A bill that would force Houston to sell its water rights in a proposed reservoir west of Simonton, a maneuver Mayor Sylvester Turner has blasted as favoring industry over the city’s long-term interests, is headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

The bill, which sailed through the Texas House last month and passed the Senate 26-5 on Thursday, would require Houston to sell its rights in the proposed Allens Creek Reservoir by the end of this year for up to $23 million.

Turner said he was disappointed in the Senate vote and suggested the city may turn to the courts to block the bill, should the governor sign it into law.

“The city of Houston has met all existing contractual obligations, committed in writing to accelerate the implementation schedule and specifically requested to meet during these deliberations,” the mayor said in a statement late Thursday. “However, this was not enough. Taking the city of Houston’s future was the only option pursued. Through this action, the legislature has forced the city of Houston to take legal action to protect our future — action that will only cost everyone money, and more importantly, delay development of this vital resource.”

The buyer of Houston’s 70 percent share of the reservoir would be the current holder of the other 30 percent, the Brazos River Authority. The authority says huge petrochemical plants downstream in the Lake Jackson area have foregone expansions due to a lack of water resources, which authority leaders would offer at a lower price than the city.

Turner has said that proposed maximum payment offered in the bill would repay only what Houston has spent on the project, not compensate the city for the loss of 15 percent of its surface water rights, stressing Houston has no other readily available source to replace the roughly 65,000 acre-feet of water that it would lose.

“The City of Houston has wisely invested in water rights and infrastructure to support not only Houston, but the greater Houston area,” Turner’s statement said. “Water rights have been a fundamental building block supporting growth in Texas. This action removes a municipal water right solely for the purpose of providing a cheaper source of water for private industry — an Industry that has ready access to desalination technology and the Gulf of Mexico — for essentially unlimited, drought resistant water.

“Today,” the statement continued, “Texas cities were sent a discouraging message that planning for the future, investing wisely and following the rules are no longer valued in the State of Texas. We were clearly told, ‘Sometimes we just take things.’ Today, we all lost.”

The bill’s supporters say Houston has developed its water rights in the Trinity and San Jacinto river basins so thoroughly that it has no urgent need for the Allens Creek Reservoir, and note the 100,000-acre-foot lake is not listed in Houston’s five-year capital projects plan.

One acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons, enough to meet the average annual water needs of five Houston households.

Houston owns 70 percent of the water in Lake Livingston and Lake Conroe and all of Lake Houston and, as recently as 2016, expected those sources alone to meet the typical needs of its residents and other retail customers through 2060.

The city, however, also provides treated and untreated water throughout the region, and may need more water by 2030 to meet those wholesale needs, Houston Public Works Director Carol Haddock has said.

Turner committed in writing to begin the project after the bill was filed and penned another letter to the river authority when the bill appeared poised to pass a Senate committee, asking to schedule a meeting by this week and saying, “We have never had a direct conversation with Brazos River Authority executive staff or leadership since I have been in office.”

Turner earlier this month called the measure “the Speaker’s bill,” noting its industrial backers — the Texas Association of Manufacturers, Texas Chemical Council, Dow Chemical, Marathon Petroleum, BP America and BASF — have a huge presence in the district of House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton.

The bill’s author, House Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, disputed that, saying the bill is about enabling job creation by thirsty industrial plants in the Brazos basin. Houston’s untreated water rate is $235 per acre-foot, he and others have noted; the Brazos River Authority expects to charge about $120 per acre-foot after it builds the reservoir.

Experts have expressed concerned at the Legislature acting to reassign water rights against the will of any group, but state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, who carried the bill in the upper chamber, argued that the reservoir’s atypical history undercuts such worries.

“HB 2486 will give new life to the Allens Creek Reservoir Project, which has been contemplated since at least 1999. The Brazos River Authority is ready and willing to start on this massive project, which will have a tremendous positive effect for Texans and industry throughout the Brazos River basin. This is a bipartisan solution, passed by an overwhelming majority in the House and the Senate that addresses the unmet potential of the Allens Creek Reservoir Project.”

The Legislature in 1999 revived an expired permit that had been granted for a cooling lake at a nuclear power plant that was never built and gave the water rights to the city and the river authority, then acted again in 2011 to delay the construction start date from 2018 to 2025.