Today, Texas is home to around 31 million residents. By 2060, the population is expected to be between 40 and 46 million, and it could reach 50 million by 2070.
You see evidence of that growth right here in Tarrant County . Fort Worth’s population recently hit 1 million, and Tarrant County’s population, which was 2.1 million in 2020, is expected to surpass 3 million by 2060.
In the Fall 2025 issue of “Tierra Grande,” the Texas Real Estate Research Center’s journal, a number of experts weighed in on the impact of all those people on our most precious finite resource: water.
The good news is that the research shows we have enough water for the present and near term. That’s partly because we’ve done a good job over the past decade or so of conserving water. A lot of that has been driven by more efficient fixtures, like sinks and toilets, and more efficient appliances, like washing machines and dishwashers.
However, even with conservation efforts, our existing sources of surface water and groundwater — lakes, reservoirs and aquifers — likely won’t be able to meet Texas’ long-term water demands, especially when you couple population growth with persistent drought conditions, which have impacted most of the state for the last 25 years.
What the state needs to do, the research findings showed, is invest in new water sources. That means developing reuse infrastructure, expanding the use of desalination processes and finding ways of replenishing aquifers. But it won’t be cheap: shoring up Texas’ water supply for the future could cost as much as $154 billion — nearly double the investment the Texas Water Development Board called for in its 2022 plan. That group oversees the state’s water supply.
“Texas is not running out of water, but it is running out of cheap water,” said Charles Gilliland , research economist at the Texas Real Estate Research Center, when he spoke at the Outlook for Texas Land Markets conference in April.
Where Do Texans Get Their Water?
Groundwater from underground aquifers supplies 54% of the 16 billion gallons of water Texans use each day. Forty-two percent comes from surface water out of lakes and reservoirs. The rest comes from recycled water, which is called reuse. Reuse is reclaimed and treated, then injected into the drinking water system (called direct potable reuse, or DPR) or into a surface water source (called indirect potable reuse, or IPR).
Fort Worth gets its water from the Tarrant Regional Water District, which pulls from six surface sources — Lake Bridgeport, Eagle Mountain Lake, Lake Worth , Benbrook Lake, Cedar Creek Reservoir and Richland-Chambers Reservoir. All of Tarrant County , in fact, relies primarily on surface water, but some nearby cities, like Boyd, in Wise County, use groundwater from the Trinity Aquifer, which lies beneath much of this region.
Based on projections, groundwater supplies could drop by 32% by 2070, while surface water supplies are likely to decrease only by about 2%. Overall, Texas is expected to see an 18% decrease in the total existing water supply by 2060.
In June, Wise County officials took steps toward creating a water utility agency to bring more surface water to the area. Talking with the Star-Telegram at the time, Boyd Mayor Rodney Holmes said it was imperative given the toll residential growth has taken on the groundwater supply.
“If we keep drilling wells in Wise County,” he said, “they will start going dry in 2040.”
Future Water Sources
Just as it replenishes lakes and reservoirs, rainwater recharges aquifers, though different aquifers recharge at different rates, some far more slowly than others. But rainfall, of course, is unpredictable over the long term, meaning cities must invest in creative solutions to ensure there’s enough water for the future, especially with demand increasing.
Harold Hunt, a research economist with the Texas Real Estate Research Center, used El Paso and San Antonio as examples of that creative planning. El Paso is building basins to capture rainwater to help recharge the Hueco-Mesilla Bolsons Aquifer that lies underneath the city, and San Antonio is taking excess water from the Edwards Aquifer, which recharges fairly quickly during periods of heavy rainfall, and storing that water in the Carrizo Aquifer for future use.
Those kinds of projects, Hunt said, are part of a diversified strategy, which includes conservation, to shore up the water supply. But the state is also being forced to consider nontraditional water sources while staring down the impending water shortage.
Reuse Water
Water recycling, said Hunt, is becoming increasingly common across the state. The city of Big Spring , near Midland , opened the nation’s first DPR facility in 2013, which injects treated reuse water mixed with lake water directly into the city’s drinking water supply.
