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it just stays in there as storage, you have that right, with that priority date associated with it. So I'm not <br />sure this junior water thing the Legislature put in to provide some type of disincentive, and clearly that's <br />what iYs designed to do, is try to make a disincentive to surtace water transfer. I'm not sure they have a <br />lot of application in the reai world from the water being diverted from a storage reservoir. <br />Let's address question 7: If Irving purchases water from Hugo or other Oklahoma sources and brings it <br />into Texas via pipeline, does TCEQ have jurisdiction over that water? If the water were piped into Lake <br />Pat Mayse, who would be responsible for the ultimate water quality? <br />I'm going to tell you up front: this is a very complicated issue. First of all, water that is brought into <br />Texas from outside the state, and put into a water course in Texas, becomes state water. And so if water <br />from Hugo is put into Lake Pat Mayse, it is a water course, and that becomes state water at that point in <br />time. I'm not quite sure, and I talked to the gentleman this morning who is the state staff person on the <br />Red River Compact, and he was not quite sure. I'm not quite sure what kind of permit the state might <br />require for this. They have two choices. They could require a water right permit we're going to now <br />introduce this water into the state and make it state water. There is also something called a bed and bank <br />permit. So when you're using the beds and banks of the state's water courses to move developed water, <br />you still have to get permission from the state to use those state water courses. Developed water in <br />general is water that would not be here but for your efforts to get it here. For example, because Texas <br />has a different regulatory scheme for surface water and ground water, if you drill a ground water well and <br />put it into a water course, thaYs developed water, it's YOUR water, but the state has the right to make you <br />get a bed and bank authorization to convey that water in a water course. So, it could be a state water, it <br />could be developed water, or it could be a pollution discharge permit. Let me explain that briefly. As we <br />talked about earlier, the federal government has this program to issue an NTDS permit. Don't worry about <br />what it means, it's just what they call it. When you're going to discharge a pollutant from a point source <br />into any water in the United States, you have to get such a permit. Almost all states have become the <br />administrator of that program, and Texas has done this. So whenever the city wants to amend its <br />wastewater discharge permit, it goes to the TCEQ in Austin and gets what is called a QTDS permit, which <br />is a Texas version vs. the national version. IYs still done under this federal permitting program. A few <br />years ago, there was a case in the U.S. Supreme Court that brought'to the forefront the issue of whether <br />moving water from water body into another water body required a pollution discharge permit. Because <br />there are many cases that the water that is being moved is very different from the body it's being moved <br />into. An example would be... here's the case... New York City has all these reservoirs up in the Catskilts, <br />and it serves the whole city of New York. And in order to get it, they've got to move it. Sometimes they <br />move it in pipes, sometimes they move it in water courses. So New York City was moving some of its <br />water through a pipe and it dropped into a water course and it flowed down into another reservoir, where <br />it became the water for the water treatment plant. Well, this water course they dropped it into was <br />somebody's favorite fly fishing area. And the water they were moving in there had high as opposed to <br />very water where they had their fly fishing. And so they sued New York City, claiming they didn't have <br />the right to use this water because they didn't have a pollution discharge permit to do it. And the courts <br />said you're right, they're discharge pollutant thaYs not proceeding naturally, they're introducing it and you <br />got to get a permit for it. They sent the case back to the lower court to see how much New York City <br />ought to be fined for discharging this pollutant, and they got a big fine, $5 million. So they took it back on <br />appeal and said we want you to reconsider this decision about whether we need to get a permit, because <br />the EPA has issued some guidelines that says all water in the United States is part of a unitary body of <br />water and there is really no moving of water from one water course to another, and the courts said we <br />don't find what the EPA has done is persuasive. So I think that the situation we have right now is that as a <br />regular course of busiiness the regulatory agencies do not require pollution permits for moving water from <br />one place to another place even though it may contain different chemical characteristics, but anybody <br />who wants to go to federal court to get an order that says that requires a permit, you got to stop it until <br />~ ~~o o, 4 21 <br />