to the land/water.

Furthermore, water cannot be created or destroyed. The whole issue of wasting water is an energy, for purification problem. The plant choices are less important than you'd imagine. Presumably if we all watered our lawns everyday there would be more humidity and potentially more rain.

There are so many options available to us to conserve water. The biggest arrow in our quiver is brown water. If we would use filtered, though not purified water for irrigation this would save both energy and water.

Scarcity must really rise before this will happen, and I doubt money will be much of an issue for Dallas. If these dire warnings are correct, Dallas could sell some of it's water, thereby offsetting the cost of brown water for irrigation.

The worst drought that ever hit the region in the map was in the early 50's. They had 3 yrs of severe drought that dried up the springs in San Marcos and Comal springs.

After 3 yrs of drought they had the three rainiest seasons on record. The Edwards aquifer was completely recharged and flow reached record levels.

Of course, if San Antonio would build just one lake, perhaps this drought wouldn't hurt the hill country so badly. Lake Applewhite was proposed back in the early 90's but never happened. Canyon Lake is in the Area, but San Antonio has no right to that water.

Imagine the entire metroplex gets it's water from above ground lakes, San Antonio gets none. All of it's water comes from the Edwards Aquifer, which also supplies New Braunfels, San Marcos and South Austin.

San Antonio has the deepest part of the Aquifer, so long after San Marcos and New Braunfels have lost all flow, San Antonio is still considering water controls.

Water is the new Oil. Oil is ultimately just for fun and aid, water is essential.

Is this bad????? is this bad????

growing up in the panhandle...we call that a tuesday...or wednesday...or any other day of the week. if the wind blows, so does the dust. nothing unnatural about the photoblog.

http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2946

Mentions a couple resources on this issue.