Submitted by: Linda Curtis, Chief Organizer – League of Independent Voters of Texas (LIV)
This MOST important water bill could die next week without a hearing.
Let’s help Rep. Gerdes get a hearing on HB 4445, arguably the most important water bill in this session!
Relating to water loss in water delivery systems for certain municipally owned water utilities.
We applaud Rep. Stan Gerdes for getting this HB 4445 introduced and vetted to address the “elephant in the room.” While we are pumping precious groundwater in Texas at almost twice the capacity of aquifers to recharge, we are turning our heads to massive leakage!
The Senate and House’s priorities in this legislative session have been to obtain new water supplies. Yet, low and behold, “water is going into a black hole,” reported Lee County’s stellar citizen water whistleblower (and LIV’s 2022 citizen of the year) Nancy McKee last night at a water meeting in Bastrop. Read McKee’s full remarks here.
Remember, this was LIV’s Story of the Year after writer Elena Bruess blew the whistle about this so-called “black hole” in the San Antonio Express-News last September. While SAWS/Vista Ridge has been pumping 50,000 acre-feet of water per year (14 billion gallons) from the aquifers relied on by 100,000s of thousands of people east of Austin all the way to Bryan-College Station, their leakage was approximately 43,000 acre-feet in 2021!
What can you do to help Gerdes get a hearing? It’s got a 50-50 chance or the legislation could go down its own black hole.
Simple. Send a respectful and short email to the Natural Resource Committee’s staffer, Sam Bacarisse as follows: Please do all you can to get Rep. Gerdes’ HB 4445 a hearing. Thank you for your time.
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