Landowners oppose Wichita Falls proposal to dam river for a reservoir to support water needs

HENRIETTA, Texas (AP) — One rancher said the proposed reservoir would cut through her property and flood areas of her ranch she needs to graze cattle.

Another said it would flood ancestral lands that have been in his family since the 1880s. Another said his kid’s childhood home, where many family memories were made, would be underwater.

They traveled to Austin last year, The Texas Tribune reported, to voice their opposition to a 16,000-acre reservoir that the city of Wichita Falls wants to build in Clay County, approximately 30 miles east of the city.

City leaders have applied for a state permit, arguing that building Lake Ringgold is vital to help the city avoid running out of water during droughts, which climate change has made more common and more intense.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental agency, will vote on the city’s permit on Friday.

If the city is granted the state water rights permit from TCEQ, it would next need to apply for a permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; the city needs both a state permit and a federal permit for the project.

The seeds for the Lake Ringgold plan began about three years after Russell Schreiber took a job as the director of public works for

Wichita Falls in 2008.

A severe drought struck the area in 2010 and lingered for years, nearly draining the city’s two reservoirs: Lake Kickapoo and Lake Arrowhead. Schreiber faced the nearly impossible task of finding water during one of the worst droughts to ever hit North Texas.

“It was very devastating,” Schreiber said, remembering how Lake Arrowhead, the city’s primary water reservoir, and its other reservoirs came close to drying up.

When Wichita Falls hit a Stage 5 drought, the highest of the stages that’s considered a “drought catastrophe,” the city issued water restrictions banning all nonessential water use like refilling swimming pools, using sprinkler systems and washing cars.

From July 2014 to July 2015, the city tried something new: direct potable reuse, a water recycling process that purifies waste and sewer water using a filtration system. The system allows the filtered water to be immediately used as drinking water.

Schreiber said at the time the city exhausted nearly every option to reduce water use, and managed to reduce the demand on the two reservoirs by 75%. But it wasn’t enough, and the reservoirs reached an all-time low of 20% of capacity...