With its population booming and a drought that won't quit, central Texas is staring down a water shortage.

So Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has stepped forward with a solution: desalination.

Patterson's General Land Office yesterday announced the hiring of a consultant to study the prospect of building a desalination plant to turn brackish groundwater into fresh water near New Braunfels.

"We don't need to live one step away from crisis and drought," Patterson said in announcing the contract in Austin. "Texas may be short on water, but not innovation. Desal is part of Texas' water future, and we're going to start right here."

The Interstate 35 corridor between San Antonio and Austin is one of the fastest-growing regions in the state, straining the Edwards Aquifer and surrounding surface waters. Predictions of a warming climate and more frequent droughts in the region add to the urgency of finding new water supplies.

"Anybody involved in water planning knows our population is set to double in the next 50 years, and there are no new surface reservoirs being built," Patterson spokesman Jim Suydam said in an interview. "It takes 30 years to build and permit one. There have to be more sources brought online."

The primary driver behind the proposal is an effort to generate more revenue for public schools from the lands, which were set aside in 1876 specifically for that purpose.

The fund has traditionally been fed by energy development on state lands, but Patterson wants to diversify the portfolio by adding residential and commercial development. He would be using power given to the Land Office in 2005 to invest in real estate using proceeds from the sale of school fund lands and revenue from mineral leases and royalties.

But the plan goes nowhere without a reliable freshwater supply. Development of three school-fund tracts in the corridor -- a total 9,000 or so acres -- would be impossible without fresh water.

"The Land Office hasn't traditionally been in the water business, but we have these big tracts of land that could be developed, and we need to have the water for it," Suydam said.

The desalination study will examine available water supplies in the area, said Mike Lemonds, the Land Office's director of special projects.

"The quantity and the quality of the water are the biggies, because that really drives what you are capable of desalinating," Lemonds said in an interview. "Obviously, the more saline the water, the more challenging it is to desal effectively. But we think based on some other projects in the area that it could be."

Easing pressure on lakes, rivers

A desalination plant is under construction in San Antonio, he said. It would be too expensive to pipe groundwater from the New Braunfels lands to that plant, he added.

If the New Braunfels plant goes forward and proves effective, it could be replicated to address potential water shortages -- and the limits on development that come with them -- elsewhere in the state, Lemonds said.

"This has potential to be a model in other areas of the state where the state owns land," he said.

While the main objective of the initiative is to find a new source of water to support development on the Permanent School Fund lands, a new desalination plant in the area would also provide environmental benefits, Suydam said.

"You enter a new water source and it takes the pressure off the Highland Lakes ... and it even goes down to the health of the bays and estuaries" on the Gulf Coast, he said. "Every drop you take out of the river is a drop that doesn't go back to the bays and estuaries. We're not saying this is going to help with all the inflow problems to the bays and estuaries, but it can sure help."

Representatives from the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club did not return calls by press time.

The feasibility report should be completed by early August, Lemonds said. If the report is favorable, the next step will be to drill a test well, he added.

"If the water is there, then I think the School Land Board is ready to invest the time and resources needed to deliver an entirely new and drought-resistant source of water for central Texas," Patterson said. "This is a game changer, a common-sense fix for the Texas water crisis."

Reese writes from Santa Fe, N.M.