Texas Delegation Pushes to Bring Much-Needed Water Back to Lone Star State

It takes an act of Congress...

I want to thank Sen. John Cornyn for introducing a Senate bill that would allow water pumping to resume from Lake Texoma. Pumping was halted back in the summer of 2009 due to the invasive zebra mussels.

Kudos also goes to longtime Congressman Ralph Hall of Rockwall, Texas , who initially authored the same bill in the House, where it was passed by a voice vote.

More than 1.6 million North Texans have been staring at the bottom of the barrel for some time, because the presence of this invasive species meant water from Lake Texoma was off-limits to the people of the Metroplex. In a state that has suffered for years under drought conditions, losing access to 25 percent of your water supply is a devastating blow. The water in Lake Texoma is a valuable resource for Texas residents, businesses and agriculture producers.

Zebra mussels were first discovered in the Great Lakes region in the 1980s and have slowly, but surely, made their way to Texas. Like its name suggests, Lake Texoma sprawls along the Texas/Oklahoma border, however an even more invasive federal law has kept Texans from utilizing their share of the water. The intake for the lake’s pump station is located across state lines in Oklahoma, and under current law, the presence of zebra mussels would make moving the water that essentially belongs to Texas, a federal offense.

This goes to show how ridiculous some of the federal environmental regulations have become. It’s just not common sense to cut off water to 1.6 million people with the misguided notion of regulating the spread of a mussel species.

Preserving natural resources should not result in persecuting humans. That’s just wrong.

Luckily, Texas leaders in Washington have the good sense to fight the restrictions on Lake Texoma and are trying to get the water flowing back to Texas communities. I applaud the members of the Texas delegation and encourage them to keep up their work to bring reason back to our nation’s natural resources policies.