Thursday, April 4, 2013

Fort Worth's Mayor Betsy Price & Arlington's Mayor Cluck Think Congress Does Not Want A Water War

Today I learned there is a website "Where lawmakers come to blog" called The Hill's Congress Blog.

I did not know mayors are lawmakers or members of Congress.

Maybe they aren't.

But, for some reason Fort Worth's Mayor Betsy Price and Arlington's Mayor Robert Cluck have joined together to write a blog post titled Congress doesn't want a water war.

Apparently the Supreme Court is about to hear a water rights case in Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann.

Regarding this, the mayors wrote...

With unprecedented peacetime deficits, massively underfunded entitlements, issues of war, peace and national security, Congress’s plate of big issues is full. But another giant helping of trouble may be coming after the high court hears Tarrant Regional Water District v. Herrmann, a case that will determine the future of interstate water rights.

The concerned citizen who emailed me about the Mayors' Blog, this morning, wondered what in the world "massively underfunded entitlements" are. Entitlements like what? Food stamps? Medicare? What entitlements are being massively underfunded? Pre-natal care in Texas? What?

The final paragraph of the Mayors' Blog succinctly sums up the problem...

So here is the problem — and it’s a big one. Water is the West’s single most critical and historically most fought-over resource. If the high court upholds the Tenth Circuit, who will be left to put back together sixty years of compacts? Only Congress. The fights could continue for decades.

The past 24 hours, water, and the Tarrant Regional Water District, have been coming across my radar screen. Yesterday I blogged about an FW Weekly article titled Liquid Power, about the TRWD and the upcoming board member election.

In the Liquid Power article we learn that Jack Stevens was the only current TRWD board member willing to talk to FW Weekly. Apparently Jack Stevens "praised the water district and the board for actively seeking new water supplies, including in Oklahoma and East Texas, and for promoting water conservation techniques."

And then TRWD board member Stevens said, “The Tarrant Regional Water District ought to be given a couple of gold stars for what they’ve done for conservation. The people of Fort Worth have really embraced conservation of water even without having the mandatory water restrictions. We have enough for quite a while, but we need more, and that’s what we’re doing.” 

The people of Fort Worth have embraced water conservation? Is this statement pulled from the same propaganda purveying service that claims things like a new Police & Fire Fighter Training Facility will make Fort Worth the Envy of the Nation. Or that Fort Worth is one of the World's Greatest Cities?

In the past year I have seen multiple water pipeline breaks flooding water into the creek that flows into Fort Worth's Fosdick Lake and into the creeks that flow through the Tandy Hills.

I do not see all that many Fort Worth lawnowners who water their lawns. More often I see lawns turn brown in summer.

With so much alleged TRWD concern about the water supply why has the TRWD sold millions upon millions of gallons of water to Barnett Shale Natural Gas Drillers, who mix the water with chemicals, then shoot it into the shale?

I think one of the many good reasons that the TRWD needs some new board members is those new board members, if they are John Basham, Mary Kelleher, and Timothy Nold, they will push for full transparency, full freedom of information.

If John Basham, Mary Kelleher, and Timothy Nold get elected there is a chance the public may learn for the first time how much water has actually been sold to the gas drillers and how much money has been paid for that water.

If the supply of water in North Texas is so precious why would water be allowed to be wasted by fracking? What if the gas drillers had been told they could not use the fresh water supply for their fracking, that they needed to build a water pipeline to pump water north from the Gulf, to use for fracking?

And now North Texas, courtesy of the TRWD, is taking a Water War all the way to the Supreme Court?

It is all very perplexing....

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