Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson is getting the state into the Central Texas water game.
Patterson’s office plans to announce today that it has contracted with two water consulting firms to examine the feasibility of building a desalination plant between Austin and New Braunfels on land the General Land Office owns.
Desalination is an expensive, energy-intensive technique of making brackish underground water potable. Patterson’s plan — a first for the General Land Office, which manages Texas’ land and natural resources — would involve hoisting brackish water up at least 1,400 feet, from below a layer of underground freshwater.
“We want to do something scalable and deployable,” said Patterson, who said he is looking at placing a desalination facility either just west of Kyle or just north of New Braunfels. “This is one of the elements of solving Texas’ water problem.”