Northeast Texans revamp decades-old fight over proposed reservoir that would benefit D-FW

Gary Cheatwood, almost 84, has spent nearly half his life worried about a yet-to-be-built human-made lake that would destroy everything important to him.

His family’s century-old home bulldozed.

Virgin timber they’ve watched grow demolished.

His elders’ graves washed up.

The threat of the 66,000-acre Marvin Nichols Reservoir has loomed for decades.

He and other Northeast Texans have been fighting the project that would push them out of their homes, some of which were built before Texas was annexed into the U.S., since it was first proposed in 1984.

The planned site along the Sulphur River in Red River, Bowie, Titus, and Franklin counties would pump water 150 miles away to the Dallas-Fort Worth region, part of the Texas Water Development Board’s plan to supply water to the quickly growing population.

“This is something you never forget about because you don’t know what the future will be,” Cheatwood said.

The reservoir has been at a standstill for decades, sometimes garnering momentum before being returned to the back burner as in the early 2000s. A recent renewed push to get shovels in dirt has reignited a call to action among stakeholders.

Cheatwood, who has lived his entire life in Cuthand, Texas, population 113, has become the face of the residents who would feel the direct impact of the project with no benefits in exchange. Preserve Northeast Texas’ “Stop Marvin Nichols” campaign features the smiley, soft-spoken man on postcard mailers and posters.

“I need to get your autograph,” Swane Williams, a resident of the unincorporated town of Maple, laughed while pointing at a poster of Cheatwood standing with his arms crossed in front of a tall tree.

“Aw, man,” Cheatwood said, quickly taking the spotlight off himself. “That tree’s on my property. I used to play under it as a kid.”

Williams moved back to the area with his wife after he retired from working in East Texas oil fields about six years ago to live on roughly 100 acres the couple bought from his parents 20 years prior.

His parents died a couple of years before he retired. They also fought the reservoir.

“They’d be happy I’m here fighting it too,” he said.

The men were among roughly 60 residents at a community meeting Preserve Northeast Texas hosted Monday night in the Mount Pleasant Civic Center for an update on the Marvin Nichols Reservoir project. Attendees also penned postcards and letters to elected officials, recorded videos for a social media education campaign, and signed a petition condemning the project that has garnered more than 2,000 signatures.

Commissioners in Red River and Cass counties voted to oppose the reservoir last year, the Longview News-Journal reported.

The project, which would pump 80% of the water to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, was approved by the Texas Water Development Board in June 2021 for inclusion in the 2022 State Water Plan. Its targeted completion date jumped from 2070 to 2050, raising eyebrows in the northeast part of the state.

The Texas Water Development Board, led by two board members appointed by the governor, declined to comment for this story.

The project is a critical asset to help the D-FW region deal with expected growth, The North Texas Municipal Water District said in a statement.

“The reservoir was conceived to provide water supply for multiple water providers and jurisdictions and is one of a combination of water supply strategies intended to meet the water needs of North Texans,” the statement says. “In selecting a final recommended set of strategies, planning groups consider a number of factors, including quantity of supply provided by each strategy, reliability of the supply during drought, cost and impacts on water quality and natural resources.”

The district also said “it is clear that development of new water supplies is required to meet the future needs of Texas” in addition to conservation strategies.

North Texas’ population grew to 7.8 million people during the pandemic, according to the U.S Census Bureau. Dallas County’s population was 2.6 million, according to the 2020 census, with the city of Dallas’ population growing by 106,563 residents between 2010 and 2020 to 1.3 million.

The Texas Water Development Board breaks the state up into 16 regions. Dallas, located in region C, had a water demand of 1.7 million acre-feet in 2020. An acre-foot is equivalent to about 326,000 gallons. That number is expected to increase to 2.5 million by 2050 when the board has proposed the reservoir being completed, according to the board’s data. The reservoir is planned to be built in region D.

Region C’s 2021 Water Plan report said the reservoir “provides a reliable new source of fresh water supplies for Region C water providers at a reasonable cost.”

The report says permitting and “current political opposition” are challenges the project faces.

The NTMWD “continues to evaluate a number of water supply strategies identified in the Region C plan and take measures to meet the water needs of North Texans,” the statement says. “NTMWD will continue to act responsibly and prudently in all efforts to evaluate and develop needed water supply projects for our region and Texas – our future depends upon it.”

It’s long been a tug of war between finding a way to address Dallas’ water challenges and reckoning with the finances and morality of it.

The reservoir, estimated in 2018 to cost $4.4 billion, will flood 66,103 acres of land, including a great deal of the hardwood forest that fuels the local timber industry. An additional 130,000 acres would be set aside to meet federal mitigation policies, according to Preserve Northeast Texas.

Local people opposed to the reservoir say it would displace families who have been on the land for generations, wash away their homes and ancestors’ graves, and take away as much as 40% of tax earnings from rural school districts.

“We live in a country that’s supposed to be free so you can live where you want to live and do what you want to do,” Cheatwood said. “This just isn’t right.”

Those opposed to the project argue that building a new reservoir is simply an outdated approach, suggesting instead to use modern solutions like filtering readily available water such as brackish water or wastewater and better utilizing existing reservoirs such as Lake Toledo Bend or Lake Texoma.

Janice Bezanson, senior policy director for Texas Conservation Alliance, says D-FW has enough water for essential use, like showering, brushing teeth and cooking, so the majority of the water brought in would go toward watering lawns and irrigation.

“No one is trying to keep them from having the water they need, but they can do this without having such horrendous impacts,” Bezanson said.

Those impacts would be crippling to more than just the northeast region’s economy and people, said Jim Thompson, a resident of Atlanta, Texas, population 5,458.

Thompson, chairman of the North East Texas Regional Water Planning Group, brings a business perspective to the conversation as chief financial officer of Cass County-based Ward Timber. The second-generation family-owned company operates the largest hardwood sawmill in Texas and caters to clients in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

If the forests are drowned out, it would affect the jobs of Ward Timber’s 125 direct employees and about the same amount of drivers, loggers and contractors it works with. He mentioned at least one other timber company in the area, estimating they have closer to 1,000 direct employees, that would be in the same situation.

“The reason timber is viable here is the supply and the woods, which are a renewable source,” he said. “We want to keep supply plentiful so this can continue.”

“Some people think it will be built regardless of what we do, some people think it will be built regardless of what we don’t do, and some people just don’t know,” Thompson said. “The Marvin Nichols will only be built if we let them build it.”

The crowd applauded, nodding their heads.

Charleen Granberry, of Douglassville, was one of the first to speak during the Q&A session. The former Queen City Independent School District nurse said her husband’s family stands to lose their fourth- and fifth-generation ranch if the reservoir becomes reality.

She’s determined to not let that happen and has been actively campaigning against the project for more than 20 years, sometimes traveling to Austin.

The fight can be frustrating and tiring, though.

“It’s very sad because we have fought and spoken up and it’s come down to them saying, ‘There’s not enough of you’ or them just not listening to us at all,” she said, later joking to the younger people in the room: “I hope y’all can hang in there and keep fighting because we’re getting old.”

The last resident to speak was sixth-generation Texan Dickie Dwayne Dalby, who has been going to meetings about the reservoir since the ’90s.

He told the story about his forefather moving from North Carolina to the Republic of Texas in the 1830s and building a log cabin on the edge of Red River and Bowie counties.

The cabin, now known as the Phillip A. Dalby Homestead, is still standing and recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.

Both it and generations of Dalby’s family buried in Dalby Springs Cemetery would be flooded if the plan went through.

“My roots are here and I do not wish to give up my property, heritage, and homestead and look for that elsewhere,” he said.