Frackin’ Dry: How Texas Dug Itself a Watery Grave

Why Texas Is Running Out of Water and How Fracking, Drought, and Deregulation Are Draining the State Dry

Jun 24, 2025

It’s summer time and the Texas sun isn’t just hot. It’s punishing. Five years of relentless drought have turned once-lush pastures into brittle, brown husks. Cracked earth stretches for miles, and lakes that used to shimmer with weekend boats now sit like dust bowls, dotted with the skeletons of old docks and sun-bleached “No Swimming” signs.

In towns across the Texas, water restrictions are the new normal. Kids play on yellowing lawns while their parents check the well pump with crossed fingers. Farmers whisper about selling off land. Ranchers haul water in by the barrel.

And then, like a mirage, a gleaming 18-wheeler rumbles down the road, sunlight bouncing off its chrome tank like a promise. Locals lean forward, hopeful. Maybe the state’s finally sending help. Maybe this one’s headed to top off the school, the fire station, the municipal reserves...

But the truck doesn’t slow for town.

It blows right past the parched communities and dusty main streets, and rumbles out toward a fenced-off patch of shale.

There, just beyond the mesquite brush, a drilling rig is waiting. And that tank? It’s not water for people. It’s for pressure, billions of gallons of it, ready to be blasted into the ground to crack open rock and squeeze out one more drop of oil.

Welcome to Texas, where the rigs get water before the people. And where leadership better wake up before the last aquifer goes dry.

TL;DR:

Why is Texas running out of water?
Texas is five years into a historic drought, but it’s not just climate change drying up the state. One factor is the oil and gas industry. Fracking operations use over 60 billion gallons of groundwater annually, competing directly with towns for drinking water. That water is turned into toxic waste and permanently injected underground.
How much water does fracking use compared to cities?
A single fracking well can use 20+ million gallons of water. More than what entire Texas towns like Pflugerville use in a year. And unlike municipal water, most fracking water doesn’t get recycled. It’s lost forever.
Is fracking regulated when it comes to water use?
Not really. Fracking is exempt from the Clean Water Act (thanks to the Halliburton Loophole), and the Texas Railroad Commission, the agency tasked with oversight, lacks the tools, budget, and authority to enforce meaningful water protections.
Does fracking cause earthquakes or water contamination?
Yes. Scientific studies have confirmed that the disposal of fracking wastewater is directly linked to increased earthquakes across West Texas. Cases of water contamination have been reported, but it’s on the homeowner to prove it against billion-dollar companies with legal teams.
What’s the solution?
Texas needs to regulate groundwater like the scarce resource it is. Require water audits for fracking operations, invest in water reuse tech, and stop letting corporations dump environmental risk on rural communities. Because if we keep trading water for oil, we’ll run out of both.

The Dirty Truth Under Texas Dirt

Here in the great state of Texas, we pride ourselves on BBQ, big trucks, and building things that last. But we’ve also built something else… a multi-billion dollar oil and gas industry that runs on a not-so-renewable secret ingredient: groundwater.

And not just any water. We’re talking about the precious aquifers that keep small-town wells flowing, livestock alive, and backyard gardens from turning to dust. It’s the same water our towns fight to conserve with lawn-watering restrictions and public service announcements. And it’s being pumped, by the billions of gallons, straight into the ground to juice one more barrel of oil out of the shale.

Welcome to the paradox of Texas fracking.

What the Frack Is Fracking?

Hydraulic fracturing, fracking for short, isn’t new. The technology’s been around since the late 1940s, but it hit warp speed in the early 2000s when horizontal drilling unlocked massive reserves in the Barnett, Permian, and Eagle Ford shale formations. The boom brought jobs, growth, and massive state revenue... but it also brought a water addiction nobody wants to talk about.

Here’s how it works: Drill down, turn the bit sideways, and then inject a high-pressure slurry of water, sand, and chemicals deep into the earth. The pressure cracks the rock, and the sand, often referred to as ‘proppant,’ holds the fissures open so oil and gas can flow back up.

That slurry? It used to take about 2–4 million gallons of water to frack a single well.

But as the easy stuff dried up and drillers went deeper and longer, that number exploded. Today, it’s not uncommon for a single horizontal well to use upward of 20 million gallons of water. Multiply that by the tens of thousands of wells across Texas, and you're looking at billions… yes, billions of gallons annually.

Big Wells, Bigger Thirst

The numbers are staggering. The fracking industry in Texas now consumes over 60 billion gallons of water each year. An amount so massive it’s hard to grasp until you realize that a town like Pflugerville, Texas, with around 65,000 residents, uses just 4 billion gallons annually for everything: drinking water, sanitation, lawns, parks, fire hydrants. That means the oil and gas industry is siphoning off enough water every year to supply fifteen entire towns like Pflugerville, and all of it just to blast underground rock apart in pursuit of hydrocarbons. In West Texas, where surface water is scarce, most of this water is drawn directly from underground aquifers.

But unlike municipal water that cycles back through treatment plants and into the environment, the water used in fracking doesn’t return. It becomes toxic wastewater, laced with chemicals and contaminants, destined for deep injection wells where it’s sealed off from the water table forever. In essence, we are permanently removing billions of gallons of groundwater from the system. All in the name of short-term energy gains.

