Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller might, at long last, be making some sense
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller sits on a stool wearing a crisp white cowboy hat and a Western-cut blazer adorned with a silver pistol lapel pin. This is the last moment of an early September interview on WFAA-TV’s “Inside Texas Politics” where expectations and reality will be two-stepping together.
Senior Political Reporter and host Jason Whitley cuts right to the chase.
“Commissioner, welcome to the program,” he says. “Texas is fast losing this natural resource of water here. Are leaders in the state taking this seriously enough?”
“Well, I certainly am. I mean, it’s been an issue for me for 10 years,” answers Miller, who is about as traditional looking a Republican as you could rustle up anywhere. “We lose about a farm a week in Texas, but it’s 700 years before we run out of land. The limiting factor is water. We’re out of water, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.”
We live in a time when every crazy thing you can imagine pretty much happens daily. But still, it’s a “holy moly” moment when the state’s ranking official on agricultural issues blurts out that “WE’RE OUT OF WATER.”
In the moments that follow, I clutch my coffee cup a bit too hard as Commissioner Miller walks through the painful specifics of Texas’ brewing water crisis and, what sounds like to me, a coming economic collapse.
“We lost the entire industry of sugar production. Sugar cane has gone from the Valley. The last sugar plant had to close because the farmers couldn’t get enough water to raise the sugar cane. We pushed out 6,000 acres of citrus for lack of water.”
These assertions meet the ear with a large KA-BOOM.
“So, here’s another huge factor and people need to know this,” Miller adds minutes later. “America’s been known as the breadbasket of the world. We kind of feed the world. Last year, it’ll probably shock your listeners to know that we bought 16 billion dollars more food than we exported. We bought in food more than we exported.”
“And we haven’t done that in the past?” Whitley interjects.
“Never done that. Not in my lifetime that I know of,” says Miller. “This year’s forecast was at – double – 32 billion dollars imported. Last week, the new revised report came out. We’re going to import 42 billion dollars more food products than we’re going to export. That’s unacceptable. A lot of that is poor marketing by the USDA. But a lot of it’s attributed to we don’t have water to grow the crops. Our tomato production in the Valley is just about gone. They usually grow five crops of vegetables in that winter garden area. They have enough water to grow one. So, our production is down 80 percent. So, it’s all about water.
“You can’t get a Pecos cantaloupe anymore. The wells are dry out there … those farmers are gone. There’s no water. They had to leave.”
In a couple of minutes, Jason Whitley reads my thought balloon and goes there.
“What does that mean when I go to the grocery store? If Texas can’t grow some citrus crops, if it can’t grow tomatoes, are Texans paying more already because of this issue?”
“You know, it’s still…” Hmmm, I notice Miller sounds tentative. Like he just remembered he’s a Republican and this could veer off to someplace he doesn’t want to go. “The prices are still pretty competitive.”
At that exact second though, Miller grabs his hat and leaps.
“But you are paying more, and it is the added freight. You know, it has to come from Mexico, Central, South America. That all adds cost. So, that’s all passed on. And that’s why the cost of gas and groceries, you know, you’ve seen the charts. How much groceries are up 20 percent to 40 percent every time you go to the grocery store. And that’s why.”
Yikes, did a Republican just frame the cause of inflation and the rising cost of groceries without invoking the name of Joseph R. Biden as the black-hatted hombre responsible for the whole mess?
“Put this in context for us,” says Whitley. “How serious is this situation for the state of Texas? Last week I called it an existential threat. Was that hyperbole?”
“No, I think it is a threat,” Miller answers coolly. “People are not talking about it. But we need to get it on the radar. We’ve got to… We’re Texans. We can take care of ourself. We’ve got to quit whining about Mexico not paying their water bill.”
Ahh, Mexico. A favorite target of Texas politicians and a certain grumpy segment of the Texas populace. But, funny thing, Sid Miller won’t abide that today.
“A lot of people, especially in that part of the state, blame Mexico for not fulfilling their treaty. They’re supposed to supply us with so much water. You know we share the water in the Rio Grande. And that’s basically the only water down there. There’s not sufficient groundwater to supply the cities or the farmers.
“But my view is we’ve got to quit complaining and do something about it. We’ve got to, you know, pull ourself up by the bootstraps and we’ve got to start doing one thing like off-channel storage in high water events. That water just runs right out in the bay. We miss it. It goes right by us. We’ve got to start being smarter. We spend millions and millions of dollars on storm water drainage, getting rid of storm water. We need to capture that and do rainwater harvesting.”
Miller begins outlining all the things we in the State of Texas could be doing to prevent this coming water crisis from seizing us by the throats. Rainwater harvesting, certainly, but also infrastructure fixes and using reverse osmosis to clean up brackish water.
“We’ve got to recycle our water. Our water treatment water goes right into the creek, right out in the Gulf,” he says. “We need to capture that and let my farmers irrigate with it. A great example of that is Israel. They don’t waste a drop of water over there. We’ve got to do a better job, a smarter job of managing our water resources. We have infrastructure problems. Some of our cities lose 30 percent of the water every time they get it to the customer. That’s unacceptable. We can’t waste 30 percent of our water.”
“I think you wrote in an op-ed recently that there were half a dozen cities that wasted some, what, 88 billion gallons or something?” asks Whitley.
“Eighty-eight billion gallons,” Miller responds flatly.
Whitley notes that “you’re one of the few statewide elected officials that I know of that’s sounding the alarm on this issue. Why aren’t more people talking about this?”
“Well, I don’t… You know, they should be. I mean, we’ve got to…” Miller trails off.
Minutes later, Whitley searches for clarity. “Commissioner, what do you want the legislature to do next session?”
