Testimony: Texas faces two long-term water challenges
On March 24, 2025, Director of Infrastructure and Natural Resources Policy Jeremy Mazur testified before the Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs in support of Senate Bill 7, which aims to tackle the state’s long-term water challenges.
The following is a written version of the testimony.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, for the record, my name is Jeremy Mazur, and I am the Director of Infrastructure and Natural Resources Policy for Texas 2036.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your invitation to be on this panel. While I will share several key data points describing our challenges, associated costs, and potential consequences of insufficient investment, this testimony is in support of SB 7.
I have provided the committee with a four-page handout that includes several of the key data points I’ll share with you this morning.
For starters, Texas faces two long-term water infrastructure challenges. First, we must expand our water supply portfolio for a drought-prone and growing state. And second, we must fix aging, deteriorating drinking water and wastewater systems.
Let’s look at the water supply challenge first.
According to the 2022 State Water Plan, Texas faces a long-term water supply deficit of 6.9 million acre-feet of water over the next half-century if we don’t expand our water supply portfolio and we’re hit by another long, severe drought.
If Texas fails to do this, and we’re hit by a long, severe drought, then by 2050 the state will endure $165 billion in annual GDP losses.
For comparison, these damages exceed those Texas endured during the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic.
Our second water infrastructure challenge involves fixing our aging, deteriorating water systems.
As I shared with this committee a few weeks ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers recently downgraded our drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
On top of this, leaky pipes waste enough water per year to fill a major state reservoir, as Texas families and businesses endure thousands of boil water notices per year.
Left unresolved, these failing and at-risk systems will cost the state’s economy a total of nearly $320 billion over the next 15 years.
Texas 2036 projects that the state’s long-term price tag for addressing these challenges equals nearly $154 billion dollars.
The breakdown of this figure is as follows:
- The inflation-adjusted cost estimate of what the state needs to spend on water supply projects in the recent water plan equals $59 billion.
- Fixing our aging, deteriorating drinking water systems will cost nearly $74 billion.
- Repairing our wastewater systems will total just over $21 billion. These estimates are based on inflation-adjusted EPA projections for the next 20 years, however.
Texas 2036 projects that existing state and federal funding programs will cover roughly 25% of this need. This will leave a long-term water infrastructure funding gap of $112 billion in the decades ahead.
The Texas-sized solution to this funding gap includes the constitutional dedication of state revenues towards our water funds.
This is reflected in SB 7, as it serves as the enabling legislation for a separate measure proposing this dedication.
That said, the legislative oversight and performance accountability standards within SB 7 are essential to any state revenue dedication.
The Texas Water Fund Advisory Committee established within SB 7 will give the Legislature meaningful, lasting oversight of the Water Development Board’s use of monies allocated to the state’s water funds.
More importantly, the bill requires that the Board report to the Committee on the state’s progress towards addressing our water infrastructure challenges.
In particular, the bill requires that the agency report on progress towards closing our water supply deficit and fixing our aging, deteriorating water and wastewater systems.
These accountability measures are essential for two reasons. First, they will allow the Legislature to track progress and achievement towards addressing our water infrastructure challenges. And second, these measures will allow taxpayers to understand the value of their return on investment in water infrastructure.
To be clear Mr. Chairman, I think the dedication of state revenues is essential for the preservation and advancement of Texas’ economic miracle. But given that so much is at stake here, we must have performance measures that track our long-term achievement and success when it comes to developing water infrastructure.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to any questions that you may have.
[Watch Jeremy Mazur’s testimony on March 24, 2025, to the Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs in support of SB 7 here.]