Six Texas state candidates spent more than two hours talking about water rights, the Red River Army Depot's future and defunding Planned Parenthood Tuesday, but of these the greatest focus was on water rights.
During this Republican candidates forum, about 300 people gathered inside Texarkana College's Truman Arnold Student Center. Of these six candidates, four are competitors for the open Texas State Senate District 1 seat soon to be vacated by Kevin Eltife. They are Red Brown, Bryan Hughes, Mike Lee and David Simpson. The other two are vying for Texas State House District 1 representative are incumbent Gary VanDeaver and George Lavender.
Even though the forum also focused on other issue-such as state bond indebtedness and the open- carry gun law-most of the questions centered on water issues.
"The main thing in this race is water," Lavender said. "It is critically important that we own and control our water supply-more critical than most anything else."
VanDeaver agreed.
"Water is a huge issue and my position on it is that we need local control," he said.
Brown said the notion of letting the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex override local control is ridiculous.
"No one should be allowed to take our land and our water away," he said.
Hughes said that Region C (the Dallas area) has plenty of other available water sources.
"They don't need to take our land and our water," he said. "We should keep that authority."
Simpson also echoed the same.
"We need to defend our resources, our water and our property," he said. "Our economic future is just as valuable as Dallas.'"
When it came to taking a voice vote on the proposed installation of the 72,000-acre Marvin Nichols Reservoir, all six candidates voted "no."
Regarding the Texas Water Development Board continuing to have jurisdiction over the Marvin Nichols decision, Hughes said that with water options being offered by Texas' Toledo Bend area as well as by Louisiana's frontier, Region C has enough options to for abundant water supply. He added that Northeast Texas could sell water to the Dallas area if necessary.
Lee said Dallas actually doesn't have a water supply problem but more or a water-pipe disrepair problem.
"Someone really needs to tell Dallas to fix their pipes," he said.
Simpson said TWDB's authority is really negated by the fact that water needs come down to being negotiated by regions that are willing buyers and and regions that are willing sellers.
"Property rights need to be defended," he said. "State water boards don't need to be determining economic value."
Lavender said the TWDB appears to have trouble deciding whether not to put something in northeast Texas region (Region D) that the people in the region oppose-specifically Marvin Nichols.
"I don't think the Texas Water Development Board has the right venue," he said.