06 a., b., & c. Record of Standing Committee

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Texas to get your permit, that analysis of the permit applicaiton has to factor in the requirements of the Compact, such as meeting this 3,000 csf flow at the border of Louisiana and Arkansas, and that the State of Texas not get more than 25 percent of the total water that is subject to the Compact. But it still would be determined by Texas. Now, if Oklahoma thought that Texas had gone to 26 percent of that total water, they could choose to litigate it right there. I have no idea what the facts are with regard to that. I would suspect that there's a lot of water unappropriated in the Red River, just because of the salinity of the water. OK, IeYs talk briefly now about permitting an inter-basin transfer. First let me define an inter-basin transfer. Let me back up and give you some history. In 1997, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1, which was the first major reorganization of the state water planning process that had been done in decades. They had a huge fight over lots of issues, and one of the big issues that they fought about was whether or not water was going to be moved fairly freely around this state. And there was a big fight between Buster Brown (of Lake Jackson), who was the senator who carried the bill, and the state rep from Mauriceville (Ron Lewis), and as is typical of a lot of these legislative issues, and water issues are always pretty heated in the Legislature, it went down to the last day, and they didn't have a bill, and they were trying to compromise and get a bill out of both bodies that could pass. A lot of time, a lot of work had been invested in this. And the compromise was, inter-basin transfers would be allowed, but that inter-basin transfers would be given a new priority date not the priority date attached to the original water right, but the priority date of the transfer itself. And in water law, priority dates are real important, because that controls who gets the water in times of drought. And that was put in the inter-basin requirements back in 1997. There were at the time about 100 inter-basin transfers throughout the state. I had been involved in permitting some before that statute was passed, and I've been involved in permitting some after that statute was passed. And the Legislature really loaded up the inter-basin transfer statute and put a lot of requirements on it to make it procedurally difficult and really to throw some obstacles in terms of doing that. I represented the Greater Texoma Utility Authority, who sold some water to the North Texas Municipal Water District out of Lake Texoma, going from the Red River basin to the Trinity River basin. To my surprise, it went through without opposition and it went through relatively quickly for the TCEQ. That means about 18 months, but that's still relatively quickly for that process. An inter-basin transfer is when you move water from one river basin in the state to another river basin for beneficial use. It's just what it says it is. It's inter basin. And so, the Legislature has made the process a whole lot more complicated. Let me tell you some of the issues that would have to be addressed as part of Irving getting an inter-basin transfer, or the City of Paris getting an inter-basin transfer. The state will look at the effects on water quality, and they look down to the level of the water chemistry. For the water thaYs coming from Lake Texoma to Lake Lavon, they were concerned about the pds content of Lake Lavon. They required some permit provisions that it had to be blended at a certain ratio to maintain a certain amount of pds content and not exceed that in Lake Lavon. I think it ended up being a 4-to-1 ratio, four parts of Lavon water to one part of Texoma water. So they couldn't just freely move that water down there, they had to blend it. The state will look at effects on fish and wildlife habitat. They're very serious about this. They raised questions in the North Texas issue about algae blooms on Lake Texoma and how that might affect Lake Lavon. So these are things the state gets into at a serious level. One other requirement that applies to all permits, not just inter-basin transfers, is whether the application is consistent with an approved regional water plan. And so if the regional water plan does not currently have language in it that addresses Irving meeting its needs to inter-basin transfers, they'll have to go get that plan amended and submit it to the water development board in order for an inter-basin transfer to be consistent. Another requirement that was part of the 1997 compromise was that the state will look at the proposed mitigation or compensation that is, the rate for water that is going to be applied in the process. And every single county judge in the basin of origin the Red River Basin will get notice that this application x 000040