Garin
01-21-2014, 08:25 PM
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG
Staff Writer
Published: 28 December 2012 10:21 PM
Updated: 28 December 2012 11:23 PM
A bill that will allow the North Texas Municipal Water District to resume pumping water from Lake Texoma cleared its last hurdle Friday evening when President Barack Obama signed it into law.
The exemption to the Lacey Act on invasive species means the water district can begin taking water from Texoma again as soon as its $300 million, 46-mile pipeline project is completed next fall.
“I’m a lot better today than I was,” Mike Rickman, the water district’s deputy director, said Friday evening. “The president signed it, and that was a good thing for us.”
Lake Texoma provided 28 percent of the district’s water supply until officials discovered a significant population of zebra mussels in the lake.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which supervises the lake, ordered the district to stop pumping in 2009 until it could devise a system that would prevent the mussels from spreading from the Red River Basin into Lavon Lake and the Trinity River Basin.
That meant building a pipeline to replace the district’s existing system, which pumped water from Texoma to the headwaters of Sister Grove Creek in Grayson County, and then flowed downstream to Lavon, the district’s primary reservoir.
The closed pipeline system will carry water directly to the district’s treatment plant in Wylie, where zebra mussels will be removed as part of the treatment process.
Rickman was grateful to members of the Texas congressional delegation, specifically Sen. John Cornyn and Reps. Ralph Hall, Pete Sessions and Sam Johnson, for pushing the bill into law.
“They and their staffs just did a miraculous job,” Rickman said.
The North Texas Municipal Water District provides water to more than 1.6 million customers in the fast-growing suburbs north and east of Dallas.
Staff Writer
Published: 28 December 2012 10:21 PM
Updated: 28 December 2012 11:23 PM
A bill that will allow the North Texas Municipal Water District to resume pumping water from Lake Texoma cleared its last hurdle Friday evening when President Barack Obama signed it into law.
The exemption to the Lacey Act on invasive species means the water district can begin taking water from Texoma again as soon as its $300 million, 46-mile pipeline project is completed next fall.
“I’m a lot better today than I was,” Mike Rickman, the water district’s deputy director, said Friday evening. “The president signed it, and that was a good thing for us.”
Lake Texoma provided 28 percent of the district’s water supply until officials discovered a significant population of zebra mussels in the lake.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which supervises the lake, ordered the district to stop pumping in 2009 until it could devise a system that would prevent the mussels from spreading from the Red River Basin into Lavon Lake and the Trinity River Basin.
That meant building a pipeline to replace the district’s existing system, which pumped water from Texoma to the headwaters of Sister Grove Creek in Grayson County, and then flowed downstream to Lavon, the district’s primary reservoir.
The closed pipeline system will carry water directly to the district’s treatment plant in Wylie, where zebra mussels will be removed as part of the treatment process.
Rickman was grateful to members of the Texas congressional delegation, specifically Sen. John Cornyn and Reps. Ralph Hall, Pete Sessions and Sam Johnson, for pushing the bill into law.
“They and their staffs just did a miraculous job,” Rickman said.
The North Texas Municipal Water District provides water to more than 1.6 million customers in the fast-growing suburbs north and east of Dallas.