RIVERS,
CANALS AND RESERVIRS
21 May 2010
Trinity River Audubon Center
Dallas, Texas
Tour - Trinity River Audubon Center:
Chris Culak, Executive Director of the
Trinity River Audubon Center, described the Center’s history and
program, and directed a brief tour of the building.
The 120-acre site is within the 6900-acre Trinity River
Forest, to the south of Dallas, and has 3 ponds, 4 constructed
wetlands, 40 acres of grasslands, Trinity River frontage, and 4
miles of trails. A
remediated 70-acre landfill containing 1.5 million tons of
construction debris and other trash (the equivalent of over
140,000 tractor-trailer loads) makes up much of the site.
The City of Dallas spent $24.5 million to recover the
site and build the 21,000 square-foot gold-level LEED nature
center, designed by the architect Antoine Predoc, and completed
in October 2008. The
building has a green roof, plastic/sawdust Treks decking,
recycled concrete floors and walls, cypress siding from a
certified-sustainable forest, recycled blue-jean insulation, and
other features.
The Audubon Society has a 20-year lease on
the building, with a relatively small stipend from the City of
Dallas, and is responsible for programming.
In 2009 the Center had a $1 million budget and 65,000
visitors. Many of
the visitors are students, predominantly 3rd through
5th grade, increasing from 8600 in the 2008/2009
school year to 18,000 in the 2009/2010 year, and expected to be
over 20,000 next year.
Most students are from lower-income urban families, and
come from the Dallas Independent School District or Grand
Prairie schools. The
Center also hosts visitors from the Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy
and Girl Scouts, Send a Kid to Camp, and Arts Partners.
One hundred and forty third-grade students
were visiting the Center today on a four-hour “Eco-Expedition.”
Mr. Culak led the Texas EGG to a wet lab where students
were examining pond samples, testing water quality and looking
for snails, beetles, worms, frogs, leeches, mussels,
dragonflies, crayfish, and freshwater shrimp.
Mr. Culak next took the Group to the exhibition hall,
where visitors can see a 15-minute historical video about the
Trinity River, look at a river-making display of erosion and
sedimentation, watch a 100- and 500-year flood model of the
Dallas area, and see prairie, pond, forest and animal exhibits,
as well as a fish and turtle tank.
Outside he pointed out a discovery garden for young
children and handicapped visitors.
Presentation - A River, A Canal, and Living with the Trinity:
Rob Tranchin, a filmmaker for KERA-TV
(Dallas PBS affiliate), introduced a 20-minute excerpt from the
recently completed documentary,
Living with the Trinity
(trinityrivertexas.org).
With funding from the Meadows Foundation and Dixon Water
Foundation, and advice from Andy Sansom and John Graves, KERA
produced this historical piece on the relationship between
Dallas and the Trinity.
Begun in May 2008, the project sought to
show the River as a system, connecting many communities from the
River’s headwaters to its estuary, and including natural
(hydrologic, geologic, and ecological) and human-related
(flooding, water quality, and water supply) aspects.
The video (cross-promoted with website and radio
materials) tells a story that starts with the disastrous Dallas
flood of 1908, a determined levee-building period in the 1920s
and 1930s, and the development of an ocean-going barge canal
plan in the 1950s.
In the mid-1960s, Rep. Jim Wright got Congressional approval for
one billion dollars in federal funding for this barge canal,
with money to straighten, dredge and install locks on the
Trinity River, and designs to remove 300 miles of meanders from
the River’s route.
However, in 1971, the Sierra Club
successfully sued under the National Environmental Policy Act
against the construction of the first segment of the barge
canal, the Wallisville reservoir and lock at the mouth of the
Trinity.
Simultaneously, Alan Steelman began his race against long-time
Representative Earle Cabell for the Dallas Congressional seat.
Steelman opposed the channelization of the Trinity on
several grounds – for the fact that DFW Airport would bring more
than adequate commerce to the north Texas region, especially in
high-value, high-tech products, unlike the low-value products
(sand, gravel, and cotton) and heavy, polluting industry (like
that along the Houston Ship Channel) that Trinity canal barges
might bring.
Steelman won that seat in November of 1972.
Just four months later, Ned Fritz and the Citizens’
Organization for a Sound Trinity (COST) successfully defeated a
basin-wide bond issue for the Trinity channel, arguing that the
canal and locks system would eliminate river meanders, create
stagnant reservoirs, cut bottomland forests, destroy the Trinity
salt marsh, waste public money, and enrich land speculators.
In these three steps - the Sierra suit, the Steelman
election, and the bond defeat - the Trinity barge canal was
stopped.
After showing the 20-minute
documentary excerpt, Mr. Tranchin, emphasized that it was
important to him to help the public understand and appreciate
the River, not to polarize the discussion nor to show the
proponents of the channel as villains.
Comments, Questions and Answers
Q: What is Mr. Tranchin doing now, after
completion of the video?
He explained that he is creating website and radio
materials that support and expand on the documentary.
q: How many viewers have seen the
documentary? Mr.
