Liquidity: Privatization and the Rise of Big Water - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 223

By 2009, the volume of depletions from the Ogallala was equivalent to eighteen Col-
orado Rivers per year, and tensions were flaring. But the most intense fight over Ogallala
water is taking place in Texas—thanks to T. Boone Pickens's plan to commodify it.
“DEVASTATING”
The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth are located in north Texas, east of the Panhandle
and just south of the Oklahoma border. By the time of the 2003 census, the two cities'
suburbs had merged into one megacity, the Dallas -Fort Worth Metroplex. DFW is the
largest metropolitan area in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States, with ap-
proximately 6.5 million residents spread over ninety-three hundred square miles—an
area larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, with the tenth-
largest gross metropolitan product in the world. As DFW grows, so does its need for
water.
Between 2000 and 2007, the population served by the North Texas Municipal Water
District (NTMWD), the utility for the seven counties north of the Metroplex, increased
by half a million, to 1.6 million people. By 2060 the population of the Dallas-Ft. Worth
region is expected to leap to 18.6 million, and water demands are estimated to more
than double, from 1.4 million acre-feet per year to 3.3 million acre-feet per year. If no
new water supplies are added, the cities face a projected shortfall of 1.9 million acre-feet
per year, or more. Using revised figures, some experts believe that by 2060 DFW will
have 5.5 million more residents than originally predicted, and water demands will ex-
ceed estimates by 50 percent.
“ Population is just eating us up ,” Jim Parks, NTMWD's executive director, said. In
2008, he restricted yard watering to one day a week and signed a twenty-year contract
to buy additional water from Lake Texoma, a reservoir on the Red River. But Parks, like
Pat Mulroy in Las Vegas, is unwilling to take on developers and their political allies.
“Limit growth? That's not what we do,” said Parks. “My charge is to respond to the needs
of the customers I'm committed to serve.”
The other problem eating at Texas has been an extreme lack of rain. he worst
drought ever recorded in Texas was in 1956, when virtually all greenery disappeared;
hot winds kicked up massive dust clouds; stock tanks, creeks, and lakes ran dry; and
the cattle industry was devastated. Artesian wells were opened so that desperate people
could fill pails with water; swimming holes were pressed into service as makeshift reser-
voirs; muddy water from the Red River was piped down to Dallas.
In 2005, DFW suffered its second-driest year on record. Lake Lavon, a 21,400-acre
reservoir on the East Fork of the Trinity River, and one of the main water supplies for