Eminent domain is the power used by a governmental entity to acquire private property when it’s deemed necessary for the greater public good.

The purpose of Proposition 11 is to ensure private property is taken strictly for public use, not for economic development. The issue made national headlines in 2005 when a group of homeowners in New London, Conn., fought a move by the city to acquire their property for a project to complement a multimillion dollar pharmaceutical research facility.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of the city, essentially saying local governments have the right to take land for economic development. Some North Texans also got a scare in 2008 when they received notices from a company operated by billionaire T. Boone Pickens informing them a small water district had been formed in the Texas Panhandle that would grant authority to condemn part of their land for an energy pipeline/transmission line.

The Supreme Court ruling sent states scrambling to pass laws to protect individual property owners. Texas is one of 40 states that have since passed such laws.

Proposition 11 would spell out the conditions under which private property could be taken by eminent domain. The amendment says property can be taken only with adequate compensation and must be “owned, used and enjoyed” by the public at large.

Critics of Proposition 11 say it is unnecessary because the Texas Legislature has already enacted laws to protect property owners.

Jody Withers, communications director for State Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, said the proposition would “put into the Constitution some things we already have in state law.”

He said that’s important because a constitutional amendment is harder to change than a law.

“Proposition 11 is a good step toward reform,” Withers said. But he said Estes will try again in the 2011 Legislature to create even stronger protection for property owners.

He pointed out that Estes’ Senate Bill 18 died when it went to the House.

“The main thing it provided was compensation for loss of assets,” he said.

The senate bill would also have required bona fide offers to property owners up-front, good faith negotiations and protection for the market value of an individual’s remaining portion of property.

“Proposition 11 is a step in the right direction,” Withers said.

State Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls, agrees.

“Proposition 11 is a big step forward in protecting private property rights,” he said. “Current law allows a governmental entity to take private property in an entire neighborhood on the grounds that over 50 percent of the neighborhood is blighted. In many cases the whole plat is then sold to a private interest in the name of economic development. Honest businesses and property owners who have maintained their property in these areas have little protection in these cases. Proposition 11 protects these private property owners.”

State Rep. Rick Hardcastle, R-Vernon, said Proposition 11 is just a start.

“It’s the first of our property right initiatives we’ll do over next few years,” he said.

Hardcastle said he likes the extra protections in Estes’ senate bill and predicted the legislation will come up again in 2011.

“We’ve got to get appraisals closer to the actual value of property” to be condemned by eminent domain, he said.

He said efforts to create the now-defunct Trans-Texas Corridor pointed out Texas laws have some disparities in obtaining right-of-way land.

Hardcastle said he is not aware of much opposition to Proposition 11 among state lawmakers.

When it comes to electing someone to a relatively local position, even a county that dramatically leans one way ideologically will overlook a certain letter attached to this man’s name on the ballot.

And the second proof, that Farabee has been so well received and trusted through the years, that even a county that might as well vote straight-party ticket wouldn’t have dared for fear we’d lose one of our biggest champions in Austin, regardless of party.

In fact, Farabee has represented the interests of the 69th District so well, few people could even recall to which party he is affiliated. He epitomized the mantra, “It’s the man, not the party.” Perhaps the only time some folks realized Farabee’s party affiliation was back in May 2003, when a group of state Democrats fled Austin in the midst of a Republican-run redistricting bill aimed at ending the Democratic majority in the state’s U.S. House delegation.

Protesting that the Texas Legislature should focus on the education crisis, Austin used that time to redraw district lines. And 50 legislators refused to show up for work at the Capitol. Without at least 100 members, the House cannot conduct business.

Farabee and his fellow Democrats traveled out of state, to Ardmore, Okla., a bold and, some argued at the time, risky move.

The most common question upon hearing the news that Farabee was in Oklahoma, “David Farabee is a Democrat?”

Farabee took many a ribbing, among his Republican friends, at pancake festivals and county fairs, but no thumping in the polls. This was Farabee, for gosh sakes.

With Farabee, it was never about party but people. You always got the sense, even when he fled to Ardmore, that his decisions were based on what’s best for this district and the state of Texas at that particular moment. And in 2003, public educational funding was at a crossroads and was not being addressed.

