On a recent Saturday afternoon, Odessa was left without water for several hours while crews worked to fix a major leak in a major waterline. For the roughly 100,000 residents of this West Texas city, it was like watching a movie on repeat. They are now used to the unacceptable inconvenience of water shutdowns and boil water notices.

Odessa’s crumbling water infrastructure is not unique in Texas, but it is becoming a poster child for a major issue statewide: leaky pipes.

Finding the money to fix aging water infrastructure is complicated. Federal funding from the infrastructure bill is getting lost in the weeds of congressional bureaucracy, and state funding is limited. But cities, especially older urban centers, can’t be left to manage these costs alone. The state must find a way to address this issue permanently if we ever want to catch up.

Old leaky pipes have been a problem often seen in smaller municipalities, but recent self-reported audits from water utilities show that major cities lost 88 billion gallons of water last year, with Houston leaking out 31.8 billion gallons.

Dallas alone contributed to 17.6 billion gallons of lost water, The Texas Tribune reported.

The voter-approved $1 billion Texas Water Fund is a starting point that can help communities like Odessa, but given our state’s needs, it is largely not sufficient for the problem. A 2023 report from the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Texas will need $61.3 billion to address drinking water systems in the next 20 years.

The state expected federal funding for water infrastructure, but congressional earmarks are getting in the way. “We are robbing Peter to pay Paul,” said Perry Fowler, executive director of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network, a trade association representing businesses that construct water infrastructure in the state.

“Texas has lost more than $100 million in annual federal funding for water infrastructure — more than any other state — since the return of earmarks just three years ago,” Fowler told us. “When these funds start getting diverted into individual projects and districts rather than going into the overall program, it basically harms the ability of the state to leverage federal funding.”

This means the Texas Legislature will need to take a closer look at providing permanent funding for the Texas Water Fund, said Jeremy Mazur, a senior policy adviser from Texas 2036, a public policy think tank.

With Texas’ growth, we cannot afford to lose so much water. Climate change is already putting increased stress on old water infrastructure with hotter temperatures, droughts and extreme rain cycles.

A focus on smarter water conservation, efficient irrigation and smart appliances works, but in the end, fixing leaky pipes across the state should be at the top of the minds of state legislators in next year’s session.

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