TX Landowners Offer To "Save" Laredo W. Water Pipeline Project: Is It Drinkable? How Much $$? Nobody Knows
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The Walker family, a well-known ranching family and one of the largest landowners in Webb County, has created the Legacy Water Supply Corporation to develop potable water for Talise. Its plans include drilling into the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. Legacy recently asked the city of Laredo and Webb County to join its water endeavor, promising to sell water to both when and if a treatment plant is built on the Talise grounds.
The Walker family’s ambitions as a developer and as a water supplier have risen as Laredo and other cities along the Rio Grande contend with dwindling water levels at the nearby Amistad Reservoir as well as a deepening drought. Laredo has long sought a secondary water source to supplement the Rio Grande.
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Legacy is registered as a nonprofit and its legal counsel has offered vague cost estimates in the past year. Legacy representatives have also said they will seek federal and state funds to cover the as-yet undisclosed total construction costs. Legacy has not provided cost figures in any public documents. No one has publicly calculated the potential cost or rate hikes to households. Inside Climate News requested construction proposals from Legacy under Texas public records law. Legacy did not release the documents and sent a request to withhold the information to the Office of Attorney General of Texas. Legacy said it is awaiting a determination from the office.
Laredo environmentalists, however, have posed questions and provided some on-the-ground reality checks about likely expenses. Tom Vaughan, the founder of the nonprofit Rio Grande International Study Center (RGISC), whose mission is to preserve and protect the river, was invited by Legacy for a visit and took a groundwater sample. Laboratory tests showed the water was too salty to meet state standards, he said, and would require treatment. “The point is, it’s going to be very expensive water,” Vaughan said in a recent interview. Tricia Cortez, RGISC’s executive director, said Laredo has more work to do before resorting to imported treated water. City officials should make decisions “grounded in science and data,” she said. “Laredo taxpayers and water ratepayers can’t be left in the dark with these significant decisions that will impact the future availability and cost of our water supply.”
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13042025/laredo-texas-treated-groundwater-rio-grande/