LEGISLATURE FALSELY ACCUSES DALLAS OF WATER-HOGGING

The version of a new state water plan approved by the Texas House (but subject to amendments or the killing it deserves) is outright punitive of the Dallas-Fort Worth region, and falsely so on at least one point. East Texas legislators are quoted as saying Dallas uses 264 gallons per capita of water daily. That’s badly outdated, if not a flat-out lie, as we pointed out last September in our cover story, “Hard Truth, Dry Times.” Here’s what we wrote:

Nobody quarrels with the need to conserve. And nobody honest would dispute that North Texans have little sense of the worth of their water. But to be fair, Dallas is wrongly tagged with being a water hog. The city’s use of 198 gallons per capita daily (gpcd) is down from 260 gpcd in 1998. If residential is separated from commercial use, it’s only about 100 gpcd, according to DWU estimates. Dallas thus compares increasingly favorable to San Antonio’s 132 gpcd and El Paso’s 140 — both dramatically lowered in recent years, too.

What’s really amazing about this is that the East Texas delegation, which advances its “environmental” stance (and shame on the environmental groups that are lying about Dallas, also) while being little more than a pawn for powerful timber, paper mill, and other commercial and property interests, has completely outflanked the North Texas representatives, who ought to be much more powerful. Cowboy up down there. Right now.

And hey, Jody Puckett, DWU director, how ’bout calling Rep. Rafael Anchia and anybody else you know in Austin to at least get the real numbers in play? Send ‘em a copy of the September issue while you’re at it.