GILMER -- If you want to start a scrape around here, try saying this cussword: Dallas.

"I think we ought to be able to go over to Dallas and buy it for whatever we think it's worth," declared Robert Lewis, who lives in Northeast Texas' Red River County but is spending days fuming about the big city to the west. "Because that's what they're doing to our land."

Wood County resident Don Hightower concurred. "From what I've read, there's enough water running through the storm drains and off the lawns of Dallas to supply the needs of Tyler and Longview," he said. "I think the city of Dallas needs a wakeup call for its wasteful tactics."

Many of the 300 at a recent northeast Texas water planning meeting in Gilmer's civic center shouted approval. Dozens trooped to the microphone to add their amens. Most wore Day-Glo stickers urging, "Don't let Dallas [hog] our water."

Dallas' troubles in the northeast Texas piney woods might go deeper than its image. The $1.7 billion Marvin Nichols reservoir that the city and its neighbors want for a future water supply -- a sprawling dam and lake proposed along the quiet, isolated Sulphur River -- has stirred a grass-roots revolt of loggers, truckers and fourth-generation ranchers. Even the project's name comes from outside the northeast Texas area: Marvin Nichols was a Fort Worth water planner who served as the first chairman of the Texas Water Development Board.

Opponents say urban North Texas must curb its water use -- the highest per person in Texas -- before it dams a distant river. "I was born in Dallas, but I don't feel like I owe them a thing," said Red River County resident Mark Evans. "They waste lots of water."

At 18, Mr. Evans is a booted, cowboy-hat-wearing, brand-new voter -- and with elections coming, some local politicians are whipping up rough waters for a project that had seen smooth sailing.

U.S. Rep. Max Sandlin, D-Marshall, and four Texas House members have4 signed a letter saying the only local consensus they detect is against it. This week, regional water planners are expected to consider rescinding support for the plan. Even if state water officials are right in calling that just a symbolic move, Gov. Rick Perry warns Dallas that Marvin Nichols is no longer a sure bet.

"It appears to me that if Dallas solely relies upon the building of Marvin Nichols, they could miscalculate," the Republican governor said in an interview. "We know how long it takes to build a reservoir," he said. "There's no guarantee that, with [the] environmnental impact that this could have on the state of Texas, that it couldn't stay in the courthouse for decades. I want to make sure that Dallas has an appropriate supply of water, and I think we need to be looking at other alternatives to Marvin Nichols."

Those, he said, could include water from Oklahoma, Louisiana or elsewhere in Texas -- but they must include clamping down on residents' water use. "Dallas has got to do a better job of water conservation," Mr. Perry said.

Tony Sanchez, Mr. Perry's Democratic challenger, said he doesn't know details of the project or the fight. But he said he also endorses conservation -- and thinks one region shouldn't be able to take another's water. "I don't want to take local control of water away from people," Mr. Sanchez said.

Such warnings might raise questions about political support for Marvin Nichols, which is still in the earliest planning stages and wouldn't supply water before 2030. But another veteran Texas politician said he thinks all the protests are for naught.

"In my opinion, the reservoir will be built," said state Sen. Bill Ratliff, whose northeast Texas district includes the potential lake site and surrounding areas. The Republican from Mount Pleasant is also serving temporarily as Texas' lieutenant governor. Marvin Nichols will be built, Mr. Ratliff said, because urban North Texas -- sprawling, populous and becoming more so, with big-city political muscle in Austin and Washington that trumps small-town northeast Texas -- wants it.

"The question is whether it will be built by a local entity, with water sold [to North Texas utilities] under contract, or whether the Dallas-Fort Worth entities just go get the permits and build the thing themselves," Mr. Ratliff said. "We'd be waging a big battle with a small stick if we tried to stop a project like that."

Not that he wants to. North Texas water systems would pay to build, finance and operate the dam and lake but take only 80 percent of the water, leaving the rest for locals, Mr. Ratliff said. "That 20 percent is more water than all the lakes in northeast Texas," he said. "That is a hell of a deal."

North Texas water planners agree, but Terace Stewart, director of Dallas Water Utilities and chairman of the North Texas water planning group, said it won't be done without extensive studies and public input -- and not at all if economic, environmental or political costs are too great. Until those are figured, he said, no one will commit to build anything. "We're obviously very concerned" with local ire, Mr. Stewart said. "We would bear in mind the impact to that area. We don't want to harm those people."