When many of his fellow Democrats locally decided to switch parties, perhaps fearing a straight-party ticket result — a legitimate concern given the political atmosphere since 2003 — Farabee stood firm. That was, of course, the party of his father, who held the same seat for 13 years, one more than his son.

Farabee returns the favor when he enters the polling booth, telling the newspaper that he always votes for his father-in-law, Bill Presson, a Republican county commissioner.

It’s the man, not the party.

This particular man will be missed. We wish David well.

It’s called the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program and it’s giving out vouchers to 3,000 seniors in the Wichita Falls area and 5,000 in the San Antonio area. The program is seasonal and will provide seniors with this service May through September.

“The seniors are like so excited to get fresh produce,” said Tina Root, agency relations coordinator at the food bank. “Everything on the voucher program is locally grown. It’s going to bring more awareness to fresh products.”

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples came to the farmers’ market at Eighth and Ohio streets downtown to kick off the voucher program.

Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls, was on hand and said the idea for the program came through Staples, who heard people in the Northeast were doing something similar. Farabee said Staples figured, “There’s nothing that the Northeast can’t do that Texas can’t do bigger and better.”

Administered by the Texas Department of Agriculture, the program will provide vouchers to seniors whose income is $1,604 a month or lower. They will receive five vouchers, each worth $4.

Picky produce shopper Nelda Simpson said she’s loving the voucher program.

“We (seniors) have never had this given to us before,” she said. Simpson once raised a garden in her former home of College Station and now is again able to enjoy the foods she loves without having to settle for the store or canned versions.

“I don’t buy canned. I buy completely fresh vegetables,” she said.

Tom Morath is a farmer with the Red River Farmer’s Market and he believes the voucher program will bring more people out. “I’ve already had a lot of inquiry about it,” He said.

Loren Tucker, 18, works with her mother at the farmer’s market and has already seen the effects of the voucher program.

“There was definitely an increase in seniors than there has been,” Tucker said. “I think it’ll be good for business.”
Farabee said he sees the programs many benefits. Nutrition is just one element.

“There’s no doubt our seniors remember a day when produce was fresh,” he said. “If only for the sentimental purpose, I think it’s a positive thing.”

At a glance:

About the voucher program:

Program runs through September 30th this year

To be eligible, seniors must be 60 or older, have a monthly income of $1,604 or less, and must live in the food bank’s service area.

To apply call 211- the central hotline for assistance, and find out where you can pick up vouchers.

It appears that the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same” rings true once again. While other states develop economically beneficial policies to bring jobs and cleaner energy, Texas is stuck trying to hold on to our fossil-fueled past.

So what happened?

Things started brightly enough. For the first time, solar had broad, bipartisan support from the leadership in both houses. There were at least 69 solar/renewable energy bills filed — by Republicans and Democrats.

Along with bipartisan support, there was solar industry interest. In March, an eight-hour “solar” day hearing attracted the attention of solar installers and international manufacturers. These industry representatives testified in support of state policies with up-front costs of as little as 20 cents per month for the average homeowner (with even lower costs or net savings when compared to future natural gas and regulatory costs).

A good solar incentive bill SB 545 (Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay; Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin), combined with a new renewable portfolio standard bill SB 541 (Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin; Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls), represented our best opportunity to bring solar manufacturing jobs to Texas. Both passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support and were placed on major state calendars in the House, giving the bills high priority.

Then the rains came. On top of voter ID and other parliamentary delays, industry support for renewable energy began to waiver. The Texas Association of Manufacturers began to circulate costs for SB 541 that were clearly inaccurate and misleading. Their estimates were much more costly than the Public Utility Commission estimates of the bill and failed to consider any of the financial benefits of the current renewable portfolio standard (RPS) outlined by the Public Utilities Commission and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

According to the University of Texas’ “Opportunity on the Horizon” report, the right suite of solar policies, including an RPS and solar rebates, would have brought Texas 123,000 jobs. Even without those policies in place, Texas attracted some attention from solar manufacturers in the last couple of years, at least enough to get them to visit and determine state interest in new jobs. But there was very little official state activity in response to those visits, especially when compared to what other states were doing. Just this session, economic development officials from another state scheduled meetings with solar executives visiting Austin when word got out that Texas failed to roll out the red carpet.

