As Texas struggles to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population, a state fund had $1.28 billion available this year to support projects that could deliver water even in a severe drought.

Unfortunately, 23 worthy projects requested a total of $4.2 billion, prompting the state to deny 13 of them — the first time the SWIFT fund had to say no to an applicant in its 11-year history.

It was lamentable timing for a state plagued by a brutal drought and aging water infrastructure.

“We have more demand than we actually have the capacity to fulfill this year,” said Marvin Cole-Chaney, director of program administration and reporting for the Texas Water Development Board, which administers SWIFT, the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas.

One of the denied projects is a desalination plant with the potential to create 100 million gallons of drinking water a day along the Coastal Bend in South Texas — an area including Corpus Christi, which is in the grips of a devastating drought.

The denial surprised John Byrum, executive director of the Nueces River Authority, which proposed building the plant as a critical source of water for Coastal Bend cities.

Under the scoring system used to set priorities for SWIFT, the river authority’s plant ranked 11th. The top 10 proposals will next submit more-detailed applications for the money.

“We really thought our project would rate higher,” Byrum said. “We were disappointed.”

The river authority requested $140 million to fuel plans to build a seawater desalination plant in Harbor Island, which sits within the cities of Aransas Pass and Port Aransas. A desalination plant filters salt and other minerals out of seawater to make it drinkable.

The proposed project, which received federal permitting in September and is projected to cost $3.2 billion, would distribute water to cities, water districts and businesses across South Texas, including Corpus Christi, which is nearing a water crisis. The coastal city is one of the biggest water suppliers in the region and may be just months away from a water crisis as its main reservoirs have shriveled to below 8% capacity.

Corpus Christi paid $2.7 million to the river authority to reserve an option to buy 50 million gallons of water a day once the Harbor Island desalination plant is running.

City leaders are bracing for a Level 1 water emergency, the point when the water supply is projected to be 180 days from falling short of demand, which could be triggered as soon as September. Commissioners in Nueces County, which includes Corpus Christi, voted unanimously last week to declare a county-wide water emergency, restricting residents’ outdoor watering.

SWIFT offers low-interest loans with extended and flexible repayment plans. The water development board said the denied projects may be eligible for other funding options, such as the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, but Byrum believes the SWIFT fund should place a higher priority on an area’s need for water.

The water development board considers several factors when prioritizing projects, ranking them on a scoring sheet with a maximum score of 86. Projects can earn the most points by serving large populations, with readiness and water conservation among other factors also taken into account.

A project’s “emergency need” carries little weight, earning a maximum five points.

None of the 10 highest-ranked projects earned any points for “emergency need,” a designation restricted to public water systems where supply is expected to fall short of demand within 180 days, federal money was sought or received to deal with the emergency, or the need for water will occur a decade sooner than anticipated by state planners.

The Harbor Island plant, despite targeting an area that critically needs water, earned no emergency need points and lost potential points because it is in rural Nueces County with a relatively low population. Its score of 62 was just one point behind the 10th-place project.

This year’s 10 highest-rated SWIFT projects span the state, including the Riverbend Water Resources District — the top-rated project on the SWIFT scorecard. Riverbend is seeking $2.98 million to assess and expand water infrastructure to meet Texarkana's growing population.

The North Texas Municipal Water District is asking for nearly $419 million for a pipeline and treatment plant in Leonard, a town in Fannin County. The water district is also receiving around $611 million to design a new raw water pump station.

Money is also being directed to South Texas, where the Hidalgo County Drainage District made a pitch for $120 million for its proposed Santa Cruz Reservoir.

Byrum said the Nueces River Authority is going to apply for the water board’s other funding programs, as well as seek private funding, in hopes of getting the Harbor Island desalination plant built.

SWIFT was created by the Texas Legislature and approved by voters in 2013, allowing the one-time transfer of $2 billion from the state’s rainy day fund. Revenue bonds over the next 50 years, starting in 2015, will finance around $27 billion in water supply projects through SWIFT.

To date, the water development board has committed about $17.2 billion in SWIFT money to 76 projects. The agency estimates the funding saved entities almost $2.1 billion over the life of the debt compared to market rates.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Unfortunately, 23 worthy projects requested a total of $4.2 billion, prompting the state to deny 13 of them — the first time the SWIFT fund had to say no to an applicant in its 11-year history.

