Texas Water a Tough Issue for the 2017 Texas Legislature
G
OING INTO THE 2017 SESSION OF THE TEXAS LEGISLATURE, SENATOR Charles Perry, featured speaker at the closing general session
of the TSCRA Policy Conference, says legislators face a reduced budget, diverse approaches to common topics such as the state water plan and signifi cant health and human services issues. “We’re going to be looking at how we go about putting some
private property rights business provisions underneath the water code,” he says, in the hope of reducing property owners’ cost of defending their private property. Perry was elected to the Texas Senate in 2014, after serving
two terms in the Texas House of Representatives. He chairs the Senate Committee on Agricultural Water and Rural Affairs, a key committee for many issues facing the cattle industry. He sits on the Senate committees of Criminal Justice, Health and Human Services and Higher Education. “We’re at a crossroads, on some level, of developing water
diversity and providing better inputs for different needs from around the state. We are just as diverse in water as we are in culture, as we are in public schools, as we are in healthcare and as we are in rural versus urban,” he says. “There’s nothing in this state that’s not unique to its region so that, again, there has to be something that we have to keep a priority when we’re talking about water law.” Maintenance of earthen dams is part of the state water plan,
he says, and needs to be thoroughly discussed. “There’s not re- ally a fl ood-control provision in the state-wide water plan. We’re going to have a discussion as to what a fl ood plan looks like, with respect to being able to divert the water and store it for fu- ture use, without having it damage our earthen dam situation.” Perry says 200 or more earthen dams are in high priority areas,
“meaning that when they were built there was no civilization around them. They had not had any attention of any substance given to them; now they have cities at the base,” he explains. “You’ll see a request out of my committee to hopefully match
some federal dollars. It’s a 3-to-1 match. For $3 million, we’d get $9 million. I’m told that will start repairing some of those high priority areas. If that earthen dam fails and it’s not a ques- tion of if, it’s when, then [repair may help] minimize loss. It’s enough money to start that process of rebuilding some of those earthen dams.” Perry expects that much of the time for discussion in the
2017 session will be taken up with debates on health and hu- man services issues and on meeting a reduced budget. Watch for news from the Texas Legislature at
tscra.org, The Cattleman NOW smartphone app and The Cattleman News Update, your daily emailed newsletter.
tscra.org
Dr. Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University Exten- sion, left, gave attendees of the closing session an update on today’s cattle market. At right is TSCRA President Richard Thorpe.
December 2016 The Cattleman 29
Past Presidents Chaunce Thompson, left, Brecken- ridge, and Jon Means, Van Horn, take a break from the committee meetings.
From left are Richard Wortham, Texas Beef Council executive director, and Kendall Frazier, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association CEO.
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