Without the incentives that the renewable energy bills would have brought to Texas, other states now have more opportunity to attract clean energy investment. Even while Luke Bellsnyder, executive director of TAM, opposed some of the proposed legislation, he acknowledged in The New York Times that “panel manufacturer X or Y was looking to Texas, but decided to go to other states because they have a better RPS or better incentives for production.”

Certainly, solar and renewable energy made important strides this session, especially given strong bipartisan support. In the end, however, political wrangling and heavy lobbying from opponents of clean energy sank any hope Texas had for showing energy leadership. With all the excitement around solar power and renewable energy, people seemed to forget why it was so exciting: good jobs, cleaner energy and lower, stable energy costs.

Marston is regional director of Environmental Defense Fund.

“Over seven thousand bills were filed for this, and I’ve said it a number of times: There aren’t seven thousand things wrong with the state of Texas,” Mayor Lyne said.

State Representative David Farabee says typically, only 15-hundred of those bills become law.

“That’s probably the way the system should work,” Farabee said. “So somebody has the ability to be heard … but after they’re heard, if it’s not in the best interest of the state as a whole, it doesn’t pass.”

Mayor Lyne says Texas cities don’t receive much funding from the state … “But at the same time, they pass legislation that impacts us and raises costs,” Lyne said.

For instance, he says the state wants cities to chip in for work on roadways such as Southwest Parkway — which Mayor Lyne says should be TexDOT’s responsibility.

“We have limited resources,” Farabee said. “So, the state of Texas is interested in providing the majority of the money – but we do want to engage local entities as partners.”

There’s the issue of eminent domain. A bill sponsored by Senator Craig Estes and supported by Farabee might require cities to pay for relocation costs on top of the price of land. Lyne and Councilor Ginnings say it’s not in the best interest of cities.

“From a local level, we can negotiate these things,” Lyne said. “We live here – so we try to treat people fairly.”

“Negotiation, by definition, is a give-and-take process,” Farabee said. “What’s happened too frequently with eminent domain is the government has been heavy-handed.”

Mayor Lyne says state legislators need to take more time to carefully consider the impact of their decisions. “Legislation should be hard,” Lyne said. “It should be hard to do, hard to pass. It shouldn’t just flow right through. And if it’s not done right, it can wait.”

Since Representative Farabee served on the Wichita Falls city council, he says he understands the relationship between local and state government.

The legislation was introduced by Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls.

Texas House members Friday gave an initial stamp of approval to having one statewide elected commissioner at the helm of the embattled state transportation agency. The proposal also calls for the election of 14 regional commissioners.

Currently the governor appoints the five-member transportation commission that oversees the agency, so the House move is seen as a slap at Republican Gov. Rick Perry’s power.

The bill still must have another House vote before moving to the Senate.

The move in the Legislature comes on the heels of a scathing state “sunset” report, which called for a revamp of the department’s governing board and its dealings with lawmakers and the public.

The review and call for a revamp came “against a backdrop of distrust and frustration with the Department and the demand for more transparency, accountability and responsiveness,” the sunset report said. “Many expressed concerns that TxDOT was ‘out of control,’ advancing its own agenda against objections of both the Legislature and the public.”

The bill as fashioned by Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, would remove some duties from the agency, including driver’s license oversight. It also would establish a legislative oversight committee to study and make recommendations for the operation and needs of the state transportation system.

“No longer will the public be in the dark about construction projects in their own towns,” Isett said, as he introduced the legislation. “No longer will the public trust be disregarded.”

“I agree with the overall conclusion,” said Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, who serves on the Sunset Commission. “Transportation policy decisions need to be returned to the oversight of Legislature.”

Estes said he sees the problems in TxDOT as issues of culture rather than governance. He said he had the “highest regard for TxDOT employees on the regional level,” but was critical of the agency’s Austin-based bureaucracy.

“Sometimes we pretend to tell them what to do and they pretend to listen,” he said, calling for greater responsiveness from TxDOT to the Legislature.

Estes said he does not favor having one statewide elected commissioner.

Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls, said the revamp “appears to be an effort by the House to make TxDOT and the role it plays more consumer friendly.”

Farabee said he “could not be more happy with our local TxDOT family,” referring to the Wichita Falls district office.

“They’ve worked hard on having projects ready to go when funds were ready to go for projects such as the U.S. 82 extension or the Falls Flyover or the Overhead (the Lloyd Ruby overpass across central Wichita Falls). Our projects have developed nicely,” Farabee said.

