There is a rumbling in West Texas, but it is not coming from thunderclouds. While West Texans are used to blowing dirt and wind, it is a different feeling to have the earth shaking beneath you.
On February 15, 2025, a 5.0 earthquake rattled the region, reaching from Lubbock, Texas to El Paso. Over the past 20 years, seismic activity in the Permian Basin has been on the rise, and this is only a part of a much bigger story.
There are other rumblings, too—less tangible, but just as real. These stirs go deeper than the dirt and speak to a growing crisis: the depleting water table beneath it. By 2030, West Texas is facing a projected water shortage of 5 million acre-feet per year—a shortage that threatens to shake the very foundation of the food and fiber capital of the world and the West Texas way of life. Yet, these issues are connected. 2024 Issue
One possible solution to the region’s water crisis is emerging in the form of produced water. The Texas Produced Water Consortium at Texas Tech University is working to turn these challenges into opportunities and find sustainable solutions for both water needs in the region.
What is Produced Water:
The Permian Basin in West Texas leads the country in oil production, currently producing up to 6.6 million barrels per day. However, oil is not the most abundant source being pulled up from the ground-it is water. There is four to five times more water being produced than oil, thus the source of the name, produced water.
This water has been sitting thousands of feet underground for thousands of years and is extremely high in salinity, hydrocarbons and numerous other contaminants, essentially making it wastewater for the oil industry according to the Texas Produced Water Consortium. A small percentage of this water is recycled and used in the hydraulic fracking process, but the majority of it is returned back into the ground via injection wells or saltwater disposal wells. The injection of billions of barrels of water over time has been linked to the increase of earthquakes in the Permian Basin. As a result, The Texas Railroad Commission is encouraging the commercial recycling of liquid oil and gas wastes, including produced water according to a report from the Texas Produced Water Consortium. This has incentivized a sense of urgency from the oil and gas industry to find an alternative option for produced water.
Texas Produced Water Consortium
The Texas Produced Water Consortium was established in 2021 as a result of Senate Bill 601. The purpose of the consortium is to generate collaboration and resources to study produced water. Its membership is made up of Texas Tech faculty, stakeholders across the oil and gas industry, landowners, and environmental state agencies. According to research from the consortium, 25 million barrels of produced water are being produced every day.
Shane Walker is the director of the Texas Produced Water Consortium and 2004 Texas Tech graduate. Dr. Walker instructs courses in the physical and chemical treatment processes and the Design of Advanced Water Treatment Systems. His research is centered on innovative water treatment technologies, with a focus on getting more clean water from salty sources in dry areas, safely reusing wastewater for drinking, and cleaning up water produced during oil and gas operations so it can be used again.
He said growing up on a cotton farm east of Crosbyton instilled an appreciation for the importance water has on agricultural practices.
“Agriculture is close to my heart,” Walker said. “It is a real privilege to be at a university that has an agriculture school and the chance to work on an interdisciplinary collaboration with college of agriculture.”
Walker received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Texas Tech. While working on his graduate degrees in environmental and water resource engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in the early 2000s, Walker was first exposed to the harsh reality that billions of people across the globe did not have access to safe drinking water. He realized desalination had the ability to greatly affect change to much of the world’s population.
“If I could learn about desalination and how to make desalination more affordable, more accessible, less energy-intensive, maybe I could help people around the world,” Walker said..
Walker returned to his alma mater in 2023 to be a professor and eventually lead the Consortium. He credits Texas State Senator, Charles Perry, for creating the consortium.
“Let’s create an organization that will help facilitate conversations among these stakeholders, industry, upstream, midstream, environmental organizations, and state agencies to facilitate, to convene meetings and have these conversations to understand what the key needs and barriers are,” Walker said.
Walker said the consortium initially focused on the feasibility of cleaning the produced water to a safe level to be used on crops, range applications, and eventually municipalities.
“As a water treatment person, I know we have technologies that can do it,” he said. “It is not a question of, ‘Can we make the water clean and safe enough? ‘It is really, ‘How much is it going to cost?’” Walker said.
Over the past four years, Walker said the consortium’s research has shown it is possible to treat produced water. He said reverse osmosis is the most popular desalination technology, but because of the high salinity of the water in the Permian Basin, it requires thermal desalination.
Walker said they use different types of instrumentation to measure the water quality and make sure it is clean and safe. Through these studies, the consortium can feasibly see a 50% recovery rate of produced water to freshwater. During a hearing on May 24, 2025, at the Texas State Capitol, Walker said the recovery of 25 million barrels of produced water a day could make a significant difference in the state’s water crisis.
“Recovery of 50% of 25 million barrels of produced water a day has the potential to contribute significantly to the increasing demands of our water,” Walker stated at a recent hearing at the Texas State Capitol.
Krishna Jagadish, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Plant and Soil Science and the director of the Davis College Water Center, has also been highly involved with the consortium.
