Groundwater sampling helps better understand Edwards-Trinity Aquifers

The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) and scientists from the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District (BSEACD) are studying water deep underground to further understand how drought and pumping affect the quality and quantity of groundwater that flows...

Abandoned “dry hole” oil wells are polluting Texas farms, ranches and groundwater. The state won’t fix them.

Schuyler Wight is a fourth-generation rancher who has raised longhorn cattle outside Midland for decades. Wight is no geologist, but over the years, he’s had to familiarize himself with what lies underground. Scattered across his sprawling 20,000-acre ranch are more...

To save water in Texas, these nonprofits are paying farmers to leave it in reservoirs

As Texas faces an increasingly fraught environmental future from climate change, a new approach to conservation is growing. Drought conditions have created a two-pronged problem for Texas aquifers, natural bodies of water that move through porous rock underneath the...
Dry riverbeds, dead fish, tapped-out wells: Drought takes toll in Hill Country

Dry riverbeds, dead fish, tapped-out wells: Drought takes toll in Hill Country

Kathleen Tobin Krueger stood on a low cliff last week, looking down on her family’s ranchland. Below her lay an expansive field laden with smooth white rocks, trees with exposed roots growing between them. There should be a full, flowing river here — there usually is...