It was lamentable timing for a state plagued by a brutal drought and aging water infrastructure.

“We have more demand than we actually have the capacity to fulfill this year,” said Marvin Cole-Chaney, director of program administration and reporting for the Texas Water Development Board, which administers SWIFT, the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas.

One of the denied projects is a desalination plant with the potential to create 100 million gallons of drinking water a day along the Coastal Bend in South Texas — an area including Corpus Christi, which is in the grips of a devastating drought.

The denial surprised John Byrum, executive director of the Nueces River Authority, which proposed building the plant as a critical source of water for Coastal Bend cities.

Under the scoring system used to set priorities for SWIFT, the river authority’s plant ranked 11th. The top 10 proposals will next submit more-detailed applications for the money.

“We really thought our project would rate higher,” Byrum said. “We were disappointed.”

The river authority requested $140 million to fuel plans to build a seawater desalination plant in Harbor Island, which sits within the cities of Aransas Pass and Port Aransas. A desalination plant filters salt and other minerals out of seawater to make it drinkable.

The proposed project, which received federal permitting in September and is projected to cost $3.2 billion, would distribute water to cities, water districts and businesses across South Texas, including Corpus Christi, which is nearing a water crisis. The coastal city is one of the biggest water suppliers in the region and may be just months away from a water crisis as its main reservoirs have shriveled to below 8% capacity.

Corpus Christi paid $2.7 million to the river authority to reserve an option to buy 50 million gallons of water a day once the Harbor Island desalination plant is running.

City leaders are bracing for a Level 1 water emergency, the point when the water supply is projected to be 180 days from falling short of demand, which could be triggered as soon as September. Commissioners in Nueces County, which includes Corpus Christi, voted unanimously last week to declare a county-wide water emergency, restricting residents’ outdoor watering.

SWIFT offers low-interest loans with extended and flexible repayment plans. The water development board said the denied projects may be eligible for other funding options, such as the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, but Byrum believes the SWIFT fund should place a higher priority on an area’s need for water.

The water development board considers several factors when prioritizing projects, ranking them on a scoring sheet with a maximum score of 86. Projects can earn the most points by serving large populations, with readiness and water conservation among other factors also taken into account.

A project’s “emergency need” carries little weight, earning a maximum five points.

None of the 10 highest-ranked projects earned any points for “emergency need,” a designation restricted to public water systems where supply is expected to fall short of demand within 180 days, federal money was sought or received to deal with the emergency, or the need for water will occur a decade sooner than anticipated by state planners.

The Harbor Island plant, despite targeting an area that critically needs water, earned no emergency need points and lost potential points because it is in rural Nueces County with a relatively low population. Its score of 62 was just one point behind the 10th-place project.

This year’s 10 highest-rated SWIFT projects span the state, including the Riverbend Water Resources District — the top-rated project on the SWIFT scorecard. Riverbend is seeking $2.98 million to assess and expand water infrastructure to meet Texarkana's growing population.

The North Texas Municipal Water District is asking for nearly $419 million for a pipeline and treatment plant in Leonard, a town in Fannin County. The water district is also receiving around $611 million to design a new raw water pump station.

Money is also being directed to South Texas, where the Hidalgo County Drainage District made a pitch for $120 million for its proposed Santa Cruz Reservoir.

Byrum said the Nueces River Authority is going to apply for the water board’s other funding programs, as well as seek private funding, in hopes of getting the Harbor Island desalination plant built.

SWIFT was created by the Texas Legislature and approved by voters in 2013, allowing the one-time transfer of $2 billion from the state’s rainy day fund. Revenue bonds over the next 50 years, starting in 2015, will finance around $27 billion in water supply projects through SWIFT.

To date, the water development board has committed about $17.2 billion in SWIFT money to 76 projects. The agency estimates the funding saved entities almost $2.1 billion over the life of the debt compared to market rates.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

HOUSTON — California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s victory lap over passage of Proposition 50 reached Texas on Saturday, days after his state greenlit his plan to blunt Gov. Greg Abbott’s redistricting effort to get more Texas Republicans in Congress.

Before Newsom could start speaking during his brief stop at a rally in Houston, the crowd of around 800 Democrats took the chance to yell out “thank you,” and he returned the sentiment.

