Category: Uncategorized

By: Michael Smith

Green Source DFW, August 1, 2024

Water is essential. And yet it’s one of those things we take for granted everyday as we wash, flush, bathe, cook, drink and water our yards.

A thirsty DFW uses immense amounts of water and it is looking around for more. One spot that has been on its radar for over 20 years is along the Sulphur River in Northeast Texas, where some want to build a new reservoir. 

But people live in that spot, along with valuable ecosystems. The proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir, south of Clarksville, Texas, would displace those people and drown farms and forests.

The massive undertaking would flood more than 66,000 acres of land, according to the Region C 2021 Regional Water Plan.

Additionally, land would be needed to lay a pipeline to pump the water uphill more than 100 miles to the DFW metroplex. And to mitigate the loss of natural places, another estimated 130,000 acres would be taken from private landowners, in theory to replace lost wetlands and wildlife habitat with places of similar quality.

“The reservoir would take a huge toll economically as well as environmentally,” said Janice Bezanson, the Senior Policy Director of Texas Conservation Alliance, a statewide grassroots group associated with the National Wildlife Federation. “Thousands and thousands of people would be affected. There are a thousand or more archeological and historical sites” that would also be destroyed, along with family cemeteries and homes. School districts would be ravaged because of the loss of land that is their tax base and by people leaving the area, she said.

LOVE OF THE RIVER AND THE BOTTOMLANDS

I spoke with Dr. Jim Marshall, a Fort Worth physician who owns a cattle ranch in Cuthand, Texas, an area the reservoir would cover, according to the Dallas Observer.

“People are poor there. It’s very economically disadvantaged,” he said. 

And yet, those who live there love that region with the river and huge amounts of bottomland forest that spread out around the river. 

“The bottomlands are kind of useless for ranching and farming because of the flooding, even though the soil is very fertile,” Marshall said. “It’s going to be underwater when we would be planting in April, May, June — for those reasons, people leave [the bottomlands] for the trees.”

Marshall said that a once in a lifetime event may happen in which a person feels like they have to cut their trees, their timber. 

“But many of them figure out how to scrape by so they don’t have to, because they love their trees.” 

The man who previously owned Marshall’s ranch was told that the reservoir was inevitable. 

“He said, ‘if they’re going to flood me I guess I should cut my timber.’ The stumps of unknown age trees are still down there. His brother told us after the sale that the saddest day they ever saw was when they cut that last tree down.”

WHERE DOES THE WATER GO?

In DFW, we may not think much about the amount of water we use and where we get it, but our survival depends on our foresight. That’s especially true in a warming world in which drought might increasingly be a fact of life. In 2022, Dallas used an average of 380 million gallons of water every day according to a CBS report. 

That same year, the City of Fort Worth reported a new record for a day’s water use: 381.3 million gallons. 

The DFW area is growing, with a current population of 6.7 million. And that number increases every year.

The consumption by cities and towns accounts for about a quarter of water use, according to Texas Living Waters.

According to the Texas Water Development Board, in 2021, Dallas residents used 150 gallons per capita per day (GPCD) and Fort Worth residents used 142.

Other major cities in Texas have lowered their water use. For example, the City of Austin’s daily per capita water use in 2021 was 125 gallons.

“If the DFW region was doing water conservation comparable to what other parts of the state are doing, they would not need any more water at all — they would meet the projected needs for the next 50 years,” said Janice Bezanson. “Approximately half the water that is piped to people in DFW ends up on their landscapes,” Bezanson said. 

The Texas Water Development Board data also shows that billions of gallons of water is lost in North Texas due to leaks and main breaks.

“We’re losing a lot of water through leaky infrastructure across the state,” Jennifer Walker, National Wildlife Federation’s Texas Coast and Water Program director, told KERA News.

ALTERNATIVES TO RESERVOIRS

Fortunately, there is a range of good alternatives to reservoirs, as spelled out by David Marquis on a Texas Conservation Alliance blog. Among them are storing water in underground aquifers, bringing in water from under-utilized existing reservoirs, constructing wetlands and filtration systems, landscaping with plants that need less water, and teaching people how to conserve. 

The East Fork Water Reuse Project naturally filters water at the John Bunker Wetlands Center then pumps it to Lake Lavon. The system also provides habitat for a variety of wildlife, including a pair of nesting bald eagles. Photo by Julie Thibodeaux.

