TYLER, Texas - A joint public meeting of the Region D and C Regional Water Planning Group subcommittees will be held at 9 a.m. Monday in the Rose Room of the Rose Garden Center, 420 Rose Park Drive, Tyler, Texas.
The subcommittees will each present and discuss the Initially Prepared Plans of their respective groups and discuss a possible resolution to the fact that the plans do not correlate.
Region C's plan includes the construction of the controversial Marvin Nichols Reservoir in the Upper Sulphur Basin and Region D's plan does not.
Region D's area encompasses all or parts of 19 counties in Northeast Texas, including Bowie, Cass, Marion, Red River, Morris and Titus and the the cities of Texarkana, Longview and Greenville. The planning area overlaps large portions of the Red, Sulphur, Cypress and Sabine river basins and smaller parts of the Trinity and Neches river basins.
Region C includes all or part of 16 counties in North Texas. As of 2011, Region C included 26 percent of Texas' total population. The two most populous counties in Region C, Dallas and Tarrant, have 65 percent of the region's population and includes most of the Dallas and Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan statistical areas. Most of Region C is located in the upper portion of the Trinity River Basin, with smaller parts in the Red, Brazos, Sulphur and Sabine Basins.
The water planning groups are working toward the resolution prior to March 2020, which is the deadline for submitting their Initially Prepared Plans to the Texas Water Development Board. They would then be included in the 2021 Texas State Water Plan. Each water planning group in the state submits a plan showing their water usage and projected needs to the TWDB, which then produces a State Water Plan each five years.
This not the first time the two groups have clashed over the proposed reservoir. In 2015, Region C agreed to move Marvin Nichols Reservoir as a designated strategy beginning in 2070 and that no water rights applications or permits for new reservoirs in Region D be submitted during that planning cycle. That was included in the 2016 State Water Plan, which will end in 2020.
Region C's initially prepared plan now includes Marvin Nichols as a strategy beginning in 2060.
Seven members represent this region on the Region D subcommittee: Jim Thompson, Fred Milton, Kelly Mitchell, David Nabors, Cynthia Gwynn, Richard LeTourneau and David Montague.
The public is welcome to attend and may make an oral presentation to the subcommittees after submitting a form at the beginning of the meeting. Each speaker is limited to three minutes.