Fort Worth and Bedford show the way to state water funding

In November 2013 the voters of Texas, by an overwhelming margin, approved a state constitutional amendment establishing the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas to provide financial assistance for water utilities to pursue projects recommended in state and regional water plans.

The creation of SWIFT had broad support from water suppliers, environmental organizations and others.

A major reason why SWIFT won the endorsement of environmental groups such as the Sierra Club was that the Texas Legislature included a conservation component.

The legislation required that, over each five-year funding cycle, the Texas Water Development Board, the state’s water planning and financing agency, should “undertake to apply” not less than 20 percent of the SWIFT funding to support projects for water conservation or reuse.

A related provision required TWDB to undertake to apply not less than 10 percent of these funds to rural water projects, including agricultural water conservation.

TWDB approved its first set of funding commitments under SWIFT in 2015, approximately $3.9 billion.

Only three of the 32 projects for which assistance was granted were “conservation” projects.

The conservation funding amounted to only $166 million for advanced water use metering systems in Fort Worth and Bedford and $7 million for an agricultural conservation project in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

The relatively small amount of funding for conservation projects in the first round of SWIFT funding was not due to a lack of commitment to conservation by TWDB, which has set the goal of not only meeting but exceeding the 20 percent target over five years.

The three water conservation projects funded were the only conservation projects for which applications were made.

TWDB can only hope to meet or exceed the conservation target if water utilities actually come to the agency with requests for financial assistance.

This did not happen in the first round for many reasons, including a requirement that a project be included in the regional and state water plans and assigned a “capital cost” in those plans to be eligible for state financial assistance.

The recent revision of regional water plans includes a number of eligible conservation or reuse projects.

Some utilities may be reluctant to borrow money to finance conservation (the SWIFT funds are loans or related financial support, not grants).

However, many conservation projects — especially projects to control water loss by fixing leaking water pipelines or installing new water metering systems to help customers understand their levels of water use — easily lend themselves to this financing mechanism.

Texas will not meet its future water challenges simply through projects to develop new water supplies.

We need to become more efficient in our use of existing supplies of water, and SWIFT provides a way to finance efficiency efforts.

The second round of SWIFT funding is rapidly approaching.

Water utilities have the opportunity to submit an initial two-page application for SWIFT funding (at least $650 million is likely to be available this year) for conservation or reuse.

But the deadline for submitting that request is looming: Friday, Feb. 5.

It’s time for other water utilities to follow the lead of Fort Worth and Bedford and to act quickly to conserve our water resources.

This story was originally published January 28, 2016 at 5:48 PM with the headline "Fort Worth and Bedford show the way to state water funding."