Developing strategies to reduce the air quality and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with power generation has been a priority across environmental and research communities for many years. Likewise, reducing the freshwater impacts of the power sector has become of increasing interest, prompted by water-stress and heat waves in many regions of the United States. However, there has been very little quantification of the environmental trade-offs between water consumption and air emissions in the power generating industry. Without simultaneously evaluating these environmental variables, solutions aimed to address one environmental priority might lead to unintended consequences in the other. Bridging this research gap will provide a more holistic perspective on the environmental trade-offs associated with electricity generation. This study investigates environmental tradeoffs in the electricity generation sector by quantifying the temporally-resolved water use and emissions rates of power plants within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the independent system operator that governs the provision of electricity for the majority of Texas. A unit commitment and dispatch model, which simulates the cost-minimized dispatching algorithm used by ERCOT, is used to quantify hourly data in terms of water consumption, emissions (i.e. carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides), and marginal heat rates for 252 electric generation units in ERCOT across a sample historical year. Annual, seasonal, and daily variations are assessed. The results of this study are intended to inform more balanced decision making and environmental assessments for the power generation sector moving forward.