If you go to the Google Search Engine and search for "Marvin Nichols Reservoir" (with quotes), you will bring up about thirty links to various documents. To review them, click above, or go directly to Google for your own search method. If you scroll down here, you'll find other links to documents from this search, with date and an excerpt. They are presented in chronological order, and the first one is dated 31 January 2001, less than a month before my communication with Mr. Dan Jones, biologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in February 2001. About that time there had been an extensive article in The Dallas Morning News about the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir and its adverse environmental impact on this fragile wetlands system. Apparently I no longer have this article, or can't find it, but I am certain that it is archived at the Dallas News website.
In recent days I have had extensive discussions with various people about this abominable reservoir project, and I have a lot of personal opinions and comments to make about it. Please check back here periodically over the coming weeks, as these writings take time. Also, if any reader wishes to recommend an additional website or simply send me a comment for inclusion in a "message board", please do not hesitate. I'll add a "Visitor Comments" section in the future.
Here is the text of the letter that I wrote to Mr. Jones. I should add here that from all the copies of the letter that were mailed to others, only US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison replied. She sent me a "form letter" of sorts, informing me that she was trying to balance the requirements of those who supposedly need more water and those who are opposed to these types of environmentally destructive reservoirs. But she did not express a personal opinion one way or the other about it.
Then a few days later, the Dallas News contacted me by email. They wanted to publish this letter, but they insisted that I edit it down to about half its size. I refused to comply with their request. I bantered back and forth for a couple of days by email with their editorial staff. "Why can't you publish the whole letter?" I asked. "I am trying to make a point, and I don't want to edit out some of my ideas. After all, it is only a page and a half, letter-size. That is not too much to publish." They told me that they receive thousands and thousands of letters, and they don't have the newspaper space for such long ones as mine. Then, during this exchange, Troy Aikman resigned as Quaterback of the Dallas Cowboys; and overnight the Dallas News suddenly found enough "space" in their paper to devote pages and pages, articles and articles, to Troy Aikman. I fired off an email to their editorial staff, inquiring why they could suddenly find so much room for all this news about Troy Aikman but they couldn't publish my entire letter to Dan Jones. They replied that a letter to the editor was not "the same thing" (or something to that effect) as an important news story. I was disgusted. I told them that they had their priorities wrong. Their future drinking water supply should be a hell of a lot more important to Dallasites than whatever happens to Troy Aikman. The Dallas News (or Ron Kirk!) never answered back.
At any rate, CLICK HERE to read the letter that I sent to Dan Jones. Even he didn't reply back to me, making me wonder how "seriously" everybody really takes this matter. It almost seems like a "political charade" having nothing to do with the "reality" of the environmental destruction that will occur if this reservoir is approved.
JOIN THE RESISTANCE! Roberto
31 January 2001
Plans for reservoir revive conservation fight
Submitted by: Danny Conger
A winter-brown leaf from a water oak marks the Sulphur River's flow east toward Arkansas, toward the Red River and eventually the Mississippi.
The Sulphur on its own would never carry a lost leaf the other way, westward toward Dallas. But a megascale plumbing job could change that.
Planners are eyeing the Sulphur River as the site of a new dam that would provide water to Dallas, Fort Worth and the suburbs spreading northward. Pumps the size of three-bedroom houses would send the water 150 miles west via pipes big enough to drive a Ford Excursion through.
The proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir, a $1.5 billion venture that would cover 100 square miles of northeast Texas, is the kind of big water project that Texas built scores of times through the 1970s until demand lagged and federal money dried up.
It's also the kind of project that used to set city officials who were trying to capture more water for people against conservationists who were trying to save the last stretches of native habitat along the rivers.
Associated Press Report, 16 July 2001
Dallas-Fort Worth area's water use causes concern
Monday, July 16, 2001
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - While other Texans turn down their water usage, residents in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are opening the taps at an extremely high rate and doing little to conserve.
The Texas Water Development Board estimates the average per capita water demand in Dallas is about 235 gallons a day, while in Fort Worth it's about 214 gallons. In contrast, El Paso residents use 159 gallons a day and San Antonio residents use 147 gallons a day.
State estimates show that the Dallas-Fort Worth area has the highest per capita water use in Texas.
Sierra Club Press Release, October 2001
The Texas Water Development Board is holding its final public hearing on the draft of its new water plan today. Prior to the hearing, landowners from threatened river basins are going public with their stories.
Max Shumake, who is fighting the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir on the Sulphur River, is coming to Austin to make his case and speak out against the state water plan. The Marvin Nichols dam would flood 100 square miles in 5 East Texas counties, forcing hundreds of family farmers from their land, some of whom have homesteaded there since the middle of the 19th century.
Citizens like Max are challenging the erroneous assumptions of the regional water plans that call for the new dams. For instance, the dam is proposed to provide water for the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but it is wholly unnecessary. If the project goes forward, Texas taxpayers will pay $2 billion to supply an amount of water to the DFW area that could easily be realized through conservation if Dallas and Fort Worth adopted water savings programs like San Antonio's.
A number of angry citizens are also wondering why in Texas, where private property rights are sanctified, a faceless state agency can propose a massive land grab without so much as a peep from state leaders who ordinarily recite "property rights" like a mantra when big business is faced with regulatory action by state agencies.
THE TEXAS OBSERVER
Dateline Texas : 23 November 2001
"DROWNED BY DALLAS -- Will The Sulphur River Be Dammed For
Dallas Lawns?"
By Nate Blakeslee
Ultimately, the fate of Marvin Nichols will depend in no small measure on an obscure state agency called the Sulphur River Basin Authority. After quietly listening to two hours of public testimony against the reservoir at the Mt. Pleasant meeting, SRBA board chair Mike Huddleston agreed to meet with me in his office in Texarkana the next day. Prior to the controversy over Marvin Nichols, few people in the area had even heard of the agency, which is run by an unpaid board of directors, has no offices, is not listed in the phone book, and until recently, had no staff. Middle-aged, with a round, red face and the humorless intensity of a small businessman, Huddleston runs the SRBA from the offices of Communications Specialists, where he specializes in the sale of Motorola two-way radios. On the wall of his quiet, spacious office in the back of the store is a print of an English fox hunt. On his desk is an Arkansas Razorbacks mug and a sign that reads: "My mind's made up. Don't confuse me with the facts!" Huddleston is also the mayor of Wake Village, a small community south of Texarkana, and last November he hired fellow city councilman Mike Burke, a long-time friend and business associate, to administer the authority. If the reservoir is built, it will be largely by the efforts of these two men. ...
Huddleston had little patience for talk of irresponsible water use in Dallas. "If you listen to the radical environmentalists, they think everything can be done by laws," he said. "For crying out loud they want to tell people they can't water their grass or have swimming pools?" He also scoffed at the numbers that have turned out in opposition at recent meetings. "You have a 100-square-mile reservoir planned and all you can muster is 35 or 50 people against it?" he said. (Asked how many people would be affected by the project, he said simply, "I don't know.")