“We need some really out of the box solutions at this point, not just conservation,” said Jagadish, who has dedicated much of his career to working toward a sustainable water source.
As an industry and a region, Jagadish said we have reached a point of extreme challenges when it comes to water sustainability, and produced water could be that solution.
Jagadish is studying the effects of treated produced water on a combination of crops from forages to cotton. Specifically, he is researching how the treated water affects plant physiology, the root system, and its utilization of sunlight. So far, he is optimistic about his findings.
“It looks like the produced water does exactly the same thing the well water is doing once it is cleaned,” Jagadish said. “The solutions that we develop in this region could have a global impact.”
“Clean and safe water being discharged into the environment whether through land application or surface discharge, could literally touch millions of people’s lives,”
Shane walker
Beneficial Use of Desalinated Produced Water
Since the passage of Senate Bill 601, research and demonstration of produced water desalination has been implemented at six pilot locations that have shared water quality data with the Texas Produced Water Consortium. Walker said the consortium is preparing a report and will share the results with regulatory agencies.
Walker said there are two pathways that permit the beneficial use of this desalinated water.
“Interested parties can pilot test desalination technologies to remove salinity and additional polishing treatments such as filtration with granular activated carbon (GAC) or zeolites to remove trace constituents,” Walker said. “Water samples are collected periodically to conduct extensive water quality testing by NELAP-certified third-party laboratories.”
Land application permits for crop irrigation or range land restoration are under the authority of the Texas Railroad Commission, while the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality oversees surface discharge which adds flow to rivers.
“Red Bluff Reservoir, right at the border between New Mexico and Texas, is one of the locations that surface discharge permit applicants are interested in,” Walker said, “as well as just downstream along the Pecos River.
He believes the rangeland application can make a lasting impact not just on the land, but also the climate of West Texas.
“I think there’s a significant benefit to putting water on the land,” Walker said. “Having vegetation, especially native bunchgrass, helps re-establish the hydrologic cycle in the Permian Basin area that has been disrupted over the last few hundred years.”
The issue of infrastructure is one that cannot be overlooked. According to Walker, there are already thousands of miles of pipelines being used in the oil and gas industry to transport produced water to injection sites. He says the next steps would be to invest in building treatment desalination facilities located at centralized collection points on the grid and also near permitted discharge points.
“You need the collection system to get the water to a centralized location, treat it, and then run a few spurs to different land properties for land application, or a single discharge point in the river,” Walker said.
“The collection network for receiving it is already there,” Walker said. “We would need to build significant investment of capital, like hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars to build the treatment capacity for this amount of water.”
Policy in Action
Sen. Charles Perry is known throughout the Texas State Capitol as the “Champion of Water.” As the chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Water, and Rural Affairs, he has helped pass the State Water Plan and emphasizes agricultural and rural issues.
Perry has explored what regional resources are available but have not been developed.
“This is a huge resource in an area that is water deficient,” Perry said during a May 2024 committee hearing. “With brackish and produced water, El Paso and West Texas, generally speaking, has a viable resource there.”
Perry, a lifelong West Texan and Red Raider, pushed to bring the consortium to Texas Tech, which he says is uniquely positioned to conduct this research.
Jagadish said integrated efforts at Texas Tech bring together several resources that can collectively create sustainable solutions for water management in West Texas: the Davis College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, the Engineering Water Resources Institute, and the consortium.
“We have excellent vision going forward,” Jagadish said.
The Future is Hanging in the Balance
Farmers continue to battle challenging growing conditions as researchers seek to find ways to make produced water a lucrative irrigation option for crops.
In Martin County, a nearly 100-year-old family farm is in the hands of fifth generation farmer, Jeremy Louder, a 2000 agricultural and applied economics graduate from Texas Tech. Primarily a cotton farmer, Louder welcomes new opportunities for water sources.
“[Without other options] you are going to see the High Plains become more and more dry land and less irrigated,” said Louder, who is a member of the Texas Producers Water Consortium.
Louder said if produced water becomes an option, it could make irrigation more sustainable long-term and make farming in the Permian Basin more economically feasible for the next generation.
“It allows the producer to have more crop options and to grow higher-value crops, which is a big deal,” Louder said. “It is more important now more than ever to address these problems and to make a gallon of water go further.”
Looking to the Future:
Walker said the opportunity presented by produced water could.
“The realization that this is a massive amount of water, and it could be an enormous benefit to so many people in Texas, that was when I realized I am still fulfilling my calling,” Walker said. By treating up to 700 million gallons of water a day, Walker pointed out that there is enough water to support five cities the size of El Paso. Walker is confident that we will see dividends of the consortium’s research within 10 years, eventually benefiting millions of acres and millions of people.
“Clean and safe water being discharged into the environment, whether through land application or surface discharge, could literally touch millions of people’s lives,” Walker said.