“When you have a statistic like that, and you are charged with the responsibility of building the infrastructure throughout the entire state of Texas, you have to pay attention to, number one, what our population growth looks like,” said J. Bruce Bugg, Jr., chair of the Texas Transportation Commission. “And number two, you have to pay attention to where those folks are going.”
People are moving to suburban counties just outside the state’s urban population centers, Bugg said.
“Harris County, for example, has actually lost population, while the counties surrounding Harris County and Houston are growing,” he said. “A lot of folks are wanting to get out of the major metropolitan areas, but they're wanting to stay [nearby] for jobs and all kinds of different reasons.”
The big picture
Investments in water and energy go hand-in-hand, Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, said March 28.
“You need plenty of both and more of both,” Hancock said during a panel discussion on infrastructure. “People must have water in order to live, so there is no more important subject matter for the growth of the state—for basically the future of the state.”
State lawmakers are focused on both topics this legislative session.
The Texas Senate unanimously approved Senate Bill 6, a proposal aimed at strengthening the state power grid, protecting residential consumers from outages and improving supply and demand forecasts, on March 19.
“If we don’t do this right, we will someday again have what we had during [Winter Storm] Uri,” bill author Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on the Senate floor March 19. “You had large loads online in a city, and next door you had communities that were dark—people literally died in their homes and froze to death. That can never happen again.”
Bills that would inject billions of dollars into the state’s water sector are also moving through the legislative process. The proposals seek to bankroll new water supply projects, invest in flood infrastructure and preserve existing water resources, according to previous Community Impact reporting.
“A big part of the discussion is, with that funding that we are potentially going to be making available, how much of that should also be going to help upgrade and maintain the infrastructure that is already here?” Alan Leonard, the policy director for the Texas Water Foundation, said March 28. “We live in a state that has increasing water risk, and so you need to upgrade your infrastructure to account for the growth.”
If aging water systems across Texas are not repaired, the state will lose about $320 billion in the next 15 years, Jeremy Mazur, a policy director for the nonpartisan think tank Texas 2036, told a Senate committee on March 24. Mazur also moderated the March 28 infrastructure panel.
“When people ask me about water, what's it going to go to—the answer is... all of the above,” Hancock said March 28. “The real focus is trying to create new water sources through all the kinds of different water that we have available in the state.”
More details
Companies are moving their operations to Texas because of the state’s “reasonable regulatory climate, the workforce, the higher [education] institutions, the infrastructure,” said Adriana Cruz, the executive director of Texas’ economic development and tourism office.
Cruz noted that state and local organizations need to work together to develop infrastructure and respond to population growth.
“We need to be prepared, and we need to have all of our infrastructure in place,” she said. “And if we don't have it today... companies know that we are planning and we're investing in the future.”
Stakeholders and experts also discussed education and gambling during the March 28 conference. Texas’ 140-day legislative session ends June 2.
