Gramm Representative Touring
Texas To See Drouth Situation

AMARILLO — A representative of Sen. Phil Gramm's office is touring drouth-stricken West Texas this week.

Sondra Ziegler, West Texas regional director of Gramm's Lubbock office, says she is starting her tour in Amarillo and will travel on to Lubbock, then head south to Odessa, San Angelo and Abilene.

A second round of visits to Pampa and Dalhart is planned for early August, she says.

"I’m conducting a tour," she told a drouth strategy session at the Texas A&M Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Amarillo. "I'm trying to get down on a local level and find out not only the facts and figures, but what's it's like for you personally. I'm trying to get input from producers. I'm trying to get input from ag specialists to take back to the senator."

Zeigler says economic impact statewide of the drouth was estimated $4.6 billion by mid-July.

"The Texas Department of Agriculture is now saying that may reach $7 billion," she says. "That is obviously devastating."

The direct producer loss is estimated to be $1.4 billion.

"The water development board says there's not one region of the state that is not in a severe or strained situation," she says. "That is why Gov. Bush has asked that the entire state be declared a disaster area."

Ziegler notes that from May 1 through July 3, there were 3800 wildfires in the state which burned 260,000 acres and caused one death, and that there have been more than 60 heat-related deaths in the state.

The drouth has added to livestock feed costs totaling $136 million.

Statewide sorghum losses total an estimated $140 million to producers. Coupled with an impact on related business activity, losses could reach $470 million for forage and grain sorghum.

Direct losses in this year's corn crop, statewide, are estimated at $225 million with an economic impact of $735 million.

Cotton losses this year are estimated at $500 million with a statewide impact of $1.8 billion.

Ziegler says Gramm and the state's other senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, offered a resolution that was passed by the Senate this month calling on federal agencies to deal with the drouth more swiftly.

"It calls on the USDA to streamline the drouth declaration process," she says. "Once the Governor asks that a town or region be declared a disaster area, it often takes a long time for the USDA to act upon that. We think there's no reason for that. We think it's a lot of bureaucratic red tape and whatever the cause of that is, we need to get through that and get the counties declared so we can get on with relief to producers."

She says Gramm also wants to ensure that the Farm Service Agency offices in the state are adequately equipped with whatever full time and emergency personnel they're going to need to deal with the applications for relief.

"There has been a problem in the past," she says. "We want to make sure the FSA has everything they need to process those applications."

Ziegler says the resolution also called for a reassessment to make sure that firefighting equipment stationed throughout the state to combat wildfires is where it will do the most good.

She says a $500 million appropriation for disaster relief is in a conference committee with the House of Representatives.