Senate Water Bill

First, I want to thank The Texas Blue for making this letter public, since the Dallas Morning News chose not to. I wrote the letter in response to a DMN editorial towards the end of the most recent legislative session and a lot has happened since. Senate Bill 3 (the water bill) came back from conference committee with the site designations of Marvin Nichols and Fastrill restored. This occurred despite commitments to Representative Stephen Frost that he would be one of the conferees (he was not) and that the House conferees would oppose this change (they did not). The Bill as amended was passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor.

One very good provision in the Bill is the "Eltife Amendment". This amendment, authored by Senator Kevin Eltife (R-Tyler), directs the water planning boards of Region C (DFW) and Region D (North East Texas) to each appoint three members to a commission charged with reviewing ALL the potential methods of meeting each region's water needs and making appropriate recommendations. Region D has made it's appointments and I have every confidence that these commission members (one of whom is Representative Frost) will do an excellent job. I hope the Region C members will as well.

I want to continue to assure our friends in the Metroplex that this is not a fight about water. We all agree that the DFW area will get the water it needs to grow. I believe this is what the people of the Metroplex and their representatives want--a secure water supply--not an expansive exercise of eminent domain in an effort to build reservoirs that are not essential to meeting their resource requirements.

It is my hope and belief that alternative options, like those described in my letter, will prove themselves to be adequate, cost effective and beneficial to both areas. But in order to embrace alternatives people have to be know they exist. Again, I appreciate "Texas Blue" and hope other electronic and alternative information outlets will help make people more aware of available options because, at least right now, mainstream Metroplex media is not.

Dear Editor:

With your most recent editorial, It's Just Our Future, the DMN continues it's "Johnny One Note" approach to the area's water needs--build lakes--build lakes--build lakes. It is truly interesting that you suggest your House members need to do a better job of educating their colleagues when your normally well-balanced editorial board has been anything but educational on the subject of water planning.

You have run a series of editorials devoted to the importance of designating Marvin Nichols and Fastrill as future reservoir sites without ever mentioning the potential impact of raising the lake level at Wright Patman, or the likely benefit of conjunctive operation of Patman and Cooper, or whether or not there is available water in Texoma that might be reallocated, or how many hundreds of thousands of acre feet annually the Sabine River Authority currently has for sale in Toledo Bend which - by the way - already belongs to the state of Texas, or the possibility of back pumping Toledo Bend water to Dallas or working it through interbasin transfer to Houston in order to free up more Trinity water for Dallas. You have also failed to mention or even try to justify the enormous gallon per person per day water usage in the metroplex and particularly in the city of Dallas.

Instead, you are content to imply that a bunch of country bumpkins got together and rolled a very talented metroplex legislative delegation. That was not the case. Nor would the lack of specific designation mean that the reservoirs would never be considered. What the Texas House made clear is that before we start taking peoples homes and clouding their property values we need to be sure of the extent of the needs and ALL of the available options to meet them. You are correct in that education is the key to understanding both the problem and the likely solutions and the Dallas Morning News should be a big player in the process but you guys have really got to get out more. Right now it is not your legislators that need to be educated.

Postscript: The DMN on May 25th carried a water article quoting Governor Perry's spokesman Robert Black saying, "The Governor is going to do whatever he can to get a bill with all 19 reservoirs including the ones in Dallas."

If the Governor will tell us exactly where "in" Dallas he wants these lakes, I am sure we will all get behind it.

Sincerely,

Representative Mark Homer, House District 3