GILMER -- Members of the Northeast Texas Regional Water Planning Group D met in Gilmer on Wednesday [January 14] and unanimously approved a resolution opposing the General Land Office's disregard of regional water planning strategies. In November of last year, the GLO announced that it was considering allowing a private company to mine for and sell groundwater in West Texas. Commissioner Jerry Patterson said part of the profits would go toward the Permanent School Fund.

In a show of solidarity for the Far West Texas Water Planning Group, the Northeast Texas group voted to formalize their opposition to the GLO's plans. "The General Land Office is trying to mine for water in West Texas, regardless of whether the regional planning group put it in their water strategy or not," explained Region D Administrator Walt Sears. "This came as a shock to legislators that they could do that."

In 1997, legislators passed Senate Bill 1, a water law that promised local and regional decision-making on Texas water policy. To many in the state, Patterson and the GLO are subverting that process. "State legislators are concerned about the Land Office bypass of regional water planning groups," Sears said. "It's a bad precedent to have state agencies thinking they can come up with water strategies that could significantly impact our region and not ask this planning group for input on this management strategy."

In 2001, the legislature authorized the GLO to use $200 million from the school fund for investments such as water projects. Patterson has said that ideas under discussion range from pumping East Texas groundwater from state prison land to buying pipelines to help get water to thirsty cities. The proposal in far West Texas to lease state water rights on about 355,000 acres in order for the water to be sold eventually to the highest bidder is without a real plan to address local water needs.

"This Senate Bill 1 process was developed to be generated from the ground up to the state legislature," said Eldon Wold, Group D representative from Mount Vernon. "They're trying to change it completely around. It can impact on us significantly with the same procedure."

In other business, the Planning Group reviewed a presentation from the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) on creating a stream flow assessment to be used in the 2007 State Water Plan. Virginia Towles, liaison to Region D, explained that the assessments will provide the region with detailed information on stream flow quantity and the impact of it. "We want to look at naturalized flow, current flow and try to determine future stream flows," Towles said. She noted that TWDB will run the water availiability models for the regions.

Eugene Yang, water availability modeler for TWDB, said that all regions must select three to five control points on each of the major river basins. There are four river basins in Region D: Cypress, Red River, Sabine and Sulphur. "The information from this study will tell you how the stream flow has changed and where it's going in the future," Yang said.

In other business, the board recommended three projects to submit to the TWDB for additional supplemental funding for preparation of the 2006 Regional Water Plans. The group's consulting firm, Hayter Engineering of Paris, suggested a demonstration project in Kilgore to study water reuse and a study of the feasibility of comibining smaller water supply districts into one system. A third project suggestion came from group member Jim Thompson of Linden. Thompson suggested a limited study on the disparity of water use levels between the cities in the region.

The group also unanimously re-elected Tony Williams of Marshall as chair, John Bradley of Avinger as vice-chair, and Terry Winn of Gilmer as secretary/treasurer. Richard LeTourneau of Longview and Steve Dean of Gilmer were selected as at-large members of the executive committee. Thompson was named liaison to Region C, while Mendee Rabicoff of Longview was selected as the Region I liaison.