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.