“TxDOT is more than accountable to local people” in rural areas, Rep. Rick Hardcastle, R-Vernon, agreed. But he said that is not always the case in the state’s larger urban centers.

He believes the Legislature should have more authority over TxDOT, but believes the final result will be a system where the governor appoints commissioners subject to the approval of the lieutenant governor and speaker of the house.

The Senate must also pass a TxDOT revamp and differences will have to be hammered out with the House version before moving on to Perry for his signature.

“We just put our seasoning in the pot,” Farabee said of the House legislation.

All three North Texas lawmakers think substantial changes to TxDOT will result from this legislative session.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

At a glance

The three lawmakers who represent North Texas agree, in principal, with two major components of a Texas House of Representatives proposed overhaul of the Texas Department of Transportation.

• Existing highways should not be converted into toll roads as some TxDOT plans proposed. They also believe toll roads should be clearly marked as such and motorists who choose not to use them should have ample opportunity to take a good alternate route.
• “Red light cameras” should be scrapped. The cameras snap pictures of the license tags on cars than run stoplights. Both Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls, and Sen. Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, referred to the practice as “Big Brother is watching.”

Antwine’s situation is all too common among the chronically homeless, those with disabilities such as mental illnesses who have been on the streets long-term. But it’s not new.

Chronic homelessness resulted from a shift away from the institutions that once housed more than half a million mentally ill people. Get people out of the state hospitals, experts thought in the 1960s, and they can live on their own, thanks to medications that were new at the time.

But the mental health services that were supposed to help those people adjust came up short. And many of the people, including growing numbers of Vietnam veterans, were left homeless. In the 1980s, cities looking to revitalize their downtowns tore down the cheap rooming houses where the very poor lived. Finally, in the 1990s, the political climate made it difficult to get more government money for housing and mental health treatment.

The result is today’s disjointed system of psychiatric hospitals, substance-abuse treatment centers and homeless shelters. It’s a system that comes at a huge expense to taxpayers and doesn’t come close to solving the problem.

“We’ve just come to accept the fact we have homeless people roaming the streets like we have rats roaming the alleyways,” said Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “We have grown accustomed to having human beings living on the streets. It’s kind of a sad commentary.”

Shortage of services

On any given night, there are at least 1,000 chronically homeless people in Dallas and more than 124,000 nationwide. At the heart of the problem is a lack of mental health services, a deficiency that’s especially acute in Texas.

The state ranks 48th nationwide in spending on mental health care for its poorest residents. And this lack of commitment goes back more than a century, if you believe Dr. J.A. Corley, the superintendent of Texas’ first state hospital, the State Lunatic Asylum. He complained that the 9-year-old facility was overcrowded and underfunded after it had filled to capacity with 352 patients.

“Our sister state of California, though younger than Texas, has provided accommodations for over one thousand of her insane,” Corley wrote to try to shame the Legislature. That was in 1870.

Such institutions were being de-emphasized by the 1960s, the first of a series of factors that have conspired against the chronically homeless. Among them:

•A shortage of affordable housing. Revitalization efforts in the 1980s led to the tearing down of cheap housing even as federal housing assistance programs were being cut. About 18,000 people are on a waiting list for housing assistance from the Dallas Housing Authority, and the wait is three to five years long.

“The bottom line is we have a housing affordability crisis, and it most negatively affects people on very low incomes,” said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has done extensive research on homelessness.

•Low disability benefits. Many of the chronically homeless receive disability checks of about $675 a month, hardly enough to rent an apartment and pay other living expenses.

•Disenfranchisement. People on the streets with mental illness have had little voice among lawmakers. This year, the mayors of Texas’ largest cities asked for $50 million over two years to help the homeless. The measure is pending.

•Fiscal conservatism. Advocates for more housing and mental health treatment face a tough political climate.

“Over the last six years, there’s no doubt that there has been a tone of fiscal conservatism that has perpetuated the reputation of Texas being stingy with mental health dollars,” said state Rep. David Farabee, D-Wichita Falls, a longtime mental health advocate. Farabee said he’s hopeful that federal stimulus money also will allow the Legislature to provide more mental health dollars.

