$7 BILLION REASONS TO SAY NO TO FLAWED MARVIN NICHOLS REPORT

TWDB Report Uses 2018 Figures to Gauge “Feasibility” of Controversial Reservoir

October 10, 2024

NORTHEAST TEXAS – Last year the Texas Legislature directed the Texas Water Development Board to study the feasibility of the Marvin Nichols Reservoir, with findings to be delivered ahead of the start of the next Legislative Session. The project, which was first introduced more than 50 years ago, would use eminent domain to take more than 200,000 acres of land from Northeast Texans to create a water source for the DFW region. Recently the board released a draft of the report, inviting public comment by October 25, 2024. In response, the steering committee for Preserve Northeast Texas issued the following statement:

“The draft report by the Texas Water Development Board is not a serious effort to assess whether the reservoir project would be good for Texas and Texans. It is superficial and uses a severely limited definition of what constitutes ‘feasible’. It does not seriously investigate the negative impacts on families, communities, school districts, industries, wildlife or the environment. Further, it ignores how the impact of conservation, water reuse and recycling, and the leveraging of existing untapped resources could address DFW’s water needs. It does not consider the many technological advancements that may have been made in the half century since the project was conceived.

“But perhaps the most stark and outrageous reason that this report is not a serious review is because its ‘feasibility’ is based on an estimated total capital cost of approximately $4.4 billion. Just two weeks after the report was released, the engineering firm who designed the reservoir, and who is expected to gain contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars if it is built, presented an updated cost estimate of more than $7 billion. All Texas taxpayers should be outraged by this and have seven billion reasons to say no to this flawed report and the controversial, unnecessary and outdated reservoir.”

Texans can share their feedback on this plan by sending an email to feasibility@twdb.texas.gov by October 25, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. CDT to be considered.

Preserve Northeast Texas Steering Committee

Bill Ward, Jim Thompson, Max Shumake, Shirley Shumake, Cass County Judge Travis Ransom, Stanley Jessee, Linda Price, Dr. Jim Marshall, Richard LeTourneau, Cynthia Gwinn, Gary Cheatwood, Janice Bezanson. For more information visit www.PreserveNortheastTexas.org.

Northeast Texans press for alternatives to land grab for reservoir

By Michael Marks

Texas Standard, October 3, 2024

The Marvin Nichols Reservoir would require the state to seize farmland through eminent domain.

A group of concerned citizens and water planners assembled in Arlington on the afternoon of Sept. 30 to take up an old argument: whether to build the Marvin Nichols Reservoir.

This debate is largely between urban and rural interests. The proposed 66,000-acre reservoir was first proposed in 1968 to meet the future water needs of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. But it would come at the expense of landowners to the northeast, whose land would be flooded under the current plan.

The project would cost more than $4 billion, and planners are taking comments from the public on the proposal until Oct. 25.

Lana Ferguson, a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, was at the meeting. She spoke to Texas Standard about the reservoir’s future. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: Well, this is a discussion I said been going on for decades. What was the focus of this meeting on Monday?

Lana Ferguson: I think the groups kind of had two goals.

So you had the folks that represent Dallas-Fort Worth area with the Region C Water Planning Group. And their goal is to figure out if this reservoir is possible. And they’re wanting to collaborate with the people out in the northeast and eastern Texas that would be impacted land-wise, especially by this reservoir.

So you have the one group that’s wanting to work together. They’ve both said they’re willing to work together, but the latter group is saying this is going to impact us and impact us poorly with their land being taken, tax cuts, etc. A lot of them have been worried for a long time about this.

Well, I think you wrote about a dozen people spoke at this meeting. Is it clear how many people’s land would be seized for the reservoir?

I’m not sure on a specific number, but there have been a lot of landowners, farmers who have spoken out and said that they will be directly impacted. And this is impacting generations of people because their grandparents own the land and they hope that they can keep this land instead of losing it for the generations to come, as well.

Well, what are the possible alternatives? The idea here, again, is to develop a water resource that’s going to serve a really huge metro area.