“You woke us up,” Newsom said, referring to Democrats’ resistance to redistricting. “You didn't just have your back here, you had our back in the state of California.“

After Abbott signed a new congressional map in August that was redrawn to maximize the state’s Republican representation in Washington D.C., amid pressure from President Donald Trump, Newsom pitched an idea to voters to offset Texas’ GOP gains with additional Democratic seats in California.

California voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition 50 on Tuesday, a plan Newsom crafted to directly target Texas’ new congressional map. The ballot measure cleared the way for Newsom to allow the legislature to approve the Golden State’s redrawn congressional districts to carve out five more Democratic seats. Abbott bypassed that step, putting it up to the state’s lawmakers to decide on a new map without voter’s permission.

The California ballot measure passed with nearly 64% of the vote, and its decisive approval is a big win for Newsom, who is considering a presidential bid in 2028. If the new maps pass as planned, nearly all of California’s congressional representatives will be Democrats. California currently has 43 Democratic House members and nine Republicans — the new maps would secure 48 blue seats. And Newsom took to Texas, the very state Prop 50 targets, to celebrate.

Saturday’s crowd celebrated with him, including 18-year-old Ben Webb of Cypress, a northwest suburb of Houston.

“He did it with voter approval, which Greg Abbott didn't do,” said Webb, who recently became a registered voter. “So I would say that's an even bigger political win.”

Webb’s friend, Thomas Mitschke, who is also 18, echoed that sentiment.

“He took it to the voters instead of just doing it like Greg Abbott and kind of just jamming it in without voter approval,” Mitschke said. “That's how democracy is supposed to work.”

Abbott’s office has not responded to a request for comment.

Texas’ new congressional district lines have the potential to boost the GOP’s footing in Congress by squeezing more Democratic voters in Houston and Dallas into districts the minority party already controls — a strategy known as “packing.” It also “cracks” left-leaning communities by splitting voters who supported Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 into Republican districts, according to an analysis by The Texas Tribune.

For example, the 9th Congressional District in Southwest Houston, represented by Congressman Al Green, went from voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 by 44 percentage points to one that Trump would have carried by a 20-point margin under the new lines. Much of the 9th District was merged into the 18th, where Green, who spoke at the rally, will now be seeking reelection. He would now face the winner of the upcoming special election runoff for the seat in the March primary.

The maps, along with a list of other reasons, is why both Webb and Mitschke said they will be casting some of their first votes to replace Abbott with a Democratic governor. They also said if Newsroom ran for president, he would have their vote.

Texas’ maps have been caught in a web of legal challenges since 2021 when the current districts were approved. Lawsuits claim that the mid-decade redistricting process was flawed from the start, and that effort came at the cost of Latino and Black communities, which have largely supported Democratic candidates.

Newsom’s rally drew a range of Democratic leaders across Harris County and the state, including Harris County Commissioners Adrian Garcia and Rodney Ellis, Congresswomen Lizzie Fletcher and Jasmine Crockett, and gubernatorial candidate and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.

Newsom’s plan to blunt Abbott’s effort was a long shot. Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic consultant who leads the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, told the Guardian that Newsom took a big gamble on Prop 50 — and it paid off.

“But more than that is the fact that he fought back — that he dared to do this, that people said it was dangerous for him, and he forged ahead with it anyway,” he said.

Kathleen Davies, a reverend at a Presbyterian church in Southwest Houston who was born and raised in California, said Newsom’s visit reminded her that despite being a Democrat in a deeply red state, she still has a voice.

“We're a big state, and he's in a big state, and I think it's important for us to know that we still are all connected as Americans,” said Davies, who moved to Texas about three decades ago. “Even though there's so much talk about, like, keep California out of Texas or whatever, I mean, we're all Americans who want to be represented and the gerrymandering has got to stop.”

Newsom isn’t stopping with California. He’s encouraging other governors in blue states, such as Illinois and New York, to follow his lead and push back against Trump’s effort to hold onto a Republican-controlled Congress.

“We cannot rest,” Newsom said on Saturday before heading to Brazil for a conference, “until we take back the House of Representatives.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

The United States is knee-deep in what some experts call the opioid epidemic’s “fourth wave,” which is not only placing drug users at greater risk but is also complicating efforts to address the nation’s drug problem.