•A fragmented system. Many homeless people fall through cracks because of a lack of coordination among social service agencies. A person leaving one psychiatric hospital, for example, may be told to follow up at an outpatient clinic. But if the person doesn’t show up, the clinic is not likely to track him or her down because it has no funding to do so.

•Stigma. There’s a lack of understanding that the chronically homeless are extremely vulnerable and need significant help putting their lives back together. Instead, they are blamed for their situation.

“Generally, mental illness is something you can’t cure by yourself,” said John Castañeda, executive director of Turtle Creek Manor, a Dallas center that serves people with mental illnesses who also face addictions. “To say ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ won’t work. It’s impossible.”

Many challenges

Richard Antwine wants to get off the streets. He wants his own apartment. And he wants to work.

Some days, he walks several miles asking business owners if he can sweep their parking lots. He talks about making a little money clipping other homeless guys’ hair, saying he once attended a barber college.

But he’s up against a lot. His severe depression has left him suicidal at times. He hears those voices. He has abused cocaine and alcohol, a common escape from mental illnesses.

He has a criminal record that includes drug possession, theft and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. The divorced father of three grown daughters does not have the kind of family support that keeps some others from spiraling into homelessness.

Antwine’s sister, JoAnn Williams of Garland, has watched him through psychiatric institutions, shelters and jail for years. She cooks for him and gives him cash here and there, but she has a family to take care of and said her brother needs more help than she can provide.

“I don’t know where he is from one day to the next,” she said. “If I don’t hear from him, I don’t have no way of calling him. He don’t have a phone, and I don’t know if he’s dead. I watch the news all the time. Sometimes I am scared to watch the news.”

‘Good intentions’

Across the nation, thousands of people like Antwine have ricocheted through institutions for years despite the many programs designed to help them.

“We’ve had a quarter-century of good intentions, well-meaning programs and human gestures, but to be honest, they have not worked,” said Philip Mangano, executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. “The antidote to homelessness is, shockingly, a place to live.”

Many programs to help the homeless traditionally have not placed enough emphasis on housing, Culhane, the professor, said.

“We have a lot of homeless people who get social services, shelters, mental health services, all of which does nothing to solve their housing problem,” he said. “It’s not a good use of resources to spend all this money and they’re still in a cardboard box on Main Street.”

Mangano, who will leave his post this month, led efforts to encourage cities including Dallas to adopt 10-year plans to end chronic homelessness. This has led to increased funding for special housing and support for the chronically homeless, and that’s gotten a number off the streets.

But there’s still not nearly enough housing, leaving many chronically homeless people like Antwine to fend for themselves.

Passed around

Antwine’s dizzying ordeal through psychiatric hospitals, emergency rooms, boarding homes and shelters in just the last four months shows how the lack of care can doom someone to the streets.

In January, he spent about two weeks at Terrell State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital with about 300 beds and several aging empty buildings that once housed nearly three times that number of patients. From there, he was taken to a clinic, but he left before seeing the doctor.

Instead of going to a boarding house as planned, he ended up at The Bridge, Dallas’ homeless-assistance center. Soon after, he said, he was robbed and stabbed as he searched for an East Dallas rooming house. He recovered at a Pleasant Grove boarding house but soon left over a rent dispute. From there, he went to the Salvation Army’s shelter and finally to another boarding home.

In March, Antwine was placed under the care of a special team of caseworkers who stay in close contact with patients to make sure they take medications, show up for appointments and remain stable. It’s an intensive service that few receive because of strained budgets. Antwine started feeling better and made plans to move into an apartment on April 1. But even the caseworkers had no control over what happened next.

Police arrested Antwine as he walked downtown on a warrant for not reporting to his parole officer. Instead of moving into a new home, Antwine was in jail, wearing a striped uniform, eating skimpy bologna sandwiches and staring at the wall because he could not afford anything to read.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Antwine said last month. “I’m just sitting here doing nothing when I shouldn’t be here.”

‘It’s a travesty’

At an April 17 parole hearing, Antwine’s lawyer, Raquel D. Brown, argued that her client tried to do everything right.

“That’s why I think it’s a travesty,” she said.

On Thursday night, after a month in jail, Antwine was released.

His whereabouts were unknown.

