2025 Water Wonks Hour Lecture Series #5: The Future of Water in the Hill Country.
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Lecture #5: The Future of Water in the Hill Country.
Speaker: Robert E. Mace, Ph.D., P.G.The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment – Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. Texas State University.
REGISTRATION WILL BE AVAILABLE after April 23rd, 2025
Bio:
Robert Mace is the Executive Director and Chief Water Policy Officer at The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment and a Professor of Practice in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State University. Robert has over 30 years of experience in water resources and policy. Before joining Texas State University in 2017, Robert worked at the Texas Water Development Board for 18 years, ending his career there as the Deputy Executive Administrator for the Water Science & Conservation office. While at the Board,Robert worked on understanding groundwater and surface-water resources in Texas; advancing water conservation and innovative water technologies such as desalination, aquifer storage and recovery, reuse, and rainwater harvesting; regional and state water planning; and protecting Texans from floods. Prior to joining the Texas Water Development Board, Robert worked nine years at the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin as a hydrologist and research scientist.
Robert has a B.S. in Geophysics and an M.S. in Hydrology from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and a Ph.D. in Hydrogeology from The University of Texas at Austin. He published a book on groundwater sustainability in 2022 and is currently working on a book about water resources and climate change.
Synopsis: Texas is growing like wildfire with a 73-percent increase in population expected by 2070. Although much of this growth will be in urban areas, the urban halos—the counties that surround urban areas—will see transformational growth. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Hill Country, an environmentally sensitive area with numerous headwater streams, a regionally stressed aquifer, and the catchment for the Edwards Aquifer. For example, the next state water plan will show population in Comal and Hays counties increasing more than fourfold by 2070 as compared to 2020 levels. Future water in the current state water plan comes from conventional sources such as surface water and groundwater as well as unconventional sources such as reuse, desalination, and demand reduction. But with warming temperatures, perpetually underprojected population growth, and depleting aquifers, will it be enough? New developments could minimize or even eliminate their water impact through using the built environment as a source of water.
These sources include efficient water use, rainwater harvesting, AC condensate harvesting, stormwater harvesting, and water reuse. Several projects in Central Texas show what a water resilient future looks like when we are ready to realize it.
