Water hope for Texas’s drought-stricken borderlands

Story: Tom Clynes

Photos: Mohammad Shahhosseini for Environmental Defense Fund

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It’s a familiar errand to many in Presidio County and throughout West Texas: Once a week — or twice in the hottest months — José Acosta meets his uncle, Luis Felipe Lujan, to help him bring water to his house. 

Lujan and Acosta: "We have to haul water to live normally."

Just a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, in the town of Presidio, the men fill two 500-gallon plastic water tanks, which they tow nine miles uphill to a cluster of modest houses known as Las Pampas Colonia.

"I like living here because it’s very calm,” says Lujan. “The only problem is that we have to haul water to live normally. That's more or less my life here."

Simple things like taking a shower, or doing the laundry, involve careful calculations.  "We have to economize as much as possible to avoid going for water too much,” he adds.