Texas’s strong population and job growth, often called the “Texas Miracle,” highlights its economic success and appeal. However, as both residents and businesses continue to arrive, keeping up with infrastructure needs is now urgent rather than simply a future concern.
Today, Texas is home to around 31 million residents. By 2060, the population is expected to be between 40 and 46 million, and it could reach 50 million by 2070.
Water and Sewer Construction Has Doubled But It’s Not Enough
U.S. Census Bureau data shows state and local governments nearly doubled annual water and sewer construction spending between 2019 and 2025, reaching levels comparable to bridge and school building programs. The projects reflect a strategy of pairing federal support with local matching dollars to make undeveloped tracts competitive for industry. And Texas ranks among the top states in total dollars awarded.
Now with the future of federal funding uncertain, the Texas Legislature’s Proposition 4 on the November ballot will ideally pass to fund water projects. Researchers say the state must additionally invest as much as $154 billion in water reuse systems, desalination and aquifer recharge to avoid future shortages.
The latest drought has coincided with an industrial boom that is sucking up the shrinking reserves. Corpus Christi attracted more than $57.4 billion in investment just in the past decade. Companies like Tesla and Exxon Mobil built facilities that require vast amounts of water for refining fuels, lithium, and plastics, attracted by cheap resources and tax incentives. Now, with reservoirs dwindling, Corpus Christi warns that within 18 months, it may not meet water demand for its industries and more than 500,000 residents across seven counties.
MUDs Provide a Unique Solution for Texas Growth
In rapidly growing, unincorporated areas where city services are limited or unavailable, Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) enable development to proceed with a level of foresight and coordination that would be difficult to achieve otherwise. MUDs transfer infrastructure development costs from taxpayers to private developers, who are reimbursed through district taxes if their projects succeed.
MUD districts are overseen by elected boards and regulated by the state. While some debate persists over their impact, the housing industry insists MUDs facilitate phased infrastructure investments, maintain housing affordability, and help stabilize local tax bases, setting Texas apart from states with stricter policies.
“It’s Time to Quarantine the Monopoly on Wires”
Texas is a poster child for utility competition, having fundamentally reshaped its electricity market through deregulation. Rather than relying on a single vertically integrated utility to generate, transmit, and sell power, Texas opened the doors to dozens of retail electric providers competing for customers. This model empowers consumers to choose who supplies their electricity, encourages innovation, and forces companies to differentiate through price, service, renewable offerings, and customer perks.
But even Texas has little competition on the distribution side. Local wires companies—like Oncor, CenterPoint, AEP Texas, and TNMP—are regulated utilities whose rates and service standards are set by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). They don’t compete for customers and they don’t sell electricity. Instead, they recover costs through regulated delivery fees paid by every customer on the grid.
Doug Lewin, a nationally recognized energy expert in Texas’s energy, environment, and climate sectors hosts The Energy Capital Podcast. He recently hosted Economist Lynne Kiesling, who said, “Texas already showed the world that wholesale competition works. Volatility spurs investment, spreads risk to investors and drives down long-term costs. The next frontier is distribution. If we quarantine the monopoly to the wires while opening structured competition for everything else, we’ll see faster innovation, more reliability per dollar, and lower bills.”
Addressing Surging Demand for Public Safety Services
As communities across Texas swell with new residents and industries, the demand for essential public safety services—police, fire, and emergency medical response—has also surged. Rapid population growth can strain existing departments, challenging their ability to maintain response times, public safety, and emergency preparedness. To keep pace, local governments must prioritize investments in staffing, equipment, training, and new facilities, ensuring that expanding neighborhoods receive timely and effective protection. The Texas Municipal League maintains a page listing grant and funding assistance programs that municipalities in Texas can access to help.
In October, Gov. Greg Abbott signed two bills into law to improve health care in rural communities and held a rural health care roundtable with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Austin. Additionally, President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its Rural Health Transformation Program, will deliver $50 billion in rural health support across the United States.
Infrastructure Careers are Future-Proof in the Face of Continued Population Growth, Corporate Relocations, Energy Expansion, and Rapid Suburban Development
Texas’s rapid growth has been met with innovative solutions like MUDs for infrastructure, electricity market deregulation to encourage competition and innovation, and legislative efforts to address public safety and rural health care needs, all aimed at supporting expanding communities and ensuring affordability, reliability, and quality of essential services. But the investment is more than financial. A robust labor force, including engineers, technicians and other skilled professionals, is also essential to meet these growing demands. Every mile of new highway, hospital, school, water plant, broadband line, and electric substation requires skilled people to build it and skilled people to operate it—not just today, but for decades.
THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN VOL 5 2025
BUILDING SAVVY MAGAZINE.
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