Posted on March 28, 2017
By Michael Hutchins, Herald Democrat
The Lower Bois d’Arc Creek Reservoir project came one step closer to clearing its last hurdle for development this week when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a revised environmental impact study. This revision comes nearly two years after the initial study was released for public comment.
“If this is approved, it will probably be the first new reservoir here in decades,” USACE Project Manager Ed Parisotto said Thursday.
The project first saw development in 2008 when the North Texas Municipal Water District started applications to construct a 16,641-acre reservoir in Fannin County north of Bonham. Parisotto said he was the fourth project manager to be involved in the development of the reservoir.
The lake will sit just south of Caddo National Grassland and be separated from Lake Bonham by a reinforced dam. Depth of the lake is expected to range from about 22 feet to 70 feet at its deepest points. When completed, the $1 billion reservoir project will have a capacity for 367,609 acre-feet of water that will be used as municipal water in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
When the USACE issued the first environmental report, it received more than 600 comments with questions and concerns that necessitated the revised study. Parisotto said the lengthy revision process was mainly due to the current laws in place relating to reservoir development.
When asked for details about the comments and concerns, Parisotto said they were primarily related to private land owners and environmental concerns about 5,000 acres of wetland that will be inundated by the lake. This concern in particular required developers to set aside additional land to offset this impact, bringing the total land reserved for offset to 17,000 acres.
Janet Rummel, public relations and communications officer for NTMWD, said that the lake will have no impact on federally-listed threatened and endangered species.
With this new study in place, Parisotto said the USACE will issue a new public comment period, which will end in May, before issuing the finalized draft. This document will ultimately be used by the USACE in its decision on whether to issue the permit for the project and allow construction to move forward.
As the NTMWD has already received water rights from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the USACE permit represents one of the final hurdles for the lake project, Parisotto said. When the request was put before the TCEQ, it received no stakeholder complaints making this project the first large reservoir project to do so in 50 years.
When asked about other reservoirs under development, Parisotto said that a second reservoir, Lake Ralph Hall, is also under development in Fannin County, but is very early in its planning phases.
Rummel said she expects a decision to be made on the application by January 2018. From there, it will take about three years to build the two-mile long dam and an additional two years for the basin to fill.
While the focus of the project is to provide adequate drinking water, Rummel said the lake could also be a major recreational attraction for Fannin County.
“There is no question that this is going to be a big thing for Fannin County,” County Judge Spanky Carter said Friday.
Citing an independent economic analysis, Rummel said the region could see $166 million in annual economic activity from the lake related to recreation and new industrial and commercial business.
“NTMWD has been supporting Fannin County on their comprehensive planning process that includes the consideration of potential recreational amenities, such as boat ramps, for the proposed Lower Bois d’Arc Creek Reservoir,” Rummel said. “NTMWD is consulting with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department regarding future recreational fisheries management.”
Source: Herald Democrat
