PITTSBURG, Texas — One of the last opportunities East Texans were able to voice their opinions on a controversial reservoir construction project that would flood 66,000 acres of land took place Wednesday.
The Northeast Texas Region D Water Planning group met to discuss the Marvin Nichols Reservoir and to hear a final say from community members.
Leaders from the Dallas-Fort Worth area heard from dozens of community members who voiced their concerns against a project that could affect thousands of farmers and landowners in Delta, Titus, Franklin, Lamar and Red River counties.
This was one of the last chances for the public to share their thoughts before the committee reviewed plans for the project to move forward.
“It's a completely unnecessary land grab,” Eddie Belcher said.
This has been an ongoing proposal that landowners have been fighting against for over 50 years. The project will create a water reservoir that would dam the Sulphur River in Northeast Texas and create a government land grab of up to 200 thousand acres of privately owned land or use it for environmental mitigation.
Something that doesn’t sit well with landowners in this region.
"It's a no-win situation for us,” Belcher said.
Belcher, is a fourth-generation cattle farmer, is at risk of losing 400 acres to the reservoir.
“I just built my home and started building maybe 10 years ago,” Belcher said. “It took me five years to build it, by hand, I built right there on my great-grandfather's land.”
He spoke about the emotional and financial toll this has had on his family and mentioned the stress and uncertainty they face about their future.
“Where do you go from here, I’m getting a little old to start over again,” he said.
Jim Marshall, who has 900 acres of land in this region, outlined the difficulty of starting a new ranching operation and the financial challenges of buying land.
“It's halting the agricultural progress we're trying to make in our region just by threatening us,” Marshall said. “So we want the threat to stop by putting an end to the discussion.”
And how all farmers in this region will be affected.
“We feel certain that all of our ranches and the people that live on them if they're destroyed, will be the end of ranching for almost everyone,” Marshall said.
Supporters of the project said there is a need for additional water supplies in North Texas with the population growing each day, and anticipate it doubling in the next 40 years.
“There needs to be some way to balance out the needs and balance out these projects between both rural and urban communities because Texas overall health is at stake for this,” Kevin Lord, Chairman of the Region D Water Planning Committee said.
Lord said they’re also exploring other solutions and negotiations to delay development to support a growing need.
“We can't meet those needs without having an additional water supply, so we're looking a lot of water alternatives. Marvin Nichols is just one of them,” Lord said.
Landowners are growing increasingly impatient and anxious as the day approaches when their land could be taken from them.
“God's not making any more land, and we just keep covering it up for other people to get richer,” Belcher said.
Each of the separate regency water groups will vote and decide if the project will be moving forward by the next meeting. It will be a multi-year process.
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