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Hugo/Irving water talks continue
By Bill Hankins
The Paris News
Published December 23, 2009
HUGO, Okla. — When the state of Oklahoma won a battle recently against the Tarrant Regional Water District and obtained a partial dismissal of the district’s suit to buy water from Oklahoma, officials in Tarrant County began looking for other ways to get that water.
Their attention turned to the City of Hugo and its contract to sell water to the City of Irving.
That Hugo-Irving contract, though still awaiting court action, seems far more promising.
Tarrant Regional Water District had negotiated with Hugo months ago to join that city’s sale of water.
“When we talked to Tarrant Regional Water District months ago, we could never reach an agreement on such things as lake levels and maintaining the lake for fishing and recreation,” Hugo City Manager David Rawls said Tuesday. “We want the lake levels to remain constant.”
Rawls said Tarrant Regional Water District did approach the City of Hugo and the City of Irving to discuss joining in their water dealings.
“We (Hugo) authorized the negotiations, but that has since fallen through,” Rawls said. “We are not involved in negotiations with the Tarrant Regional Water District at this time.”
Rawls said Hugo contracts with the federal government for 28,800 acre feet of water.
“We can sell a portion of that water,” Rawls said. “But we still are awaiting the outcome of litigation in the Eastern District Federal Court on the issue.”
“We expect a ruling by the end of January that could open the door for the sale of water to Irving,” Rawls said. “After that ruling and pending appeals that may follow, all we have to do is provide Irving with a legal opinion that we have the right to sell water.”
Rawls said he has not talked with Tarrant Regional Water District and does not know what they will do.
TRWD’s quest for Oklahoma water hit a roadblock in November, when a federal judge sided with the State of Oklahoma, which had asked for a dismissal of the TRWD suit against an Oklahoma ban on the sale of water outside the state’s borders.
The judge ruled Oklahoma’s position is “constitutionally sound.”
The water district’s executive director Jim Oliver said TRWD will continue to pursue legal avenues in the pursuit of water.
The water fight began in January 2007, when TRWD sued the State of Oklahoma and applied for permits to obtain water from three river basins.
The fight was joined by three other water districts, the Dallas Water Utilities, the North Texas Municipal Water District and the Upper Trinity Regional Water District.
Earlier in the fight, the group won the right to move the suit forward, and it was headed for trial Dec. 7, before the federal judge partially dismissed the case.
If the dismissal holds, it likely will set TRWD’s efforts back for months if not indefinitely.
The City of Paris pulled out of negotiations with the City of Irving earlier this year after a council-appointed citizens committee spent a little more than a year studying water availability in Pat Mayse and Lake Crook lakes.
The committee recommended continued negotiations with several restrictions, but city council voted non-renewal of a Memorandum of Understanding to study the possibility of selling water or being a conduit of water from Hugo Lake to the City of Irving.
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