Hunt pointed to Big Spring as a water resiliency success story, but he conceded that, for many, there’s still a psychological barrier to drinking, cooking with and bathing in reuse water, despite the fact that it goes through a purification process to meet state and federal drinking water standards.
“It’s a stigma,” he said, “and I think it takes education. If you explain to people what’s going on and that it’s safe, it’s not a problem. It’s just getting over that mental aspect of using recycled water.”
Wichita Falls , Hunt said, uses an IPR process whereby it injects treated reuse water into Lake Arrowhead , which supplies the city’s municipal water. That type of water recycling is a little more palatable to people, said Hunt.
According to the city’s 2024 Water Conservation Plan, Fort Worth supplies reuse water to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport , Arlington and Euless for nonpotable use, like irrigation.
Fort Worth also relies on a form of IPR for its municipal water. The Tarrant Regional Water District discharges treated wastewater into the Trinity River. River water is then diverted to constructed wetlands near Richland-Chambers Reservoir and Cedar Creek Reservoir. The water is naturally filtered in the wetlands before winding up back in the reservoirs.
In addition to municipal wastewater, water brought to the surface during oil and gas exploration could be a source of reuse water with further technological advances, Hunt said.
Desalination
The Texas Water Development Board estimates there’s approximately 3 billion acre feet of salty brackish groundwater in the state. As is, this water is undrinkable, but, primarily through a process of reverse osmosis, the salt and mineral content can be removed, and the water can be made safe to drink.
According to the Texas Water Development Board , there are more than four dozen desalination plants in the state. There are three in Palo Pinto County near Possum Kingdom Lake and four along the Brazos River in Parker and Hood counties.
Like the process of purifying reuse water, the desalination process is more expensive than the typical methods of treating non-brackish groundwater for consumption. It’s even more expensive to remove the salt from seawater. When asked about the prospect of using water from the Gulf of Mexico for municipal purposes, Hunt said it’s cost prohibitive, but that could change as technology improves.
Water Use Statistics
Roughly half of the total water consumed in Texas goes to crop irrigation. In 2020, 9.4 million acre feet of water was used for crops, while municipal use (homes, businesses, institutions) accounted for 5.2 million acre feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water it would take to cover an acre of land in one foot of water.
Of all the metropolitan areas in Texas , Lubbock ranks No. 1 in per-capita water use with 1,434 gallons per day, mainly due to the farming in that region. Austin ranked last with 166 gallons per day per capita, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area ranked third from the bottom with less than 200 gallons per day per capita.
Municipal water use varies little among Texas’ metro regions. Of the state’s biggest metro areas ( Dallas-Forth Worth , Austin , Houston and San Antonio ), Dallas-Fort Worth used the most municipal water, but it was only 10% higher than Houston , which used the least.
With the population growth, water use patterns will change dramatically in the coming years. By 2070, it’s estimated that annual irrigation demand will decline by almost 2 million acre feet while municipal demand will increase by more than 3 million acre feet
Water Security in Coming Decades
In 2020, there was an estimated 16.8 million acre feet of available water in Texas. By 2070, it’s likely that will have shrunk to approximately 13.8 million acre feet.
If nothing is done to supplement existing sources, there could be a shortage of nearly 7 million acre feet of water in Texas by 2070 should we encounter severe drought conditions. That would leave roughly a quarter of the state’s population without enough water, resulting in economic damages in the ballpark of $150 billion, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center.
Hunt called Texas “a leader in sustainable water management,” but said it’s imperative that the public understands the reality of the situation and makes the necessary adjustments to prepare for the future.
At the individual level, that means conserving water and getting comfortable with the idea of drinking recycled and desalinated water, as well as potentially paying more for water given the increased sourcing costs.
At the state level, it means spending a lot of money to develop new water sources to avoid a catastrophic shortage in the next two generations.
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