At the University of Texas at Austin, the manager of the oil and gas drilling logs collection has looked into and researched the option of “drilling” for water to solve the current drought in Texas. Researchers are using records to map brackish groundwater to eventually go to a desalination plant. It was determined that an aquifer in West Texas holds 4.9 trillion gallons of fresh water and 27.7 trillion gallons of brackish water. However, this all depends on the support from legislature to make it happen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/us/digging-up-old-drilling-logs-to-strike-not-oil-but-water.html?ref=science&_r=0