A city 20 miles south of Austin has become one of the fastest-growing in the US – despite an alarming lack of water amid scorching temperatures.
Kyle, Texas, can be found down the road from the city, about an hour north of San Antonio.
It has the same humid subtropical climate as Austin, but locals say that it lacks the infrastructure to beat the heat.
Despite its heat-related woes, Kyle’s population has jumped from 5,314 in 2000 to 62,500 in 2023 – making it the second-fastest growing city in the whole country.
A new pipeline is currently being built to bring water to the community, at the cost of $250 million. Delays, however, have hindered the project. Heat-related deaths, meanwhile, remain higher than ever, reaching a record 341 in Texas last year.
‘I’ve seen people completely black out,’ Alex Stockton, a member of the Laborers’ International Union of North America who runs construction crews that drilled to lay conduits for a housing development in Kyle, recently told The Wall Street Journal.
‘I’ve blacked out myself.’
He moved to Buda, a town located right between Kyle and Austin, a year ago, and has found the heat to be extreme.
He told the paper how his crew gets only 30 minutes to rest each day – a rule he ignores if he sees a coworker showing signs of heat exhaustion. He tells them to sit down, he said.
‘A lot of companies don’t like that style,’ Stockton explained, as companies like Amazon and Tesla continue to set up shop in the area.
‘They come by and say, “Why’s he sitting there?” I’m like, “I don’t know, so he doesn’t die?”‘
The heat index, a measure that takes into account humidity, reached a record 118 degrees in the Austin area in June of last year, and 115 a few months ago.
In May, emergency response calls to the area clocked in in at 125 – double the amount last year – as the population continues to grow.
‘I had people working in factories or at an Amazon warehouse taking precautions and going to work with a big jug of water,’ John Turner, the medical director of four emergency and urgent-care facilities in the region, told the Journal.
‘[A]nd they still ended up in renal failure.’
Meanwhile, housing developments continue to sprout up to house the newly arriving residents, as the center that opened in late 2020 brought with it more than 200 jobs.
Stockton is part of a wave of newcomers who have arrived since 2020 that have grown the local population swell from 45,700 to 62,500.
Amazon recently opened a distribution center in Buda as well, in 2021, and Tesla its Gigafactory on the outskirts of Austin in 2022.
The migration can be traced back to a demand for high-quality industrial spaces that has surged along with online sales for such companies, at a locale that’s not only subject to relatively low taxes, but situated to serve two cities.
Kyle’s strategic location between these two top performing cities, along the I-35 corridor, has seen it surface as the second-fastest grown city in the US, behind another Austin satellite in Georgetown.
As newcomers continue to arrive in search of lower taxes and more hang for your buck real estate, a strain has been put on the community’s water supply.
Recently, it’s gotten so bad, Kyle has been forced to buy water from nearby San Marcos.
Mayor Travis Mitchell told Fox Business last week of why he believes the city’s water supply has been so depleted.
‘It’s a combination of multiple factors,’ he explained.
‘The droughts are longer and more frequent, so that’s one.
‘The second,’ he said, ‘is just the growth in general – more homes, more people, more yards, more irrigation systems, more drawing down on the aquifer.’
Speaking to the Journal, he said the city, will adapt, citing restrictions already put on lawn watering and the pipeline he said will start pumping water sometime next year.
However, that timeline remains in doubt, after one set for last year was already pushed back, in part because of the rush of residents, the people behind the pricey project have said.
Graham Moore, executive director of Alliance Water, told Fox of the factors driving the delays: ‘Some of them are equipment-specific… as we came out of the pandemic and had kind of a tight market on some equipment.’
He added that since Kyle has become increasingly more developed, it took an ‘inordinate amount of time’ to get the easements and property rights necessary to lay the pipeline.
The city is considering constructing a new plant at its water treatment and wastewater facility to return treated water to a drinkable level, as the Carrizo pipeline remains unfinished.
‘We’re trying very hard to increase the supply while also reshaping the demand and putting programs in effect to that end,’ Mitchell told the Journal.
‘That new water supply from the [pipeline], while very important, is not the only way for us to increase our water supply.’
When finished, the pipeline will bring water from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer, which itself spans 60 counties.
‘Our current supply of water is around 5.7 million gallons a day,’ said Mike Murphy, Kyle’s director of water utilities, of the 20-mile connector.
‘[The pipeline] is going to add an additional 1.7 million to that.’
Severe drought, meanwhile, continues to bombard the region, further threatening its water supply.
The city remains under Stage 3 drought restrictions, after the city already banned washing cars at home and using local water for construction projects.
In the spring, the city council approved a contract to buy water from San Marcos, costing Kyle at least $274,000 annually.
Staff have said the city will likely not come out of Stage 3 before fall 2024, as Mayor Mitchell has already revealed plans for a $99 million sports complex that he says will attract more residents, as well as hotels and restaurants.
‘Water is always going to be a concern, [but] I don’t think we should be worried about it,’ Murphy told KXAN in June. ‘We’ve got ample water to do our day-to-day business now.
‘And with this 1.7 million coming on in February, it’s going to add to that.’
By 2027, when the pipeline’s input will increase to 2 million gallons, things will be smooth sailing, he said.
‘By 2027, we’ll be in really good shape,’ the mayor insisted. ‘This is going to increase our water portfolio, which is what we’re trying to do right now in Kyle.’