At a Town Hall meeting Tuesday State Senator Charles Perry updated Abilene community members on recent legislative activities. He shared his thoughts on how the 89th legislative session turned out for policy areas including rural development, healthcare, education and his top priority water.
Senator Perry started his town hall in the ballroom of the Abilene Country Club by going over the 17 constitutional amendments on the ballot this year.
But he spent the bulk of his time talking about the topic he’s most passionate about: Water.
“Texas is about 10 to 12 million acre feet of water short. I say by 50 (2050) we need at least 75% of that online. Some people will say 2070. We’re 20 years behind. I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting. So this is intended to jumpstart that supply development.”
The “this” the senator was talking about is Proposition Four on November’s ballot. The constitutional amendment would require the comptroller to allocate a billion dollars from sales tax each year to the state’s water fund.
“These long-term, expensive projects have to have a consistent stream of revenue or they’ll never start. And that’s what that fund is expected to do,” Perry explained.
Texas Policy Research, a conservative-leaning think tank opposes Proposition 4, arguing that setting up automatic funding for water undermines limited government and future tax relief.
Perry told the business and community leaders gathered that just like road-infrastructure, the state’s water needs require future planning. And he says that’s part of the problem for Prop 4, which he says 40% of the state’s voters oppose.
“We’ve migrated from a society to where we used to think generationally. We used to think, ‘Our grandkids need this, and we’re willing to commit to it’, to ‘I want mine today, and I’ll let those guys worry about it tomorrow’. So if that’s the 40% I don’t know where we’re going to go, ‘cause there is some basic things that I think government is good for. Infrastructure is that thing.”
But Senator Perry does expect Prop 4 to pass.
When it came time for the Q&A several people asked about how Perry is working to help small, rural communities with their water infrastructure and supply needs.
Mark Thinnes is an associate at the water engineering firm Hayes & Sawyer. He also ranches north of Anson, where he struggles to keep his herd hydrated. He says he doesn’t have drinkable water on his ranch and he’d like to see officials come up with a solution for rural areas, maybe similar to how the state funds schools.
“Really I’m concerned about smaller communities: Hamlin, Aspermont, Anson. Larger communities can bear the brunt of this. The smaller communities really cannot. And so it kind of comes into a red tape situation with government. How do we funnel this money more directly to them, in a quicker fashion with less red tape. And instead of a loan, how do we get it to be a grant?”
Perry explained that a key part of his big-picture water plan is to develop regional hubs to use economies of scale to address water infrastructure and supply issues in small towns, “There’s no way Hamlin’s going to put in a new sewer treatment. There’s no way they’re gonna fund a magic aquifer that they can punch three high-capacity wells in and pass that along. So under a hub and spoke, you get this money filtered in and you develop regional supplies and then you extend those pipes to those smaller communities.”
Other audience members, including Riley Rodriguez, of Abilene, who is challenging Perry for the 28th district seat in next year’s election, expressed concerns about how the incoming AI data centers will impact both water and energy supplies in West Texas.
“I know that data centers are coming here. That’s a bus that can’t be turned around,” Rodriguez said. “As a representative of a district that is in a perpetual water crisis, and many rural districts that are really concerned about what’s going to happen to their prices, and their water supply, some figures say they could take 600 million gallons of water off, to charge those data centers up once they’re all well and done. 12.5 gigawatts, I believe. Are there any plans in place to prepare these rural communities for the infrastructure they might need or any type of guardrails to say, ‘Alright boys, that’s enough.’?”
Perry said to some extent that’s up to local officials to regulate. But he said some areas do not have a water district, and a law called ‘rural capture’ allows property owners to pull water out of their property and do whatever they want to with it, including sell it to AI data centers.
Perry says he takes comfort in the investment that the companies are making in these operations, “These companies are investing billions of dollars in infrastructure in these regions. That’s a $30 Billion project. They’re not going to invest that kind of money without some certainty that they’ve done their due diligence to determine that both they have the power going forward and the water.”
And Senator Perry said that conversations are on-going as legislators prepare for the next session to figure out what new guardrails need to be put in place.
The next full legislative session will start in January of 2027.