Tranchin said that there had been three airings with 70,000
viewers each, and that many more had seen the video on the
statewide Earth Week showings (there are no figures yet for
those airings).
Q: How does the
video relate with current Trinity River controversies?
Mr. Tranchin said that dredging, tollroad and levee work
had recently been proposed for the Dallas area, and a local
reporter had written a Dallas
Observer article
called “History Keeps Repeating Itself, History Keeps Repeating
Itself,” noting how these current proposals echoed the ones
shown the KERA movie.
C:The effort of the early
1970s against the canal is a good, and increasingly rare,
example of what citizen engagement can accomplish.
Mr. Tranchin was pleased that KERA had been able to
resurrect video showing that kind of public outreach and
organizing, much of which had been drawn from local public TV
archives at Southern Methodist University.
He felt that it was key for public media to keep this
history alive.
C: One commenter noted that she had grown up
in Dallas amidst a generally negative opinion about the Trinity,
and was pleased to see this other, more positive side of the
River. Mr. Tranchin
said that he had also been raised in Dallas, and remembered
playing in a creek, catching catfish and bass, a place that was
now devoid of life.
He had long seen the Trinity like other Dallas residents – as a
flood-prone, mosquito- and alligator-infested boundary between
the haves and have-nots.
C: One commenter said that he had worked in
the Senate twenty years ago and had had
to field constituent letters in support of the Trinity canal.
Even now, Mr. Tranchin knew that there was extensive support in the
lower Trinity basin, in Chambers County, for the canal.
Mr. Tranchin noted that there is often a conflict like
this, between a push for development and jobs now vs. a focus on
protecting systems for the long term.
Presentation – Rivers, Dams, Reservoirs, and Water Supply:
Janice Bezanson, Executive Director of the
Texas Conservation Alliance (TCA), spoke next.
While Mr. Tranchin and
Living with the Trinity
were focused on the history of developing the River for
navigation and commerce, Ms Bezanson has been more concerned
with recent proposals to develop the River for water supply.
Still, there are overlaps between the groups and people,
issues and eras involved.
Ms Bezanson was first hired in the 1980s for TCA’s
predecessor group, the Texas Committee on Natural Resources, by
the same Ned Fritz who helped organize and lead Citizens
Organized for a Sound Trinity.
Her first task then was to fight a reservoir called the
Little Cypress River.
She was successful then in helping stop
that dam, but these proposals continue to recur elsewhere.
For instance, the current Texas Water Plan envisions a
$30 billion state-wide water supply construction project, mostly
for reservoirs, although also for pipelines, efficiency, and
reuse improvements.
Projected demand in Dallas is driving many of the projects,
including the Marvin Nichols reservoir on the Sulphur, Fastrill
on the Neches, Bois d’Arc in the Red River basin, and Ralph Hall
on the North Sulphur.
And she pointed out that there is an overlap between the
arguments made in the 1980s and those made now:
these additional reservoirs were not needed 25 years ago,
and are also not necessary now.
Ms Bezanson argued that the major point to
remember is that there is plenty of water stored now, in
existing reservoirs, for all projected growth over the next 50
years, and beyond.
In addition to being environmentally damaging and financially
costly, new reservoirs are simply not needed.
As an example, she suggested that Dallas could turn to
Lake Texoma, which is close, largely uncommitted, and existing,
or to Toledo Bend, whose 2 million acre-feet have been sitting
nearly unused for 50 years.
Or the operation of an existing reservoir, such as Wright
Patman on the Sulphur, could be modified to use extra flood
capacity to store water supply, avoiding the need for the
proposed Marvin Nichols reservoir further upstream on the
Sulphur.
Aside from the existence of alternative
water supplies, Ms Bezanson sees a strong rationale against the
newly proposed reservoirs themselves.
For instance, the financial cost can be huge.
For the Marvin Nichols reservoir, mitigation under the
Clean Water Act would require the condemnation of 250,000 acres
for the reservoir and to offset
the inundation of the 70,000-acre lake site.
Further, the Texas Forest Service has estimated
that construction of the reservoir would cause the loss of up to
1300 jobs and $200 million in annual revenue due to
flooded woodlots. In
fact, inundation of these working forests could cross a tipping
point, making the sole regional lumber mill in Texarkana
uneconomic, and causing a domino effect in the forest industry
well beyond the immediate Marvin Nichols area.
Ms Bezanson pointed out that concerns about
reservoirs can extend beyond the sheer price tag.
Flooding these bottomlands can submerge cemeteries,
homesteads, livelihoods, and the whole economy and culture of an
area. The Millican
reservoir, proposed for the Navasota basin, is an example:
it would flood farms, subdivisions, oil and gas fields,
and shopping centers.
The Millican proposal has immediately spurred an
organizing drive against it, led by the 500 members of the
Guardians of the Navasota (www.guardiansofthenavasotariver.com).
Comments, Questions and Answers
C: One commenter noted that dam proposals can
fuel other questionable developments. He remembered that he had grown up in Granbury and had
seen Lake Granbury built to provide critical cooling water for
TXU’s nearby Comanche Peak nuclear plant. Ms Bezanson said that this kind of tie-in with private
economic agendas was not uncommon.
