Throckmorton’s CEA Recounts
Drouth Story At SRM Meeting

ABILENE – Two years ago the small community of Throckmorton, Texas, made national news. The area was in a severe drouth and the water supply for the rural North Central Texas community was rapidly running dry.

Corky Redden, Extension agent for Throckmorton County since 1978, was on the front lines of that crisis. He relived that experience recently with those attending the Texas Section Society for Range Management annual meeting here. His topic was "When the Reservoirs Run Dry."

The small community had long depended on Throckmorton Lake for its water needs. In 1999 the lake serviced 750 water meters.

"You could actually wade across the lake, that’s how bad it was," Redden told listeners. "Everyone was depending on that one mud hole. Nine hundred and fifty people doesn’t sound like a lot of folks. Neither does 750 water meters, but if that one mud hole is all you have, then it’s a lot."

Throckmorton County is strictly dependent on surface water.

"I don’t care how deep you drill, you’re going to get salt water."

When the stock tanks started drying up in the county, landowners took advantage of the situation and began cleaning out their tanks. Some 350 tanks were cleaned that year, and as it turned out, all 350 were on the watershed for the city lake. When it did rain, the tanks caught the water. There was little if any excess runoff. Consequently, the lake level continued to decline.

"Rob Brown cleaned out a tank and enlarged it about three times the size it was. We got a five-plus inch rain. It filled Rob’s tank. He was kind enough to let anyone from Throckmorton pump water from his tank to put on their landscape plants."

People tried to save their trees. He showed a picture of a tree that had 750 gallons of water put on it every week during the drouth.

"That’s a lot of water, but when you’re in a drouth, you can’t put enough water on a tree to help it."

In 1999 residents of Throckmorton were using 6000 gallons of water per meter per month. In September 2000 it went to 7349 gallons per month per meter. When water rationing started, water use was limited to 3500 gallons of water per month per meter.

"I don’t know how many of you have tried to get by on 3500 gallons of water a month. It’s not easy," Redden said. "You start doing some things to get by that you normally wouldn’t do. I don’t know how many of you realize how many gallons of water you use every time you flush a commode. You use about a gallon and a half every time.

"We decided it wasn’t necessary to flush the commode 25 times a day. Flush it in the morning and flush it in the evening. You don’t think about those things until you ration the water. We dipped the water out of our bathtub to water our plants. There wasn’t any lawn watering and there wasn’t any car washing.

"The thing about rationing water is that it doesn’t make any difference how much money you have," he continued. "Even if you could buy 10,000 gallons a month, you’re still only going to get 3500 gallons."

During rationing the average daily per capita use for the entire community was 90.88 gallons of water per day.

"That was the average for the whole county, not just one family. That even included the hospital, the restaurants and the school."

Community leaders understood all too well that something had to be done. The nearby community of Graham offered to let them tap into its water system. That meant laying a pipeline. A pipeline extended from Graham to Fort Belknap, but it ended there. It was up to Throckmorton to lay the remainder of the pipeline. It went from Fort Belknap to Elbert, then from Elbert to Throckmorton, about 28 miles all told.

Redden said they didn’t really have trouble getting easements, because if the pipeline came through someone’s property, they could get a water meter.

The community secured a grant but it wasn’t enough to complete the job, so they had to depend on volunteerism.

"You don’t really realize what you have until you get in a crisis situation," Redden said. "Then you realize that you do have a lot. Our crisis made me realize that just because we live in a town of 905 people, we’re not deprived. These are great people. You should have seen them come together and work as a group."

Everyone wanted to donate water. They brought water and more water — all by the gallon jug. Country singer Billy Ray Cyrus heard about the small community’s plight and wanted to do something, so he sent a truck to Louisiana — he had something to do with a water company there, Redden said — and had the water delivered to Abilene. Home Depot delivered it to Throckmorton.

The city council asked the 4-H club to take charge of distributing the water. The water was stored at the show barn and delivery days were Tuesdays and Thursdays.

"We delivered and loaded 31,074 gallons of water by hand. That’s lots of water," the CEA said.

All of the equipment needed to build the pipeline — the big ditch diggers, the tractors, even the labor to run that equipment, was donated.

"A company out of Midland sent a huge ditch digger and a guy to run it. The company put him up in a hotel and paid for all of it."

The community utilized anyone and everyone who was willing to volunteer, even some prison labor.

"I guarantee they worked hard, and they were some of the nicest folks. It was a delight for them to get out in the sunshine and work."

One man came all the way from Washington to help.

"He had one arm and he insisted that he wanted to help dig the ditch. I guarantee he could shovel more dirt with one arm than I could with both. That just reminded me not to ever overlook opportunities. People like that who want to work usually work from the heart."

The Red Cross came and made sandwiches for those working on the pipeline. Some of the local fellows brought their cookers out and cooked hamburgers for the prison crew every day.

Some of the other kids in town, the football team for example, came out every morning and carried five gallon buckets of water with ice and towels up and down the line. Everyone got a wet towel and a bottle of water.

The pipeline was finished two months ahead of schedule.

"This crisis brought our community together better than anything I know of because everyone was affected the very same way. Everyone was in the same dilemma and everyone worked for a common goal, to get the water line in so we could have something to drink," Redden reiterated.

He switched gears and talked about how the drouth affected the economy of the county.

Livestock numbers, Redden said, were decreased by at least a third.

"During the drouth, ranchers sold and sold and sold. Anyone who tried to save replacement heifers had them on a feeder because there wasn’t any grass at all.

"We usually stock one animal unit to 17 acres, and in Throckmorton County we generally run about 30,000 head of cattle, and that dropped down to about 10,000 head.

"Any way you figure that, it’s about a $5 million loss just from the calf crop, based on a 95 percent calf crop," Redden noted. "And that doesn’t even include the cost to replace your cows."

Redden figured the county lost an additional $216,000 of income from stocker cattle production for every year of the drouth.

Wheat loss was estimated to be $1,509,000.

The total loss for every year Throckmorton County was in a drouth, Redden said, was $6,725,000 a year.

The speaker was asked if there was anything he would do differently if he had to do it again.

The first thing every community should do, he told listeners, is get prepared, do a little planning.

"It’s going to get dry, so if I lived in a rural community the first thing I would do is start measuring the holding capacity of your water supply. Know what you have.

I didn’t know we were evaporating three times as much water a day as we were using," he told listeners.

"I would say you need a three year supply of water at normal levels, and if you don’t have that I would start making plans to get to that capacity."

Throckmorton County, he said, has received rains over the last several months. Throckmorton Lake is now at about 63 percent capacity.

Redden concluded his remarks by encouraging the natural resource professionals to continue their work to improve rangeland practices that in the long-term will help with water conservation.

"One of these days, water is going to be a whole lot more important than oil," Redden concluded. "Running out of water is like running out of gas, only worse. Don’t let it happen to you."