We're not the big city.
We're kind of out here on the plains
by ourselves, on this little Panhandle island out here in West Texas.
It's an honor for them to want to come out here
and see what's going on in Lubbock because we do sometimes get lost
in the shuffle when you're not in the bigger cities.
We live in what I like to call the land of flat.
And so we've got very little drainage as far as slope goes.
And so things like this behind me, the playa
lakes, these are our natural drainage features
and we call them regional detention basins.
But this is where our streets convey the water to the playa lakes.
And then we don't have a way for them to drain down without putting a pipe
network in place to allow them to recover between rain events.
And so behind me you can see a structure that will take water out of the lake.
There's a 90-inch pipe that leads out of this lake,
and it travels about 8 miles to discharge into the canyon
on the northeast side of town.
We had assistance from the Texas Water Development Board
to build this phase of the project that connected this lake.
$35 million, zero percent interest loan was phenomenal for the City of Lubbock.
The playas
retain water for up to six months at a time.
So that is very, very unique with respect to flood control
because what we're used to seeing, you know, on television is when it floods
large amounts of rainfall just moving through a city fairly quickly.
But here with the playas, the playas store water for a while,
and they have to be managed differently.
Well, we're here on the bottom
end of the Ogallala Aquifer, here on the South Plains.
Our water is being depleted.
It's a one-time use only type of a resource,
so you need to be wise with it.
At the same time, we need to make a living off of our land.
We're doing things different than what my dad did
or even my grandfather did with water.
Not everything works on everybody's farm, but there's something that may work
and help each one of us somewhere on our farm.
And in 1992, I bought my first center pivot.
It uses water in a more efficient way.
And then from there, we've migrated to 10 pivots.
And then we have drip irrigation.
Some of the later technology that's come out the last several
years is moisture sensors, pivot
controllers, which actually gives you
hands, 24-hour monitoring and hands-on with your smartphone.
So there's a lot of technology that's more user friendly, easier to use.
All this is time
efficiency, water efficiency, and just being better
stewards of the water that we're pumping.
Texas Panhandle is an agricultural
juggernaut in the state of Texas and really across the country.
So being here today, we've been able to see how
agricultural producers have been able to use water effectively and efficiently,
how we as a state have been able to help provide funds for water
projects up here, and really see those dollars go to work.
It's been fantastic to visit with producers and get stakeholder
feedback on how we're going to implement the Texas Water Fund,
which should go a long way to helping producers effectively grow crops.
Lubbock and this whole area of West Texas is the fuel, fiber,
and food for this entire state.
We have the largest contiguous land of cotton in the world.
We produce more cotton in West Texas than anywhere in the world.
We produce more food, the cattle industry, the fiber that we create,
and just everything fuels from West Texas and agriculture out here.
And if we don't have water,
you're going to see a struggle not only in this region
but also in the state of Texas and, I think, in the country
because it's so vital out here.