The problem for many rural communities that need to recruit physicians is that more and more physicians are asking to be an employee of the local hospital with a paycheck, health insurance and retirement. They are not interested in establishing a medical practice in a small town and taking on the financial risk that goes with it. And, it is often not practical to set up a 501A corporation with such a small number of doctors to pool together and set up a separate benefits plan. A 501A corporation is how larger medical groups and hospitals have legally circumvented this old law for years. The creation of these separate corporations, with more bureaucracy and added cost to the taxpayers, is not feasible for rural physicians and hospitals.

With health care access seriously challenged in rural areas, this outdated law is becoming a significant barrier. The situation is aggravated by the fact that many doctors are moving to Texas from states that do allow physicians to be employed. In fact, only a half dozen states have any laws that restrict the employment of a physician. The problem will only get worse. A recent Texas medical school survey shows that three-fourths of upcoming doctors in family and internal medicine would prefer to be employed by a hospital.

Texas rural hospitals and communities see the handwriting on the wall and are asking the Texas Legislature to catch up with the rest of the world by creating an option for rural hospitals to offer employment to any physicians that desire to be employed rather than work independently. Sen. Robert Duncan of Lubbock, whose district has more rural hospitals than any other in the state, has introduced Senate Bill 1500 in the Texas Legislature to allow hospitals of counties of 50,000 or less population to have the option to hire doctors.

At the same time, 12 state representatives and 6 senators with partly rural districts are also proposing bills to help their local rural hospitals by allowing them to employ physicians. Sen. Craig Estes and Rep. David Farabee are sponsoring bills to allow the hospital in Electra to employ physicians. This is being done at the request of both the physicians and the hospital board. Sen. Estes and Rep. Farabee are to be commended for their vision and commitment to enhance health care access in Texas.

An interesting point in this political debate is the fact the Legislature in years past has made many exceptions for its own institutions and certain local hospital districts. Doctors can be an employee of a medical school, prison, and state school. Community health centers and over a dozen hospitals districts across the state can already hire doctors.

Some will argue that if hospitals employ physicians, the physicians will lose their autonomy and their independent medical judgment will somehow be compromised. This argument is unfounded. There are no systemic problems that have arisen in the medical schools, the other states, or the community health centers. Texas doctors are professionals and will always act in the best interest of their patients, just as hospitals are committed to do. Besides, if hospitals start telling doctors how to practice medicine, they are violating current state law.

The arguments may seem complex, but the answer is simple. This antiquated Texas law prohibiting the employment of physicians is a recurring barrier to the recruitment of talented young physicians to rural Texas and the time has come to change it.

Don McBeath is the director of Advocacy and Communications Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals

The groups recommended Monday state planners better study how Texas’ water supply and electric needs intertwine ahead of a hearing on proposed changes to the way the state permits new power plants.

Modern water systems crave electricity to treat and pump their supply. Lubbock residents pay a premium for energy to draw their water from well fields – lake water from the parched Lake Meredith reservoir costs almost half as much.

Low-quality water can consume thousands of kilowatt-hours to treat. Treating salty, brackish water, a proposed long-term supply for Lubbock and other cities, can consume 10 times the amount of power cleaner processes require. Treating 1 million gallons uses enough electricity to power nine Texas homes for a month, according to the study.

Dropping power consumption will also save water. Texas power plants demand steam, and older plants may use the water they draw inefficiently.

As drought has shut down power plants in other parts of the country, residents are starting to better appreciate the relationship, said Amy Hardberger, a researcher with the Environmental Defense Fund in Austin.

“I think as water needs become scarce and those power needs are growing, suddenly this connection is starting to sort of surface,” Hardberger said.

So the report encourages both water and electric planners to reconsider how each system uses the other resource. Water-efficient power plants preserve a drinking supply – energy-efficient water systems may help do the same.

The House will hold a committee meeting today on legislation authored by State Rep. David Farabee, D-Witchita Falls, which would require any planners constructing new electrical generation to show that the region’s water supply could accommodate the new project.

Panhandle residents, where irrigation causes an electric demand surge during growing season and farmers try to wring the most from every drop stored under their property, have watched the relationship for decades.

Xcel Energy, which generates most of the region’s wholesale electric supply, chose the location of now-ancient generator facilities because of their access to water, spokesman Wes Reeves said.

The company draws electricity from a new plant using water-efficient processes in New Mexico because of the region’s water supply, Reeves said.