MARKETPLACE.ORG - Out in the ghost town of Terlingua in remote West Texas, craggy mountains loom high in the distance, largely uninhabited save for a few houses dotting the hillside. But on a morning in late November, there was a change to this landscape, where a drilling rig cut into the horizon, spewing dark shale into the air.
... The state's water laws weren't written with the expectation that this many people would live in the desert, said Amy Hardberger, a water law professor at Texas Tech University. Texas land management was built on the assumption that ranchers with large properties would be good stewards of the land “because they do have this dependency on the land working,” Hardberger said...
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