And here’s the leadership knock: if you're running a project and your emergency backup is the same resource keeping everything afloat, you don’t play roulette with it. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing in Texas. Draining our ancient aquifers faster than they can recharge, gambling away our most precious resource for one more boom cycle.

This isn’t just a climate issue. It’s not even just a rural crisis. It’s project management malpractice. The kind of reckless decision-making that should have been flagged on the whiteboard in meeting one. Because if we let the water run out, there won’t be towns left to drill under, let alone lead.

Deregulated to Death

Thanks to decades of deregulation and Texas’ good ol’ boy land rights system (I can do whatever I want if I own the dirt), the oil and gas industry can tap into underground water with less oversight than a teenager building a backyard skate ramp. Want to pump millions of gallons from a shared aquifer to frack a well? No problem. No permit required. No usage limit. But try to install a rain barrel on your roof to catch a little stormwater? Well, partner, you might just find yourself on the wrong side of a code enforcement visit.

And what happens after all that water gets pumped underground?

It doesn’t just stay there.

Fracking not only breaks up shale rock to release oil and gas, it also forces ancient, salty groundwater back to the surface, along with chemical additives and naturally occurring radioactive materials. What comes up isn’t just oil. It’s a toxic slurry known as produced water, a nasty byproduct that can contain heavy metals, hydrocarbons, and enough salt to sterilize a field.

So, where does all that toxic water go?

Simple. It’s separated from the oil at the surface and trucked off to injection wells. Often old, played-out oil wells that have been repurposed for wastewater disposal. These deep disposal wells, tens of thousands of them across Texas, are supposed to isolate the danger by burying it miles underground. But who’s watching to make sure that water doesn’t leak back into the environment?

That’s where the real plot twist comes in.

The Texas Railroad Commission, the agency charged with overseeing oil and gas operations, including these disposal wells, is about as well-equipped for the job as a mall cop in a Marvel movie. The Texas Railroad Commission has the oversight but not the oversight tools. No high-resolution sonar, no field-monitoring tech, and no teeth for enforcement. They don’t have the modern tools, the tech, or the funding to actually inspect most wells. And even if they did find something dangerous? They often lack the legal authority to enforce corrective action.

It gets worse.

Fracking operations in the U.S. were explicitly exempted from the Clean Water Act under the 2005 Energy Policy Act, courtesy of what’s infamously known as the “Halliburton Loophole.” This carveout, pushed by former Vice President and Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney, made it legal for frackers to keep the full list of chemical ingredients in their slurry secret. Even from regulators and first responders. So we’re not just letting oil companies play fast and loose with the water table, we’re handing them the keys to do it in the dark.

And here’s the kicker: if a homeowner’s well gets contaminated, it’s on them to prove it. Good luck winning that legal battle against a multi-billion-dollar operator with an army of lawyers and a lobbyist on speed dial.

It’s Not Mismanagement. It’s Math. And It’s a Little Bit of Mismanagement.

The math doesn’t lie, and neither does the geology.

Let’s be crystal clear: I’m not anti-fracking. I’m anti-shortsighted project management. When you build an entire industry on pumping vast amounts of water into the ground without accounting for the consequences, you’re not managing. You’re gambling with communities’ lifelines.

The belief is that because these disposal wells sit well below our freshwater aquifers, the risk is minimal. But consider this: those wells must traverse freshwater layers on their way down, cased through dozens to hundreds of feet of vulnerable geology, creating failure points at each casing joint and cement seal.

And the warning signs have already appeared. In Midland, the city discovered produced-water contamination back in the early 2000s after testing its T-Bar Ranch drinking wells and finding elevated chlorides and total dissolved solids tied to nearby disposal leaks. Residents have also reported odd tastes and colors in their tap water; “insanely high levels of arsenic or lead,” one commenter wrote after receiving a delayed city alert.

Then there’s the seismic fallout. Big disposal volumes pumped into deep wells are triggering earthquakes, and not just minor tremors. In the Permian Basin, quakes have risen sharply, from around 42 of magnitude 2.5+ in 2017 to over 670 in 2022. Scientists and even Texas operators initially blamed “natural fault reactivation,” but peer-reviewed studies show that injectate pressure from wastewater disposal is making faults rupture more easily. A 2019 SMU study published in Science Advances tied a surge in North Texas earthquakes directly to wastewater injection sites. SMU researchers confirmed that quakes in West Texas correlate directly with nearby injection sites.

Oilfield-paid geologists have traditionally pushed back. Framing seismicity as normal “microseismic” events or natural tectonic activity. But the latest independent science is clear: these are induced earthquakes caused by fluid injection, not fracking itself incidentally. While fracking itself doesn’t usually cause large quakes, the wastewater injection does.

Despite these red flags, Texas regulators remain hamstrung by math and loopholes. Fracking still enjoys an exemption from the Clean Water Act courtesy of the infamous “Halliburton loophole” tucked into the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Produced water disposal wells fall under the Texas Railroad Commission’s watch. But they don’t have the field equipment, the budget, or even the legal teeth to enforce when things go wrong.

