From where do Texans draw freshwater?
Across the great state of Texas, a variety of systems supply Texans with potable water.
- 32 Aquifers supply 55% of all fresh water; 80% is used for crop irrigation, 20% for potable water that represents 75% of all potable water supplies in Texas. Learn more about aquifers from the Texas Water Development Board. Water from aquifers is classified as ground water.
- Ground water includes lakes, streams, and river basins.
- Not all potable water is used for drinking water. Various industries consume significant volumes.
- There are approximately 7,000 lakes. 188 are major water supply reservoirs that represent 96% of the total conservation storage capacity.
- The ultimate source of freshwater is atmospheric precipitation.
What is the source of the precipitation?
In general, all precipitation comes from clouds. Due to the low temperature and low pressure at high altitudes, most all precipitation starts as snow, as shown in the graphic.
What is the source of the water in the clouds?
Answer: The oceans, seas, and bays. Clouds cover the earth. View the NASA Live Stream – Earth From Space: Live Views from the ISS.
How does the water get from the oceans, seas, and bays to high altitudes where clouds form?
NOAA explains the water cycle: “Over 96% of total global water is in the ocean, so let’s start there. Energy from the sun causes water on the surface to evaporate into water vapor – a gas. This invisible vapor rises into the atmosphere, where the air is colder, and condenses into clouds. Air currents move these clouds all around the earth.”
An abbreviated description of the water cycle
Solar radiation heats the surface of the oceans, gulfs, and bays. Gaseous water (H2O) is lighter than air. This evaporated water, like the steam over a boiling pot of water, rises to an altitude where the dewpoint and the dry-bulb temperatures intersect.
When the clouds become oversaturated, moisture in the clouds condenses to form precipitation heavier than air. On its way down to terra firma, the precipitation manifests as rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow.
The icy precipitation that lands on high-altitude mountain tops form penitent snows and glaciers during the cold times of the year.
During the warm times of the year, the glaciers and penitent snows melt to feed 22 dams collect the runoff to form reservoirs. According to the USGS, as much as 75 percent of water supplies in the western states are derived from snowmelt.
Summary of the Water Cycle
Solar heating elevates oceanic surface-water temperature that cause moisture to rise to an altitude where the cold temperatures condense the moisture into visible clouds. The motion of the earth slowly drags the clouds eastward. When the temperature of the moisture in the clouds gets colder, precipitation happens.
The precipitated water irrigates forests and farms and suplies life-sustaining water to potable water systems like the North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD).
Rockwall, my hometown, then distributes NTMWD water to cities and other clients.
What’s the point?
Warming of the surface of the earth is not cause for climate alarmism. Like the natural carbon cycle, the natural water cycle sustains life on earth. As our global population increases, the demand for life-sustaining food also increases. Just as the water cycle is not pollution, the carbon cycle is also not pollution.
Political activists have fostered global mass hysteria. 52 years ago, climate scientists predicted a new ice age was coming. The hysteria over an ice age was soon replaced with hysteria over global warming. On the heels of the global warming hysteria came the climate-change hysteria.
Rational thinkers recognize we need more carbon-dioxide (CO2), more water (H2O), and nitrogen (N) fertilizer to feed billions of people on our planet Earth. The scientific evidence of the importance of the elevation of global CO2 is a matter of fact, as substantiated by the U.S. government. We cannot create any of these three minerals, but we can and we must comprehend their vital importance to our lives and wellbeing.
Proverbs 18:17 says, “Any story sounds true until someone tells the other side and sets the record straight.”
Reasonable means not exceeding the limit prescribed by reason; not excessive. As it is written in Isaiah 1:18, God speaking, “Come, let’s talk this over [reason together], says the Lord; no matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can take it out and make you as clean as freshly fallen snow. Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you white as wool!
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 
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