Water and Other Flows: Mapping Policy and Governance in Texas Water

Water flows across all sectors of society and water governance challenges inherently involve multiple policy issues. Water is not the only flow in the interdependent web of policy and governance interactions that manage water in Texas. Water governance cuts across many policy issues, a wide range of institutions and actors, and many different contractual and regulatory mechanisms. In this research, we model and map the institutions and governance mechanisms of Texas water to elucidate and better understand the complex dynamics of the Texas water sector. To do so, we analyze the “governance” of the system, which consists of institutions (agencies, actors and types of users) connected by different policy/governance mechanisms (authority, funding, regulation, etc.) across interdependent policy issues or subsectors.

Recovering Stronger: A Federal Policy Blueprint

Address the structural problems that have led to decades of suboptimal and inequitable outcomes in water. We will also examine ways to address those problems: pricing water to reflect its true value, providing affordable and universal access, catalyzing utility partnerships and consolidation, deploying smart water operations at scale, and using water as a key pathway to address the climate crisis.