Fall 2002 - Lone Star Chapter, Sierra Club

Lone Star Sierran Fall 2002 3
Feature
Citizens Rally to Oppose
the Proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir
Diverse Coalition Pushes Conservation over Development
By Ken Kramer, Director, Lone Star Chapter
“Meet the faces of a new coalition,”
said Rita Beving, conservation
co-chair of the Dallas Regional
Group of the Sierra Club, as
she stood and spoke on July 22 to
a rally of 150 people from North
Central and Northeast Texas
united to show their opposition to
the proposed Marvin
Nichols Reservoir.
“They are loggers,
farmers, ranchers,
and private landowners…from
Dalby
Springs to Dallas,
from Denton to
Texarkana…in all
my years as an
activist I have
never seen such
dedication from a
group united for a
single cause,” added
Beving.
Indeed it was an
impressive sight.
Over 50 people had
come by bus from
Northeast Texas to Grand Prairie
to join with 100 citizens from the
Metroplex to attend a meeting of
the Region C Water Planning
Group, the water planning group
for the region that includes the
Dallas/Forth Worth metropolitan
area. These somewhat unlikely
allies were there to promote water
conservation over water development,
to argue for saving the
taxpayers’ money as well as saving
water.
The Proposed Reservoir
The immediate target of their
passion was the proposed Marvin
Nichols Reservoir. The reservoir,
which is included in the current
regional water plans for both
Regions C and D, would be located
in Region D (Northeast Texas) in
the Sulphur River Basin.
Although the reservoir is proposed
to be located in Northeast Texas,
80 percent of the water from the
reservoir would be transferred by
Citizens opposing the Marvin Nichols Reservoir vow “No Nickles for Nichols.”
pipeline to the Dallas/Fort Worth
region. Water customers in that
region would be the ones primarily
responsible for the $1.7 billion
price tag for the project.
The proposed reservoir project
would be a large one by any standard.
It would inundate about
72,000 acres of forests, ranchland,
and farmland along the Sulphur
River in Red River, Bowie,
Franklin, Titus, and Morris counties.
The reservoir would yield
619,100 acre feet of water per
year. (An acre foot of water is the
amount of water needed to flood
one acre of land to a depth of one
foot – it is equivalent to approximately
325,000 gallons of water).
The water from the reservoir
going to the Dallas/Fort Worth
region would travel in a pipeline
about 170 miles long.
The project would be built and
managed by the Sulphur Basin
River Authority (SBRA), a regional
water authority created by the
Texas Legislature
in 1985. SBRA
has the authority
to control, store,
conserve, and
distribute surface
water in the
Sulphur River
basin consistent
with surface
water rights
granted by the
State of Texas to
varied water
users in the
basin. SBRA has
contracted with
two Texas engineering
firms for
studies of the
feasibility of the reservoir.
In its regional water plan,
however, the Region D Water
Planning Group did not identify
any unmet water needs in its own
region within the next 50 years.
Thus, water from the Marvin
Nichols Reservoir would primarily
benefit only Region C for the
foreseeable future, although some
of the water in the reservoir would
be available for Northeast Texas in
the distant future.
Photo courtesy of Justin Murrill
The Opposition
The citizens from Northeast
Texas who oppose the reservoir do
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