Thousands of people in Texas are at risk of their public water systems running out of water in 45 days or less while even more are experiencing water service interruptions.

A small Texas city west of Austin remains under tight water restrictions amid a significant drought. After days of being at the highest emergency level for water conservation, officials said Monday that those restrictions have only slightly been loosened, limiting water consumption to “indoor use only” until further notice.

      • Mrrt@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        1 year ago

        As an outsider I assume it’s because their ‘independant’ (read: under-regulated) power grid collapses every time all that stuff turns on.

      • QuinceDaPence@kbin.social
        3·
        1 year ago

        Recently we had an exceptionally cold winter staying below freezing for multiple days. Since winter is usually fairly temperate with most days having lows in the 40s (I usually only use the heater at night and have windows open during the day). and only going a degree or two below freezing for a couple of hours, a lot of houses here are not particularly suited to cold weather. We have fairly inefficient resistive electric heat in many houses, and pipes are not particularly well insulated for cold weather.

        It got well below freezing for a couple of days, and already several power plants were shut down for maintenance since winter is typically low demand. Anyway, all of this combined to result in the grid being overloaded, doing rolling blackouts, and then peoples pipes froze as well because of that.

        Also the Texas power grid is isolated from the other US grids so importing power is not an option.

        Since then I have noticed a lot more solar farms, mini natural gas peaker plants/backup generators and other upgrades being put in on backroads when I go for a motorcycle ride.

  • CasualWindVane@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 year ago

    Nothing in the article about agricultural use.

    If I’m reading their USDA census data correctly, over 2/3 of the entire county is used for farming (336,688 acres). Of which 79% is pastureland.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      I also wonder whether that city has any golf courses. If so, it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll be exempt too

          • frogfruit@discuss.online
            1·
            1 year ago

            Typically, yes. They issue citations and increasing levels of fines for each violation, and they disconnect your water if you don’t respond or pay in a timely manner. How quickly they respond to reports and how often they issue citations varies by city. Some cities even employ patrol units to enforce violations during severe drought conditions. Some cities aren’t giving out warnings at all anymore but going straight to citations/fines.

    • frogfruit@discuss.online
      3·
      1 year ago

      That would be extreme even for Texas. Texas has laws in place to prevent HOAs from prohibiting water conservation efforts such as xeriscaping, growing native grasses instead of exotic, rain barrels, etc. Most of Texas undergoes drought restrictions already. If we didn’t, we would certainly run out of water. Banning water conservation would be stupid even by Texas standards.

      Granted, Texas also does stupid shit such as restricting water usage in communities while pumping out that same water to sell to 3rd parties.