New Technology, Old Ideas Solve Texas Water, Resource Problems

Compared to recent history, it's been a relatively wet winter in Texas, with hopes that timely spring rainfall will continue to boost crops and refill lakes, ponds and reservoirs. These were all but dried up in the devastating drought of 2008 and 2009. Despite this year's reprieve from Mother Nature, the safest thing is to anticipate that Texas water will continue to be short most of the time and in many places.

Harvesting rainfall as human drinking water is an ancient practice taking on new life in water deficient areas of Texas.

Check out this excellent story written for the Texas Farm Bureau publication by Texas Agriculture Field Editor Matt Felder.

Harvesting rainfall for drinking water demonstrates in a compelling way how ideas as old as history itself, combined with new technologies and old fashioned American ingenuity, can go a long way toward solving some of our perpetually troubling resource problems. Water is only one of them. Capturing that gift of the Almighty-precious rainfall-to alleviate shortages has an almost poetic connotation to it.

Texas has made major strides in capturing the wind for electrical power, as Texas pioneers used it to bring water up from below parched range.

The wide-ranging, sometimes intense sunlight of Texas can be an energy bonanza when the technology catches up to it. Already, solar panels in home applications are paying off.

None of this is to say that we should abandon our traditional sources of energy. Fossil fuels-hopefully free from the regulatory insanity of cap and trade-are in our future for many decades to come. We should look for it, and drill for it anywhere we can, in an environmentally responsible way. This of course, we now have the technology to do. We must also forge ahead in developing biofuels, which will help alleviate our thirst for foreign oil and will benefit consumers, agriculture and rural Texas.

A mix of the old and new, responding to market forces is happening here in Texas-in response to resource crisis. That's why, when you come right down to it, Texas' greatest resource is-Texans.