The reservoir itself would cover about 72,000 acres of river, bottomland and timber. Environmental mitigation -- set-asides required to make up for habitat destruction -- might take another 200,000 acres out of commercial use. That has pushed loggers into a rare alliance with environmentalists. Mr. Ratliff said he's advising loggers to get Congress to delete the mitigation requirement. Environmentalists say that won't happen, and many loggers say they're not interested. They want the lake killed -- a notion with growing support, judging from the turnout at meetings of the state-sppointed northeast Texas regional water planners.

The number of protesters swells each time, even though the group meets during weekday work hours. "Hey Dallas -- turn off your damn sprinklers," read a sign posted at the most recent session. Emotions run high when people talk about water rising over their old family places. "Our sweat and blood are in the land," said Nina Holt of Cuthand, a crossroads community in Red River County. "The Lord gives us rain. But he's already created as much land as he's going to create."

Lindy Guest of Bogata buried his young son at Cuthand 10 years ago. He and others bristle at the idea of moving loved ones' graves. "This is sort of taking the heart out of the land," Mr. Guest said. "The politicians that are with us now, after this election coming up, I hope they don't change their minds back."

If the northeast Texas water planning group, one of 16 set up under the state's 1997 water planning law, rescinds its support for Marvin Nichols, the political fallout might be significant, but the legal effect would be nil, said Texas Water Development Board spokeswoman Carla Daws.

That's because the northeast Texas group calls Marvin Nichols a "recommendation", while the urban North Texas group calls it a needed "water management strategy". That seemingly tiny twist, Ms. Daws, said, means northeast Texas can't veto the lake. "If they change their plan to remove that expression of support, there's no change in the other region's plan," she said.

Mr. Stewart, the Dallas water chief, agree. "They can amend their plan however they wish, but that would nave no effect on other entities wishing to develop that resource," he said.

[COMMENT: This pure, unadultered, sheer arrogance of Ms. Daws, Mr. Stewart and King Rat is disgusting, is it not? R.]

If that's true, said Norman Johns, a water resources scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, then the 1997 state water law's promises of locally driven, bottom-up planning were hollow. "It was much ballyhooed as that," he said. "Now the grass roots has spoken, but you've got a bureaucracy that says that doesn't matter." He called Marvin Nichols a "72,000-acre loophole".

Mr. Ratliff said the deal he brokered to get the 1997 law passed anticipated that the north and northeast Texas plans would be "mutually approved"., That was done with building Marvin Nichols in mind, he said, because northeast Texas is a special case in otherwise dusty Texas. "In most of the other parts of the state, the question is how you can allocate scarce resources," he said. "The thing that makes this unique is that there is an abundance of water -- billions and billions of gallons."

But not a drop, vowed Robert L. Canfield of Red River County, will leave the Sulphur River. "We didn't come down here to beg that the lake be removed from the agenda," Mr. Canfield grumbled. "We came down here to say there isn't going to be one."

The following letter-to-the-editor appeared in the Dallas News on 22 September 2002.

Re: "Northeast Texas to Dallas: Don't take our water," Sept. 16.

I was once again saddened to be from Dallas upon reading our plan to flood 72,000 acres along the Sulphur River. Living here, one gets used to development outweighing all other things like trees, old buildings, historic landmarks or air quality. You are no one and developers are someone.

But once our ever-consumptive desires reach to an area as beautiful as the pines of East Texas, one wonders when it will end. We can't breathe, we can't enjoy nature because we can't leave it alone long enough for it to grow, and we can't gather anywhere but a shopping mall. If it's your unfortunate destiny to live within 200 miles of us, you can't either.

We seem to think we have a manifest destiny to drive as much as we want, as big as we want; build as much as we want, as big as we want; create as much nonrecyclable garbage as we want and, evidently, pour as much water as we want on our yards and plants, most of which were never intended to live in a place that gets as hot as it does here.

Can we please quit with the take-take-take, me-me-me attitude before this city is an ugly eyesore that's uninhabitable?

Michael Amonett, Dallas