[oldjavacoder]

Lived here for over 1.5 decades and do not see a "decades-long drying". Texas isn't perfect but water management is something it does right.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-last-drop/

"Among the fifty states, Texas may rank near the bottom in many categories—including environmental protection (forty-fifth), quality of parks and recreation (forty-ninth), and availability of mental health care (forty-sixth)—but there is one area of public policy where it ranks indisputably first: water planning. No other state knows with such precision how much water it has and how much it will have in the future."

"The drought of the 1890’s killed off much of its nascent cattle industry. In the fifties a seven-year drought (Texas’s worst statewide drought ever) destroyed much of the state’s agriculture and caused 244 of the state’s 254 counties to be declared federal disaster areas. This led the state legislature to create the Texas Water Development Board, which published its first water plan in 1961."

For every time a climate change hand waver starts up, the answer is, yes climate change is real...it's how the Earth works.

What we need is for people moving to the state do do what we did and get rid of the back yard, make a nice rock garden, stop watering those massive lawns.

[galangalalgol]

That water plan had some costs too. "Goodbye to a river" talks anout some of them. I mostly agree with you though. Amarillo being the exception, they water their perfect lawns like the aquifer was bottomless, and it certainly isn't. The sudden transition to a natural landscape at the edge is quite jarring. Most cities in TX do much better, probably all.

[LBJsPNS]

Lived in San Antonio for 2 years in the middle of yet another drouth (welcome to the Southland). Mine was the only lawn in the neighborhood that was brown. Neighbors were pissed. Texas may know exactly how much water they have, but the residents don't seem to understand how important that water is. Part of the reason I moved elsewhere.

[tootie]

"it's how the Earth works."

You missed the part where it's definitely cause by human activity. Especially Texas since it's an oil state and it's government is anti-climate.