Drought Is the New Normal. Time to Lead Like It.

So we’re left with a grim reality: wells drilled straight through our drinking water supplies, contaminated water sealed below ground like toxic time bombs, and earthquakes rattling our towns like a warning shot. Meanwhile, the industry shrugs, smiles for the press, and insists everything’s fine, citing "compliance," "industry best practices," and throwing around so many acronyms (NORM, SWD, TCEQ) it starts to sound like a Scrabble tournament for lobbyists.

But here’s the gut punch: it’s not just the contamination and the quakes. It’s the fact that fracking is directly outcompeting towns and cities for access to freshwater.

In drought-ravaged regions, where communities are imposing water restrictions, rationing lawn use, and trucking in drinking water for schools, oil companies are tapping into those same aquifers at industrial scale, and they’re doing it faster, bigger, and with zero obligation to conserve.

Why? Because in Texas, groundwater is governed by the "rule of capture," which basically means first come, first pumped. So when a company drills a massive well and starts extracting millions of gallons per frack, there’s nothing stopping them. Even if the town next door is bone dry.

It’s not a fair fight. A municipal water utility has to justify every drop, maintain infrastructure, report usage, and face public scrutiny. An oil operator, on the other hand, just has to own the land or get a lease. No permits. No limitations. No water planning meetings or conservation goals. Just pump and profit.

That’s not just shortsighted. We’ve handed the keys of our most precious resource to the highest bidder and told the rest of the community to play nice.

This isn’t project management. It’s not sustainable. And it sure as hell isn’t leadership. It’s negligence, rebranded as prosperity, and the people paying the price are the ones who didn’t sign the lease or cash the royalty check.

We treat water like an infinite resource, when it’s actually our most critical project dependency.

You wouldn’t build a $10 million mansion on a foundation of Swiss cheese, so why are we building an entire energy sector on a vanishing water supply?

This isn’t about hugging trees. It’s about hugging common sense.

It’s Time to Course Correct

The oil and gas industry has contributed to Texas’ economy for decades, but that doesn’t give it a license to drain our future. If we want to keep calling Texas a place of opportunity, not just for oilmen, but for families, farmers, and future generations… we have to change how we manage water. That starts with putting an end to the groundwater free-for-all that’s defined the oil boom for far too long. Groundwater isn’t an infinite resource. It’s not an open bar. It’s a shared survival mechanism that needs to be regulated with the seriousness it deserves. That means tracking who’s pumping, how much, and from where. Right now, we have blind spots in the data so wide you could drive a water truck through them.

Next, it’s time to make full water audits a non-negotiable for any fracking operation. If you want to fracture rock to get at oil, then you should have to show your math first. How many gallons are being used per well? Where is that water coming from? What happens when the local aquifer starts to drop or the well itself goes dry? We expect small businesses to submit permits, environmental plans, and operating reports. Why should billion-dollar operators get a pass?

And let’s stop pretending innovation is just a Silicon Valley thing. The oil and gas industry has the resources to lead in water reuse technology, and it’s about damn time we start treating that as a top priority. We should be incentivizing companies that recycle their flowback, reclaim their graywater, and invest in closed-loop systems that reduce their freshwater footprint. The next big boom in Texas shouldn’t be about pulling oil from the ground, it should be about keeping water above it.

Finally, we’ve got to stop letting corporations offload the environmental burden onto rural communities. Just because a county can’t afford high-powered lawyers or a digital seismic lab doesn’t mean they should have to carry the cost of poisoned wells, cracked walls, and unlivable homes. If you’re going to profit off the land, you should be responsible for what happens to it. Period.

Course correction isn’t a luxury. It’s leadership. And if we don’t pivot now, we’ll be remembered as the generation that traded water for wealth… and ran out of both.

Leadership Means Getting Uncomfortable

Here’s the thing they don’t teach in most leadership courses, but we sure as hell teach it at Hard Knock University: Sometimes leadership means making people uncomfortable. It means looking a profitable industry in the face and saying:

“Not like this.”

We don’t need to kill oil and gas. But we do need to stop letting it kill the water supply our kids will rely on long after the rigs go quiet.

If your state rep can name their top oil donors but not their local aquifer levels, it’s time to find new leadership.

🔥 #HardKnockLesson:

You can’t build epic wins on a dry foundation. If your leadership doesn’t factor in environmental sustainability, it’s not resilient… it’s reckless.

The good news? We can fix this.

The bad news? We’re running out of time.

So let’s cowboy up, Texans. Let’s lead smarter. Because if we don’t, we’ll be the ones explaining to our kids how we traded water for oil and called it progress.

#HardKnockLessons
#HardKnockUniversity

Previously on Hard Knock University Dispatch:

Laundered Cars & Thirsty Aquifers

Mark Caples

Jun 3

Today, we're going to merge two things that don’t usually end up in the same conversation unless you're either very curious, very caffeinated, or sitting at a backroom poker game where the buy-in is cash only, the stories are unbelievable, and everyone claims they’re in "real estate."

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