Texas Is the New Arizona, and Not in a Good Way
The state’s growing population is outstripping its water resources, and climate change will only make it worse.
Kyle, Texas, has grown by more than a third in just the past three years.
Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg
Humans can survive whole days without food, shelter or internet, but they can’t last long without water. Which is why it’s so weird that American humans keep rushing to live in places where water is increasingly scarce. The latest dry hot spot is Texas.
Two fast-growing Texas towns have been in the news recently for being dehydrated. The first, Clyde, defaulted on a municipal bond because it didn’t have enough water to sell to customers. A neighbor of Abilene, Clyde sits on the edge of West Texas, where relentless drought has shrunk reservoirs serving hundreds of thousands of people. (One lake in San Angelo, where I was born, is basically gone, at just 0.8% of capacity.) Clyde is small, with a population of about 4,000, but has grown by more than a third since the turn of the century — a familiar story in a state attracting people from around the country.