By Mose Buchele, KUT News for StateImpact Texas
AUSTIN – An oil and gas drilling boom is transforming huge swaths of Texas. And a new bipartisan group of state lawmakers hopes to guide that transformation.
An event at the state capitol Wednesday served as a sort of coming out party for the Eagle Ford Shale Legislative Caucus, a group of more than 20 House and Senate state lawmakers. At the meeting, a packed room heard reports about the impacts of the south Texas drilling boom. Tom Tunstall is the research director for the Institute for Economic Development at UT-San Antonio. He presented research funded by America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group. It found massive economic benefits from the boom.
TOM TUNSTALL: “…which we forecast, in our May report to be by 2021, 90-billion dollars in the 20-county area. And those numbers may be low.”
But lawmakers also heard about the downside of the boom. A group of south Texas county judges talked about the need for funding to repair roads damaged by heavy trucking associated with drilling. Daryl Fowler is county judge in DeWitt county.
DARYL FOWLER: “So altogether on the revenue side of our budget right now, to handle all the damages that we see, which come to about $80,000 per mile, all we’ve seen is $102,000 from the state of Texas in the last fiscal year. So we’re not getting very far down the road- I can use that fund.”
State Senator Judith Zaffirini, a Laredo Democrat, helped found the caucus. She says those kinds of concerns are exactly what the caucus needs to hear about, as it crafts its strategy for the legislative session and decides what bills the caucus may want to get behind.
JUDITH ZAFFIRINI: “Well the caucus will be organized as a forum as you see today. But it will also bring together sentors and represetatives who care about these issues, and who want to unite in supporting legislation and in securing funding for the programs involved and in reaching out to our colleagues.”
When it comes to damaged roads, Fowler says two bills have already been introduced to fund repairs, with his group lobbying for a third.
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