Lobbyist hired to delay water grab bill

AUSTIN – The Houston Chronicle reports the Texas Senate voted against delaying a controversial East Texas groundwater export project on the same day the company behind it hired one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s top advisors as a lobbyist. Conservation Equity Management, a company affiliated with Dallas investor Kyle Bass, hired Allen Blakemore on Tuesday, the same day the legislation hit the Senate floor, according to lobbying records filed at the Texas Ethics Commission. Blakemore is Patrick’s political consultant and has also worked on the campaigns of several Republican senators. The Senate, which Patrick oversees, ultimately agreed to back a state-led study of the company’s proposal to pump huge amounts of groundwater out from under Anderson and Henderson counties. But it stripped a provision that would have put the project on hold until the findings came out in 2027.

The change “gutted the most important part of this bill,” according to the author, state Rep. Cody Harris, whose district includes the counties Bass is looking to tap. The legislation ultimately died on Wednesday night when the special session ended, in a win for Bass. Blakemore directed questions to Bass, whose spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Patrick said in a statement that he was “not involved in it at any level.” He said the senator who sponsored the bill and the one who chaired the committee that vetted it made all the decisions. “I told them we would do whatever they decided – it was up to them,” Patrick said. Two companies affiliated with Bass have applied for exploratory permits for wells capable of pumping more groundwater out from under the two counties than is currently available. The companies have not yet applied for permits to export the water, but Bass signaled that is his intention, saying that the water was needed to address looming shortages elsewhere and could go “anywhere south of Waco and… north of Dallas-Fort Worth.” The permit decision now rests with the State Office of Administrative Hearings.