“One, I’d like them to redo our water plan,” says Miller. “Go back and revisit that and come up with a new, refreshed 50 -year water plan. I’d like them to encourage, incentivize counties and states to conserve water, to fix their infrastructure, their leaky pipes and everything. We’re wasting water. We’ve got to stop that. There’s a whole lot they can do.”
Sid is starting to hedge at this point. Like he might not believe the Texas Lege is going to do anything. But they must be on top of this, so I jump over to an online document called the 2024 Interim Legislative Charges – basically Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s hit list of legislative priorities for the coming session.
And guess what? Out of 57 major priorities that he outlines, addressing the coming Texas Water Crisis is not among them. Sure, there’s an item called Water System Reliability, but its mission to “Evaluate water systems in Texas and identify opportunities to better equip those systems to serve the public” sounds like someone didn’t get the hair-on-fire memo from Miller.
In a minute, host Jason Whitley notices that all the dirty laundry hasn’t been dumped on the floor.
“I want to ask about biosolids being used as fertilizer. This is a big deal we’ve reported on here as well, too. It’s called PFAS, the microplastics that are in all of us, the chemicals that we’ve all consumed all the time. Companies are selling this to farmers. Farmers are using this on their land. Their land is contaminated, killing their crops, their livestock. How big of a deal do you think this is right now? This is not just isolated, it seems like, to Johnson County south of Fort Worth. This seems a lot more widespread.”
“Well, in the beginning, it was getting rid of sewage sludge, which makes really good fertilizer,” says Miller. “But we didn’t know anything about PFAS at that time. So, over a number of years, it builds up. And then when it builds up to a certain level, it’s toxic, kills your livestock. That’s where we are in Johnson County. So much of that has been applied to those farms down there. And it’s… It’s a forever chemical. It doesn’t go away. There’s really not any way to clean those farms up. So, we’ve got to reach out to the EPA. This is something that needs to be regulated. It’s not now.
“But it’s very dangerous for our environment. I consider myself an environmentalist. I want clean water. I want clean land. I want, you know, I want clean air.”
At this point, you wonder who the hell this Miller guy is and why he’s masquerading as Texas’ ultra-right-wing Republican Ag Commissioner. For one, he’s just acknowledged learning something that has changed his mind. Two, he’s suggesting that we need to involve the EPA and regulate dangerous chemicals. Seriously, is he not aware that the second most popular sport in Texas is suing the EPA? Three, he stops just short of admitting he’s a cross-dressing Communist – something abhorrent to the real Sid Miller – by stating that he’s an “en-vi-ron-mentalist”.
Even Whitley is incredulous. “Do you consider yourself an environmentalist?”
“Absolutely. Yeah. Every farmer and rancher are probably the best environmentalists on the planet because we all have one goal in common,” says Miller. “Don’t matter if you’re a farmer or rancher or where your place is. We want to leave our place in better shape than we found it for our kids and our grandkids. And that’s a good environmentalist.”
Whitley presses Miller: “Do you think the legislature should give the TCEQ more power instead of waiting on the EPA to address this? Should the state try to address this in these hot spot areas?”
“I think the state could address it,” Miller answers, but you can tell his heart is not in it because, let’s be honest, this would be as likely as the Tooth Fairy stepping in to solve the problem. “But I think the proper channel will be through the EPA because we (wouldn’t) want other states’, you know, livestock poisoned. It’s not isolated to Texas. This is a problem for the whole United States.”
Whitley winds it up with a fastball: “Do you expect the legislature is going to address this at all?”
“I think they will. I don’t know if they’ll get anything passed. But it will be addressed.” As Miller speaks, it’s clear that he’s slipping in and out of political reality. “It hopefully should have been an interim study. I don’t believe it was. But maybe we can at least shed some light on it. If we can’t get legislation this time, we can bring the subject up, give it a top priority for a future date.”
In other words, nope, not a chance in hell that will happen.
+++
Only weeks later in September, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is huddling with South Texas leaders at the McAllen Convention Center for their quarterly South Texas Alliance Cities meeting to address the region’s ongoing water crisis. I guess Sid Miller wasn’t there because the discussion quickly turns to ensuring Mexico fulfills its obligations.
“The state is working to make sure the Mexican government follows through its end, and delivers the water supply required by the 1944 water treaty,” Abbott tells the assembled officials.
McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos briefly spins a tale of coming innovation, suggesting the city will combat water scarcity by investing in desalination plants as a long-term solution.
“We’re going to desalination. It’s going to be through wells, and that’s what we’re looking at. We’ve already studied it,” Villalobos says to the group. “I think we’ve already probably hired some engineers for the purpose of looking into it. So, it’s something that we are going to have to do. No two ways about it.”
Let that sink in. “I think we’ve already probably hired some engineers…” As a can-do attitude, that falls a bit short.
+++
Miller is a no-nonsense rancher from the dusty back roads of Stephenville. He’s come here to fight what he clearly sees to be a raging fire, but he knows he’s holding just one bucket of water.
I’m reminded that I’ve never voted for Miller. Probably because his positions on trans issues and myriad other social questions are as terrifying as they are anachronistic. But that’s THAT Sid Miller. This Sid Miller, he seems OK, and I notice the hundreds of comments from others who have watched this same video interview.
“First time I’ve seen someone in Texas speak about something that truly matters,” writes a trucker from Houston.
“He may be the most sensible man in Texas,” says another.
“OMG-a Texas government official WHO’S REALLY COMPETENT AND ON THE BALL—IT’S A MIRACLE–You Go Sid.”
You know, they’re right. I kind of like this Sid Miller. He’s somebody I think I could work with.
The question is, are there any Texas Republicans who will work with him?