It’s not the claim in this article, well researched and with many links that scare me that some 30 Texas towns are running out of water, that I find scary. I’m sure overtime, given the size of Texas there is some natural occurrence of this, and it can be measured and to some degree predicted.

What I find most concerning, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard it, but when you see it in writing on a respectable website, it really hits home. It’s this

We’ve got to get floods. We’ve got to get a hurricane to move up in our country and just saturate everything to replenish the aquifer,” he said. “Because when the water is gone. That’s it. We’re gone.

 

The quote is attributed to a Buck Owens, rancher. Owens reserved his anger for the contractors who drilled 104 water wells on his leased land, to supply the oil companies. Water levels were dropping in his wells because of the vast amounts of water being pumped out of the Edwards-Trinity-Plateau Aquifer, a 34,000 sq mile water bearing formation.

So, lets recap

• Fracking has accelerated and is draining an Aquifer that is 34,000 sq miles
• Texas is a Republican mostly “god fairing”, climate denying state
• We are increasingly hoping for a god or natural disaster to save our water
• Said natural disaster is likely to cause significant harm to the property and lives of many of its own residents to make a difference
• The Republican state government in general doesn’t believe in big federal government, but isn’t past asking for our share of its disaster relief when it suits them.
• Oil and gas from fracking is being shipped offshore to be sold on the international market, it doesn’t directly make us energy independent.
• If fracking made us energy independent, we’d be preserving it and restricting it’s extraction for when we really need it
• The reduction in fracking would at least give the aquifers a chance of refilling naturally.

Does anyone else see the conflict going on here?