May 19, 2000

The Sunset Advisory Commission believes the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TP&WD) should be in the loop before any state-owned land is sold or leased in the future.

Sunset Commission staff recently noted in their report on TP&WD that such state entities as the Permanent University Fund, Department of Transportation, and Department of Criminal Justice own vast amounts of land to which the public has little or no access. The report suggests that these properties could be inventoried by TP&WD to provide opportunities for hunting, outdoor recreation and even special conservation programs.

TP&WD owns 4.4 percent of all state-owned land, or 911,203 acres. In contrast, the Department of Transportation owns more than 1 million acres and the Permanent University Fund controls 13,335,678 acres, or 64.9 percent of all state-owned land. These agencies routinely sell or lease properties without any review by Parks and Wildlife as to the land’s conservation and recreational value.

Texas Farm Bureau policy does not specifically address the role of TP&WD as a clearinghouse agency for state land. In general, though, our policy opposes additional government purchases of private land. It would be hoped that better coordination and use of current state-owned land would preclude the need for additional land purchases in the future.

This recommendation and others by Sunset staff concerning the TP&WD will be the subject of a Sunset Advisory Commission hearing in May. TFB will offer testimony at the hearing.

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The Senate Natural Resources Committee is seeking a consensus on groundwater issues before the next legislative session. The committee commissioned a facilitators group—the Meridian Institute and Consensus Solutions Incorporated—to bring all interested parties in groundwater management together to discuss a number of issues relative to groundwater. This strategy has been used in other states with some degree of success on contentious issues.

Agriculture was invited to participate in this process through the Texas Farm Bureau, Texas Cattle Feeders Association, and the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. The issues being addressed are predominantly targeted towards groundwater conservation districts.

The Senate committee has spent a majority of the interim studying how conservation districts are formed, funded, and operated. With the shadow of legislative redistricting hanging over the upcoming session, it is vital that major issues to be determined before January, 2001. Once the census numbers are released in late April, 2001 redistricting will take over the remaining six weeks of the legislature’s time in Austin. Therefore, major legislation must be passed by the legislature before April, 2001, or risk being derailed by the redistricting process. This scenario has created an urgency in the Texas House and Senate to solve the “water fights” before, rather than during, the 2001 session.

Texas Farm Bureau, and the other agricultural interests participating in this process, are not certain the outcome of this consensus process. Our mission is to determine the opinions expressed by other groundwater stakeholders, promote our organ-ization’s groundwater policy, and protect the right of agriculture and rural Texas to groundwater. Most participants in this consensus process seem to doubt that an alternate solution to groundwater management can be developed.

We will keep you posted as this process develops.