A regional plan projects that no reservoirs will be needed in the next 50 years to meet local projefted water needs.
"We don't have that many deficiencies that we would need to build a reservoir for Region D," Ray Flemons, consultant for Dallas planning group BWR Corp., told Region D water planning members last week.
Flemons and Reeves Hayter, president of Hayter Engineering of Paris, recently updated the panel on efforts to address long-term water needs in a 19-county area that includes Bowie and Cass counties. "We have 1,866,912 acre-feet of water available in the region and that will decline very slightly to 1,824,000 acre-feet over the next 50 years," Hayter said. "That decline is due to primarily sedimentation in reservoirs or to the decline in groundwater availability."
Walt Sears, general manager of the Northeast Texas Municipal Water District, said need for a reservoir in Region D only would occur if demand exceeded supply. Individual portions of a region, such as a county or city, can show a water deficit in coming years. But those individual deficits appear easier to address than those regionwide.
"We have to have a strategy for every water user group that has a shortage shown any time in the next 60 years," Hayter said. " ... In previous rounds most of those strategies have been perhaps drill a new well, build a bigger pipeline to your existing reservoir or contract. We have a contract that expires in 2020 to buy water," Hayter offered as an example. "If that contract expires, you have a shortage on paper ... so the strategy is extend the contract for more years to reach the end of the planning period."
Dedicated water planning in Texas has been ongoing in three phases since the mid-1990s. Planning Cycle 1 took place from 1997 to 2001 and Planning Cycle 2 ran from 2002 to 2006. Round 3 will wrap up in 2011.
The Region D panel is working rapidly to get a 10-chapter analysis approved by a March 1 deadline. Last week the group approved Chapters 1 and 2 and heard presentations on Chapters 3 and 8. "After we do Chapters 3 and 8, hopefully at the next meeting, we have to get to the rest of these chapters. The clock is running," Sears said.
Chapter 1 designates and describes Region D and Chapter 2 analyzes regional water demand. Chapter 3 evaluates ground- and surface-water supplies in the region, and the next chapter subtracts demand from availability to determine water shortage or excess in all parts of the region.
For Chapter 8 Flemons recapped the Round 2 decisions to pursue new reservoirs -- only if all other possible alternatives have been exhausted.
Previous planning documents request property owners in the proposed Marvin Nichols footprint be compensated not only with fair market value but an honest replacement value, and that owners of property that would be directly inundated receive "royalties" in the future for water stored over the property.
The plan also specifies compensation to local taxing agencies. "The planning group felt like when property was taken out of the taxing group that it would drastically reduce their income and there should be some compensation to the taxing entity so that it didn't take half the county and the school district under," Flemons said.
The 2006 plan also suggested any land mitigated for a reservoir in Region D be set aside in the region requesting the reservoir. Flemons said he expects mitigation to be a controversial topic but recommended the stipulation "to make them think a little more closely about what they're doing."
Sears said clarifying and minimizing mitigation has progressed from the second study. "When this was done four or five years ago, there wasn't as much attention on the subject of how unfair mitigation was," he said. "We're in a different place in 2009 than we were in 2005. There are other people now in leadership that are advocating similar positions that this group has."