Climate change is making reservoirs an even more undesirable choice. The amount of evaporation is determined by the surface area, and the proposed reservoir would cover 66,103 acres. That would result in huge water loss from the surface as things get hotter and drier.

Bezanson said that following a drought in the 1950s, Texas went on a reservoir-building binge in which a 100 reservoirs were built over 30 years. 

Critics say, there are better options for supplying water, but a lucrative industry now exists with lobbyists and attorneys to insure laws and regulations favorable to reservoir-building.

PLAYERS AND CONFLICTS 

Who makes these recommendations and decisions? There is a statewide Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) which is charged with collecting data, helping with regional water supply planning and administering financial plans for water-related construction. The TWDB organizes “Water Planning Groups” with representatives from the public, agriculture, municipalities and other interest groups. 

The Region C group includes the DFW area, and it recommends that the Marvin Nichols reservoir be built. Region D in Northeast Texas opposes it. 

It also happens that the engineering and consulting firm working on the reservoir project is Freese and Nichols — the same “Nichols” for whom the proposed reservoir is named. Marvin Nichols was an engineer who was both a partner in Freese and Nichols as well as the first Chair of the Texas Water Development Board, appointed in 1957. 

Bezanson noted that the Freese and Nichols firm “would get a billion dollar contract to build Marvin Nichols Reservoir. Their incentive to recommend a project like that is huge.” 

She went on, “They’re also one of the consultants to the Region D Water Planning Group so they also get to help shepherd it through [the recommendation process]. We feel that’s a conflict of interest.”

Bezanson recounted some of the history: “In 2001, the water districts that want to build the reservoir announced to the Northeast Texas community that it was going to be built because DFW needed the water.” 

It was presented “as a ‘done deal,’ so you might as well sell us your land,” she said. 

The people living in the communities and farms of the region responded with a strong grassroots effort and reached out to the Texas Conservation Alliance to oppose the plan.

The 2016 water plan moved the reservoir’s projected completion to 2070 with an assurance that they would not start planning for five years, Bezanson recalls. But in 2021 they moved completion up to the year 2050. 

“Proponents of the Marvin Nichols Reservoir have always said that it would take 30 years to get the project permitted and built,” and so a target date of 2050 means that work would begin soon.

Bezanson summarized what the process has been like for the residents of Northeast Texas: “These people have had this reservoir hanging over their heads for 23 years. They don’t know whether to expand their business, to buy land, to sell land.” 

One person she talked to recently bought property to retire from Dallas, and the maps aren’t good enough for her to know whether or not her land will be inundated.

CONSERVATIONISTS — INTENTIONAL OR NOT

Texas is a state in which most of the land is privately owned. Over 95 percent of Texas — the prairies, the forests, deserts, coastal marshes, and those bottomland hardwoods in Northeast Texas – is privately held, according to the Texas Land Conservancy (TLC). 

When we think about conservation, we might think of nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy or maybe government agencies like the National Park Service. They do great work. The Nature Conservancy’s Lennox Woods Preserve is a beautiful example of the Northeast Texas bottomland and upland forest to be found in the vicinity of the proposed reservoir.

But we should not forget that ranchers and farmers who keep part of their property in a natural condition are doing the work of conservation, too. Many of them put some of their land into conservation easements, continuing their ownership but agreeing to preserve the natural value of that land. 

When Dr. Marshall talked about his property and what the people of his community will do to spare the bottomland forests and enjoy their river, the attachment is clear. 

He said, “The part of the Sulphur River that’s gonna go under would be the longest, last undammed piece of hardwood bottomland in East Texas — it’s a magnificent place.”

Remembering the previous owner who cut the trees thinking that the land was going to be flooded, Marshall said, 

“Twenty-five years later that area is completely regrown in elm, oak, hickory, a lot of ash — it shows the fertility of these bottomlands.” 

If the Marvin Nichols Reservoir is built as planned, those trees will hardly reach maturity. And the people — stewards of the land, some of them conservationists even if unintentionally — will be displaced, homes inundated, farms like Marshall’s drowned.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Janice Bezanson said, “The people in DFW mostly don’t know that this is happening, and may not know where their water comes from.” 

Her view was that the more we can educate each other about this, the better. She said that DFW residents can tell their elected officials, “We don’t want this.” 

The folks in Northeast Texas are doing what they can, and they would encourage us to raise our voices, too.