In fact, she felt that the state’s 16 regional water
planning groups, intended to provide a bottoms-up process for
the general public’s involvement, had been largely captured by
engineers, consultants and construction firms that would benefit
from construction of water projects, regardless of whether they
made financial sense for the state.
Again, she thought it was critical that the public
understood the basic message that no further reservoirs needed
to be built – that there was more than adequate supply available
from existing lakes.
Q: What will the impact of climate
change be on the state’s reservoirs?
Ms Bezanson said that higher temperatures would lead to
greater evaporation losses.
Also, flooding bottomland hardwoods would remove an
important carbon sink that might otherwise alleviate climate
change.
C: One participant felt that we should all be
looking for ways to mitigate climate change, but also to reduce
more local problems, such as urban heat islands.Green roofs seemed like
one promising option in the construction field. She did not
understand why private water consultants and construction firms
did not look for similar green options, but instead supported
such costly and damaging reservoirs.
Ms Bezanson stated that there has been a legitimate need
for some reservoirs in the past, since Texas river levels do get
too low during the summer to pump from.
However, she believed that the water development industry
has continued building past the point where reservoirs are
needed or economical.
The water development industry is large, on a scale with
the oil and gas business even, and needs continued new projects
to keep it busy.
Unlike the oil and gas industry though, the water developers
work with public money, so they do not have the same kind of
cost/benefit accountability.
C: One attendee noted that the concerns over
water development had recently gotten good press coverage.
Ms Bezanson agreed and pointed to the May 2010 issue of
Texas Monthly, which covered the controversy over the Fastrill
dam proposed for the Neches River in its pages (p.114), as well
as in a 7-minute video on its website (http://www.texasmonthly.com/multimedia/video/home/14806).
C: One audience member recalled that there had been a
successful legal challenge to the meager representation of
public and conservation concerns on the regional water planning
group boards. Ms
Bezanson said that she was right.
The general public typically had only 1 or 2 seats on
these boards, and were usually outvoted by representatives of
the water industry which held the remaining 9 to 10 seats.
Q: What is the planning
period for the regional water study groups, and what reuse options are there?
Ms Bezanson said that the state is required to plan on a
50-year term. She
added that existing water supplies more than cover fairly
expected needs over that period.
As for water reuse, she saw a number of good prospects.
For example, the Bunker Sands wetland filtration project
provides Tarrant Regional Water District with 100,000 acre-feet
of water, the same as the proposed Fastrill reservoir, on less
than 5% of the footprint of the Fastrill project.
Similarly, El Paso was using ultra-filtration to refill
its local bolson aquifers with treated wastewater.
Q: One spectator had heard, but not been able
to verify, that a number of reservoirs have storage space set
aside for unlikely navigation uses. Is that so?
Ms Bezanson said that that would not be surprising, and
added that some lakes also reserve flows for hydroelectricity
which may only be worth few dollars per acre-foot,
a small value compared with the hundreds of dollars that
an acre-foot of water supply might bring.
C: One commenter
explained that a number of large municipalities, including Dallas, see
water sales to their own residents, and to smaller towns, as a
source of revenue.
She felt that that helped explain their reluctance to invest in
water efficiency and conservation, and their bias toward
developing new sources of water.
Another audience member added that during the current economic
crisis, such cities must be even more strapped and eager to
develop water as a new way to bring money into their coffers.
She understood that Houston was in fact looking at new
reservoirs (Houston’s Region H has considered helping build the
Tennessee Colony, Cleveland, Harmons, Humble and Spring Creek
Reservoirs and in the current planning cycle has added a
70,000-acre reservoir proposal on the Navasota, called Millican).
Q: How does water demand in the
DFW area compare with other parts of the state?
Ms Bezanson said that Dallas uses 200-215 gallons per
capita per day (gpcd), while the actual average for the state as
a whole is 180-185 gpcd. The goal for Texas water use assumes
that the state’s demand will fall to 140 gpcd over the 50-year
period. This seems
feasible to Ms Bezanson:
Austin and San Antonio already use only 120 gpcd, while
rural areas, where landscape irrigation is not such a factor,
use less than 100 gpcd. Ironically, the regional planning
documents for the Dallas-Fort Worth-North Texas area
are based on a projection of 197 gpcd in the year 2060, a
trivial reduction claimed from marginal efforts at conservation.
Q: Which data source has Ms
Bezanson used for challenging water development proposals?
Ms Bezanson said that her group uses only official Texas
Water Development Board figures.
C: One TEGG member noted that the American
Society of Civil Engineers had published a recent report that
estimated that $100 billion in U.S. water infrastructure
upgrades were needed, due to wide-spread water leakage from
transmission and distribution lines.
Ms Bezanson said that the Living Water Initiative had
estimated that Texas water systems lose roughly 25-50% of their
water due to leaks. Research at the River Systems Institute
had found that water system leaks averaged 30% in Texas.
C: One commenter reminded the group that water development
cost projections were likely subject to overruns once design and
construction and operation actually took place.
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Discussions we have held
with experts in various Texas environmental areas:
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