Texas water

More than a dozen years back, the Texas Legislature created 16 water regions, “based on a ‘bottom-up,’ consensus-driven approach” for water planning.

http://www.twdb.texas.gov/publications/shells/RegionalWaterPlanning.pdf

What you need to know about water in Texas is this: Some places have a lot of it; other places, not so much; and still other places almost none at all.

Places with lots of water have used what was needed and, for the most part, allowed the rest to empty into the Gulf of Mexico, where a proper mix of fresh and salt produced shrimp, red snapper and numerous other sea foods to grace tables not only in Texas, but all over these United States.

People with almost no water at all learned what to plant and how to prepare dry land, but mostly how to successfully run cattle on what is available.

The people in the not-so-much-water category seem to live mostly in the Dallas area -- Region C under the state designation -- and they want the water in Northeast Texas – Region D.

Region C wants to flood around 70,000 acres of Northeast Texas, mostly in Red River County (a third of the county), but also small parts of Morris and Titus counties. Most of the landowners in those counties don’t agree that their property should become the bottom of a lake just so Dallas can continue to have lush green lawns and golf courses.

In addition to the flooded acreage, an almost equal amount of private land will be set aside from any future development, to make up for the millions of trees killed and hundreds of thousands of animals displaced by Marvin Nichols.

The Clarksville Times http://clarksvillenews.net/ reports that a week ago in Mt. Pleasant, Texas, the water board and Region D board heard what 350 citizens think about the lake. Some people who spoke have history on the potential lake bottom going back to the 1840s. That’s how long their families have lived on and farmed the land. Other families go back only 120 years; still others 50 years.

Those families overwhelmingly oppose flooding 70,000 acres of Northeast Texas. So do environmental organizations and timber companies.

Favoring the lake are some elected mayors, county judges and county commissioners, in addition to high-dollar consultants and water officials in the Dallas area.

In addition to the 350 people at the Mt. Pleasant meeting, more than 7,000 people wrote letters to the Texas Water Development Board. A good guess – Almost all oppose the lake.

The Dallas-area group says it will raise the $3 billion or $4 billion to build Marvin Nichols. In 2000, the estimated cost was $1 billion.

But money will not cause Texans to throw up their hands and quit. That ain’t the way things work south of the Red River. What the Legislature might do is authorize one region of Texas (Dallas) to claim eminent domain over another region (Northeast Texas).

Texans are not too good at using pitchforks and torches when storming a castle, but they darned sure are good at using other extra-legal means if necessary to gain and keep freedom. Just ask Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.