Is Texas running out of water? What most people get wrong about the state's growing water crisis

In water management, there's this thing known as "day zero." It refers to the point where a city or region's water supply reaches critically low levels, six months away from demand exceeding supply. Just this year, one Texas city was projected to become the first in the U.S. to reach that point: Corpus Christi.

The crisis is not only the result of drought and high heat. Corpus Christi is just one extreme example of a problem decades in the making. Water shortages do not often get attention from state lawmakers, and fights over resources can pit rural landowners against cities.

All of it has left a lot of Texans asking how close the state is to running out of water, and is there any way to stop it?

Where does our water come from?

Currently, most of the water we use comes primarily from reservoirs or aquifers. And even though water planners do want to diversify the portfolio, reservoirs are going to be important to Texas's future for a long time. 

Reservoirs are among the cheapest ways to acquire additional water supply because you essentially dig a big hole and the rain fills it up," said Sarah Kirkle with the Texas Water Association. 

Water planners are looking to increasingly rely on methods such as desalination, which is a strategy under consideration in Corpus. And water re-use, like the George W. Shannon wetlands near Corsicana. Still, in 2080, surface water sources like reservoirs are projected to make up the biggest share of our state's water supply.

But you can't just build a reservoir anywhere. You have to build one by an existing water source, and this is where things can get ugly. Water is not naturally distributed evenly across our state. The piney woods of East Texas are naturally wetter than the southern and western regions.

"At some point, it becomes a challenge that within your own region, you may not have available water supplies to meet those needs. And so then you end up having to look elsewhere in other parts of the state. And some of those areas are concerned about their own future needs," Kirkle said.

Inter-regional conflicts

Disagreements over the future of water in Texas are already playing out. Take, for instance, the fight over the Marvin Nichols Reservoir. First introduced in the state's water plan in 1968 as the Naples Reservoir, the project would flood 66,000 acres of the Sulfur River basin in northeast Texas, with the majority of the reservoir supply going to DFW. Building it would require taking private property from landowners, some who have been on their land for generations.

Water planners say this project is deeply important for the state's future. But the affected landowners say they aren't willing to give up their land without a fight, regardless of what the state is willing to pay for it.

"There's not a price for this land ... I can't put a price on seven generations," said cattle rancher Eddie Belcher, who inherited the property from his mother.

"The land would lose everything. The community would be gone forever. And all of this wonder we see out here in nature would literally be drowned. And that's what devastates us," said cattle rancher Jim Marshall.

The Marvin Nichols Reservoir isn't the only interregional water fight the state has had. In another recent headline-grabbing example, a Dallas millionaire plans to export groundwater from under his property in East Texas to the Metroplex. It's prompted outrage and a legal battle.

These problems will likely only get worse over the next few decades, with thirsty parts of the state increasingly wanting to supply their regions with water from areas with more supply.

"Balancing out the needs of the basin that needs the water, the basin that has the water, and understanding what their needs are going to be in the future is a really big challenge, and we're having a lot of conversation on the policy and legislative cycle about that," Kirkle said.

Water planners are constantly assessing these sometimes competing needs, and have been since the 1950s. That's when Texas started formal water planning after its worst drought in recorded history. That drought spanned six years and ended in 1957, with heavy rain that flooded every major river and tributary in Texas. It is still considered the statewide drought of record, and it's used to plan for future droughts.

How does water planning work in Texas?

The state is broken up into 16 planning groups. Every five years, each group develops a regional plan for water supply needs over a 50-year period. These plans look at things like future population growth and how much water Texas could have during a drought, and they recommend ways to develop new water supplies and prevent shortages before they happen.

Once they're finalized, all 16 regional water plans are sent to the Texas Water Development Board. The board then looks at all of the plans and creates one statewide water plan.

"It's a national model because it means that the local interests are invested in solving their problems. They understand their water situation much better than anyone else, and they have the responsibility at the local level for securing their additional supplies," Kirkle said.

Why the shortage? 

At this point, lawmakers have been talking about water shortages in Texas for decades, but in more recent years, there has seemingly been increased urgency to these warnings.

"The water issues in Texas are basic supply and demand. So we've got escalating demand that has to do with a large increase of population, as well as the economic development that goes along with that," Kirkle explained. "And then we've got supplies that are decreasing for a number of factors, including drought."

The amount of water Texas needs in the future is a moving target, which is why the state releases a new plan every five years. According to the draft of the latest plan, released in April of 2026, in the next 50 years, the state's population is expected to increase more than 50% to 52 million people.

Despite all those new people, water use is expected to only increase by 6%, but we are going to have a lot less water to go around. Texas's existing water supplies are projected to decline 10%, mainly because of aquifer depletion.

Water planners measure water in acre foot units. An acre foot is enough to cover an entire football field with one foot of water. According to the state's most recent water plan, if no additional water sources are brought online, the state could be short 3.6 million acre feet by 2030 and 5.8 million in 2080.

To meet these needs, the State Water Board's plan has recommended more than 3,000 projects by 2080, costing an estimated $174 billion, 50% more than the dollar amount presented state's last water plan five years ago. A number that big can be hard for most people to conceptualize. It's billions more than it costs to fund all public schools in the state every year. By some estimates, it's enough to house every person experiencing homelessness in the U.S. for at least five years.

And as big as the $174 billion price tag is, it does not even account for future inflation or the cost to fix the state's aging water infrastructure.

Potential impact of water shortages

Cities will likely never literally run out of water, as restrictions would be put in place before it happens. But even shortages can devastate a region economically. By the Texas Water Development Board's estimates, a severe drought could cause an estimated $91 billion in economic damages in 2030 and $177 billion a year by 2080 if the state does not implement its strategies.

We can also look to what has happened during water shortages around the world. From 1996 to 2012, Australia experienced a drought dubbed the "Big Dry," which shrank its GDP by 1.6%. When Cape Town, South Africa nearly ran out of water in 2018, 3.4% of the region's GDP was lost.

In Texas, a fight over water had a major impact on the economy in the Rio Grande Valley when the state's last sugar cane mill shut down due to the lack of enough water to keep the crops alive. A group of investors has since partnered to reopen the mill. But the Texas agriculture commissioner said the closure's temporary economic and cultural issues were profound.

Lessons from Corpus Christi

In Corpus Christi, recent floods have delayed the city's water emergency until 2028, buying leaders there some time. But experts say there's a lot to can take away from their emergency.

"It can be really sexy to have a park or a library or these things that people can see more immediately that you don't see in water, because water and wastewater pipes, they're kind of an invisible problem ... As long as the toilets are flushing and the and the taps are turning on, people don't realize that we have a water crisis that's looming," Kirkle said.

Because Corpus Christi water issues are about more than just drought. They are also about a lack of planning and delaying major projects, and they highlight the importance of having a long term lens when addressing community needs.