Texas
Texas is losing too much water
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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Texas
Triple-digit heat returns to North Texas before weekend storms bring relief
Dallas weather: July 8 morning forecast
High pressure starts to build back into North Texas, which lowers our rain chances and brings triple digit temperatures to parts of the region. Expect partly to mostly sunny skies today, with highs near 100.
DALLAS – A building system of high pressure is bringing triple-digit temperatures back to North Texas, though the intense heat will be short-lived before a weekend weather shift brings relief and renewed chances of rain.
Wednesday forecast
We expect partly to mostly sunny skies Wednesday, with high temperatures reaching near 100 degrees across much of the region. While hot and dry conditions will dominate, a low chance of scattered rain showers remains possible, primarily in areas east of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
The heat is expected to solidify Thursday as the upper-level ridge settles firmly over the area. We have removed all chances of precipitation from Thursday’s forecast, locking in dry conditions and an afternoon high temperature of 100 degrees.
However, relief is on the horizon for the upcoming weekend. The high-pressure ridge will lose its grip on North Texas as it begins to shift westward toward the desert southwest.
Weekend forecast
By late Saturday and continuing into Sunday, the atmospheric shift will establish a northerly flow aloft. This pattern change is expected to funnel a series of weather disturbances into the region, triggering a return of widespread rain and thunderstorm opportunities.
The unsettled weather pattern is forecast to linger well into next week. The persistent cloud cover and moisture associated with the continuing rain chances will successfully suppress the heat, keeping afternoon highs closer to historical norms for this time of year.
7-Day forecast
The Source: Information in this article is from the FOX 4 weather team.
Texas
US immigration officer shoots and kills man in Texas
Man, identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, is latest to be killed by ICE officers since President Trump took power.
Published On 8 Jul 2026
A United States immigration agent fatally shot a man in Houston, Texas, while officers were attempting to stop his vehicle, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said.
The man killed on Tuesday was identified as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, described by ICE as a Mexican national and “illegal alien” who attempted to evade arrest during a “targeted enforcement operation” by federal immigration officers.
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Ronaldo Salgado, who identified himself as Salgado Araujo’s son, told the Spanish-language television station Telemundo Houston that his father was shot while he was looking for workers to hire in the area.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said Salgado Araujo ignored commands to stop his vehicle, saying he “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer”.
In past shooting incidents, including the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, immigration officials had said that their officers were being attacked when the two were shot, claims vigorously disputed in both incidents.
Video footage captured on Tuesday by a surveillance camera from a nearby business and reviewed by the Reuters news agency showed a person lying on the ground beside a white van and surrounded by officers, in what appeared to be the aftermath of the shooting.
Salgado Araujo was targeted in an operation because he was living in the country without legal permission, according to DHS.
Democratic US Representative Sylvia Garcia called for an independent and thorough investigation of ICE’s claims about the fatal shooting.
“All available footage, communications, and other evidence should be preserved and reviewed as part of a full and impartial investigation,” Garcia posted on social media.
Juan Proano, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, echoed Garcia’s calls for a transparent investigation into ICE’s actions.
“We don’t take DHS at their word at all,” Proano told The Associated Press news agency. “There should be an independent investigation, and they should release all the videos.”
There have been at least six fatal shootings by federal immigration officers since the start of President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement crackdown.
Good, a 37-year-old US citizen, was shot in the head by a federal immigration agent during a crackdown in Minneapolis. DHS also said Good was trying to hit the agent with her vehicle, which local officials and witnesses disputed, saying she was only trying to drive away.
The backlash from Good’s killing and other similar incidents led ICE to step back from some of its more controversial operations.
However, Tuesday’s deadly confrontation in Houston came amid a recent increase in the number of ICE arrests nationwide, with immigration officers picking up about 2,000 migrants a day last week, Reuters reported.
Texas
Trump takes credit for Toyota moving some truck production from Mexico to Texas: ‘That’s what tariffs do’
Toyota is planning a $3.6 billion expansion of its Texas truck assembly plant. President Donald Trump took credit for the investment.
On Monday, the automaker announced the multibillion-dollar investment to add a second vehicle assembly line at its San Antonio manufacturing campus to support production of the Tacoma pickup. Toyota said the expansion project would shift some of the midsize truck’s production from its Mexico plants to San Antonio over roughly 4 years. Toyota will still build some Tacoma models and the Corolla in Mexico.
While Toyota did not attribute the expansion to tariffs in its announcement and the company is not fully exiting production in Mexico, Trump said the fresh investment was a sign that his tariffs were working.
“It came over the wires that Toyota is moving out of Mexico into the United States, and building one of the biggest truck and car plants ever built,” Trump said on Tuesday during a visit to Ankara, Turkey. “It’s amazing. That’s what tariffs do, properly used.”
Toyota said the investment will create 2,000 jobs and add 2.5 million square feet to the site, doubling the company’s Texas footprint by 2030.
Toyota
On Monday, Ted Ogawa, president and CEO of Toyota Motor North America, said the investment reflected the company’s “confidence in the region’s workforce, innovation, and long-term growth potential.”
The move gives Trump a high-profile example of a well-recognized company creating manufacturing jobs. His administration has argued that tariffs incentivize companies — particularly automakers — to reshore manufacturing in America and reduce reliance on foreign production.
Toyota’s announcement also comes amid major uncertainty for automakers with plants in North America. The USMCA — the trilateral free trade pact between the US, Canada, and Mexico struck during Trump’s first term — is under review after the US declined to renew the treaty in its current form on July 1. The Trump administration is reportedly pushing to change the agreement so 50% of all automotive parts and manufacturing would happen in the US.
Toyota also nodded to that trade uncertainty in its release, saying it remained committed to operations in all three countries while encouraging “a quick resolution to USMCA” to keep North America globally competitive.
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