Yeah, absolutely. So some folks have said that a lot of the water in North Texas is wasted because of leaks or the way water is used in North Texas – watering lawns, just leaving your water running when you’re brushing your teeth. It’s a wide variety.

So they’re saying we need to fix that infrastructure before we look to build reservoirs elsewhere. There’s a lot of other lakes that are already available to pull water from. They’re wanting to look at other ways to prevent this reservoir from being built. And they’ve listed a few ways of doing that.

Well, what comes next? I think I saw you wrote this was first talked about in 1968. So is any kind of final decision looming or could the Marvin Nichols Reservoir question continue to be unanswered for a while to come?

So the next major deadline is going to be Oct. 21.

The water board has drafted a feasibility study saying that this project can be done. There’s no barriers economically, land-wise or time-wise to getting this done. And public comment is being accepted on that through midnight on the 25th.

So people are able to comment on this and we’ll see if that impacts the study at all. But after that, it’s kind of in the hands of the water board to decide if they’re going to move forth with this or if they decide not to. This will continue looming probably for a long while.

Well, and I guess the opposition, these landowners, they may not be large in numbers, but their message is kind of to the rest of Texas – “if this can happen to us, it can happen to you. “This isn’t the way we should be be treating folks in Texas, taking their land for something like this.” Is that sort of what you’ve heard?

Absolutely. Eminent domain is a big talker in Texas. And Texas has so much private land that these landowners out in East Texas are just saying it’s not right and it’s not very Texan to do a big land grab like this.

Opponents of Marvin Nichols Reservoir to voice concerns at regional water planning meeting

By Karl Richter

Texarkana Gazette, September 28, 2024

TEXARKANA, Texas — A delegation of opponents of the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir will travel Monday to voice their concerns at a regional water planning meeting.

The Region C Regional Water Planning Group is considering the reservoir for inclusion as a recommended strategy in its 2026 Region C Regional Water Plan, according to the Texas Water Development Board. During a Region C meeting Monday in Arlington, Texas, opponents hope to make clear how building the reservoir in Northeast Texas would harm residents.

Region C includes much of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and would get most of the water the reservoir would collect.

Jim Thompson, chair of North East Texas Regional Water Planning Group; Janice Bezanson, senior policy director at Texas Conservation Alliance; Cass County Judge Travis Ransom, Preserve Northeast Texas Steering Committee member; and Dr. Jim Marshall, Preserve Northeast Texas Steering Committee member, will speak at the meeting.

Thompson invited Region C officials to discuss local residents’ concerns in 2021, he said.

“We heard nothing for them for over two and a half years, and recently received letters saying they were going to put Marvin Nichols in in their plan as a recommended water planning strategy. …

“We do not believe they understand, nor may they care, the impacts that it’s going to have on the Northeast Texas area. We’ve been banging that drum for many years, but not a whole lot of people have listened. This is one of those opportunities to tell them to their face what the problems are,” he said.

Some people who only recently have gotten involved in Region C planning may be unaware of the Marvin Nichols issue, Bezanson said.

“One of the basic things we want to do is to educate the other members of the Regional Water Planning Group what tremendous impacts this would have on Northeast Texas, the building it would have, and also to talk about alternatives, that there are other ways to do this. Some of them are cheaper. All of them have less impact,” she said.

Creating Marvin Nichols Reservoir in the Sulphur River Basin in Titus, Red River, and Franklin counties was proposed as early as 1968, according to a feasibility review recently published by TWDB. The project has been included in regional and state water plans since 2001.

As planned, the reservoir would store up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water, have an inundated footprint area of about 66,103 acres, and provide a firm yield of approximately 451,500 acre-feet of water per year, according to TWDB. Region C would get about 361,200 acre-feet per year. The remaining 20% would be reserved for local use.

Local opposition has pushed back against the plan for decades. Advocacy group Preserve Northeast Texas says Marvin Nichols Reservoir would “use eminent domain to force property owners off thousands of acres of family lands, negatively impact wildlife habitat, drown resources that would devastate the timber and agriculture-based economy in the region, and inundate archaeological and historic sites and cemeteries.”