These waves, according to a report out today from Millennium Health, began with the crisis in prescription opioid use, followed by a significant jump in heroin use, then an increase in the use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

The latest wave involves using multiple substances at the same time, combining fentanyl mainly with either methamphetamine or cocaine, the report found. “And I’ve yet to see a peak,” said one of the co-authors, Eric Dawson, vice president of clinical affairs at Millennium Health, a specialty laboratory that provides drug testing services to monitor use of prescription medications and illicit drugs.

The report, which takes a deep dive into the nation’s drug trends and breaks usage patterns down by region, is based on 4.1 million urine samples collected from January 2013 to December 2023 from people receiving some kind of drug addiction care.

Its findings offer staggering statistics and insights. Its major finding: how common polysubstance use has become. According to the report, an overwhelming majority of fentanyl-positive urine samples — nearly 93% — contained additional substances. “And that is huge,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health.

The most concerning, she and other addiction experts said, is the dramatic increase in the combination of meth and fentanyl use. Methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug often in powder form that poses several serious cardiovascular and psychiatric risks, was found in 60% of fentanyl-positive tests last year. That is an 875% increase since 2015.

“I never, ever would have thought this,” Volkow said.

Among the report’s other key findings:

• The nationwide spike in methamphetamine use alongside fentanyl marks a change in drug use patterns.
• Polydrug use trends complicate overdose treatments. For instance, though naloxone, an opioid-overdose reversal medication, is widely available, there isn’t an FDA-approved medication for stimulant overdose.
• Both heroin and prescribed opioid use alongside fentanyl have dipped. Heroin detected in fentanyl-positive tests dropped by 75% since peaking in 2016. Prescription opioids were found at historic low rates in fentanyl-positive tests in 2023, down 89% since 2013.

But Jarratt Pytell, an addiction medicine specialist and assistant professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, warned these declines shouldn’t be interpreted as a silver lining.

A lower level of heroin use “just says that fentanyl is everywhere,” Pytell said, “and that we have officially been pushed by our drug supply to the most dangerous opioids that we have available right now.”

“Whenever a drug network is destabilizing and the product changes, it puts the people who use the drugs at the greatest risk,” he said. “That same bag or pill that they have been buying for the last several months now is coming from a different place, a different supplier, and is possibly a different potency.”

In the illicit drug industry, suppliers are the controllers. It may not be that people are seeking out methamphetamine and fentanyl but rather that they’re what drug suppliers have found to be the easiest and most lucrative product to sell.

“I think drug cartels are kind of realizing that it’s a lot easier to have a 500-square-foot lab than it is to have 500 acres of whatever it takes to grow cocaine,” Pytell said.

Dawson said the report’s drug use data, unlike that of some other studies, is based on sample analysis with a quick turnaround — a day or two.

Sometimes researchers face a months-long wait to receive death reports from coroners. Under those circumstances, you are often “staring at today but relying on data sources that are a year or more in the past,” said Dawson.

Self-reported surveys of drug users, another method often used to track drug use, also have long lag times and “often miss people who are active for substance use disorders,” said Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College. Urine tests “are based on a biology standard” and are good at detecting when someone has been using two or more drugs, he said.

But using data from urine samples also comes with limitations.

For starters, the tests don’t reveal users’ intent.

“You don’t know whether or not there was one bag of powder that had both fentanyl and meth in it, or whether there were two bags of powder, one with fentanyl in it and one with meth and they took both,” Caulkins said. It can also be unclear, he said, if people intentionally combined the two drugs for an extra high or if they thought they were using only one, not knowing it contained the other.

Volkow said she is interested in learning more about the demographics of polysubstance drug users. “Is this pattern the same for men and women, and is this pattern the same for middle-age or younger people? Because again, having a better understanding of the characteristics allows you to tailor and personalize interventions.”

All the while, the nation’s crisis continues. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 107,000 people died in the U.S. in 2021 from drug overdoses, most because of fentanyl.

Caulkins said he’s hesitant to view drug use patterns as waves because that would imply people are transitioning from one to the next.

“Are we looking at people whose first substance use disorder was an opioid use disorder, who have now gotten to the point where they’re polydrug users?” he said. Or, are people now starting substance use disorders with methamphetamine and fentanyl, he asked.

One point was clear, Dawson said: “We’re just losing too many lives.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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