LeakBird

(Feb. 11, 2009, The Star-Telegram)

As Texas’ population explodes, new residential, commercial and industrial development is rampant. The state is far more urbanized, and continued dramatic growth is expected in coming decades.

That’s putting unprecedented environmental pressures on one of the state’s most-precious resources: its many rivers, creeks, bays and estuaries. These flowing bodies provide critical water supplies for everyday human use and recreation, as well as vital habitat for an enormous variety of plant and animal life.

These waters also provide an invaluable connection to nature, something many city slickers are gradually losing. In an increasingly crowded and noisy world, a pristine river is “a refuge for the human soul,” an East Texas resident remarks in an excellent new TV documentary, Texas: The State of Flowing Water.

The one-hour video is well worth your time. It airs on Public Broadcasting System stations throughout the state, including KERA-TV Channel 13, Dallas, at 8 p.m. Thursday. The documentary is the fourth in an award-winning series produced by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in partnership with PBS stations.

The documentary illustrates how water use — and water waste — in big metropolitan areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth can have a significant impact on the health of waters downstream. It outlines how plans to create a new national wildlife refuge on the Neches River in East Texas clash with a proposal to build a reservoir there to serve Dallas.

The documentary also looks at the potential to reduce reservoirs’ negative impact on rivers’ flow by building off-channel storage dams for water supplies. It explores the critical link between creek beds and the recharge of aquifers that provide water for cities and farms.

It outlines how fresh-water inflows from rivers to coastal bays and estuaries is vital to maintaining healthy breeding grounds for shrimp and other aquatic life. It speaks of how global warming might result in East Texas becoming wetter and West Texas drier. It tells how people individually can take simple water conservation measures that collectively will be significant.

The average Texan not only will learn a lot from watching the documentary, but will gain a heightened appreciation of just how priceless our flowing waters are.

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Texas: The State of Flowing Water8 p.m. Thursday

KERA-TV, Channel 13, Dallas and other PBS stations in Texas

Online: www.texasthestateofwater.org

(Original Article Here)

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