Opponents also argue that reservoirs are expensive, outdated, inefficient infrastructure and that the DFW area could have all the water it needs through practices such as municipal water reuse/recycling, conservation and capturing stormwater.

The Marvin Nichols project has not proceeded past the proposal stage, and it may never do so. It will be among many potential water supply projects in Region C’s plan, Thompson said.

“They will have a list of population projections over the next 50 years, their water supply projections over the next 50 years, and they have to verify in their plan certain strategies to meet those demands. … There are a vast number of projects listed in the plan that, in reality, will never, ever be built, but they have to put it in the plan to, in their opinion, in order to meet their projections,” he said.

Public comment on the TWDB feasibility review is open through Tuesday, Oct. 15. Input must be emailed to feasibility@twdb.texas.gov by the deadline to be considered by TWDB’s executive administrator.

Texas reviewed the Marvin Nichols Reservoir and thinks it’s good to go. What do you think?

By Jamie Moore-Carillo

Fort Worth Star-Telegram, September 27, 2024

Enthusiasts and skeptics will have another chance to share their thoughts on the potential construction of a 66,000-acre lake 150 miles east of the Metroplex on Monday.

North Texas water planners first conceived of the Marvin Nichols Reservoir in the late 1960s. Tensions surrounding its future intensified in the 2000s, as Dallas-Fort Worth’s surging population laid bare the long-term inadequacies of its water supply.

State officials extol the project as a sensible and formidable solution to future supply shortages. The Texas Legislature in 2007 deemed it a “site of unique value for the construction of a reservoir,” given the ample surface water provided by the Sulfur River basin and the comparatively low estimated costs of shipping the water to consumers.

Completing the $4.5 billion undertaking would require flooding more than 100 square miles of forest and wetland near Cuthand, an entrenched and tight-knit ranching community of roughly 300.

Residents and state nature conservationists view Marvin Nichols as a needlessly destructive boondoggle, designed not to meet the region’s basic needs but to feed the gluttony of water-hungry lawns in sprawling suburban subdivisions. Any potential benefits, they reason, wouldn’t be worth the costs: drowning a diverse and vibrant ecosystem and disrupting the livelihoods of locals.

The opposition compelled lawmakers to require the Texas Water Development Board to conduct a “feasibility review” of the project before pushing it forward.

The agency published its preliminary findings this month and painted an unequivocal picture: North Texas needs Marvin Nichols, and there are no insurmountable barriers — financial, logistical, or ecological — that make its completion infeasible.

The board’s North Texas planning body — Region C — will convene at 1 p.m. Monday at the North Central Texas Council of Governments, 616 Six Flags Drive, in Arlington to discuss the reservoir, the study, and what opposition remains. Members of the public will be given time to vent their concerns or or share their content.

This story was originally published September 27, 2024, 12:56 PM.

Marvin Nichols Reservoir proposal on agenda at Sept. 30 meeting in Arlington

By Mark Haslett

KETR, September 24, 2024

The proposal is among the agenda items for the regular meeting of the Region C (North Texas) Planning Group at the North Central Texas Council of Governments.

The proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir is going before Texas regional water planning groups once again. If built, the lake would flood about 66,000 acres in the Sulphur River Basin in in Titus, Red River, and Franklin counties.

The project has been a point of contention between the North Texas and Northeast Texas planning groups. Region C, based in Arlington, supports building the reservoir. Region D, based in Mount Pleasant, opposes the project.

Next Monday, Region C planners will convene in Arlington and the Marvin Nichols Reservoir is on the agenda. The Sept. 30 meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. in the First Floor Transportation Council Room of the North Central Texas Council of Governments building, located at 616 Six Flags Drive in Arlington.

Also, the Texas Water Development Board has recently published a feasibility study on the project and is receiving public comment on the new report through Oct. 15 at feasibility@twdb.texas.gov.