In a tranquil state park in Central Texas, workers are busily piecing together massive yellow pipes that spell salvation for this city. The pipes run along a park road, slither between trees, cross a street to avoid an ancient cemetery, hug a state-owned easement and then land at a treatment plant. Without it, what everyone fears most would come true: The water will stop running. This $250,000 pipeline project will bring water from a rock quarry seven miles away to Groesbeck by Dec. 6 — the date that state officials monitoring the drought said the town would run out of water, finally sucked dry by Texas’ historic drought. But it is only a six-month supply. That’s enough time, Mayor Jackie Livingston hopes, to find a permanent solution. “We will do anything, anything short of hauling water,” Livingston said. Imperiled towns around Texas are finding short-term solutions to water supply problems brought on by the drought, some just in time to avert a crisis. But finding a permanent solution is tricky, and in many cases, expensive. That makes the plight of finding water doubly difficult: Even if they could find a fix, they also have to find the cash to pay for it. 

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