{"id":17497,"date":"2013-12-04T13:23:13","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T19:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=17497"},"modified":"2013-12-04T13:23:13","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T19:23:13","slug":"gov-rick-perry-misses-legislative-deadline-in-oklahoma-texas-border-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2013\/12\/04\/gov-rick-perry-misses-legislative-deadline-in-oklahoma-texas-border-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Rick Perry Misses Legislative Deadline in Oklahoma-Texas Border Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Welcome2Texas\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul L McCord Jr \/ Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>

Exactly where<\/a> the border between Oklahoma and Texas lies along the Red River has never been completely clear, especially where Lake Texoma covers the original river shore.<\/p>

The dispute over water and the whereabouts of the border predates statehood, and has led to Supreme Court cases \u2014 most recently, the court sided against a north Texas water district<\/a> that wanted to use water from Oklahoma’s Red River tributaries.<\/p>

Once the fight nearly became literal<\/a> when, in 1931, Texas barricaded a bridge across the river, causing Oklahoma Gov. “Alfalfa” Bill Murray to deploy the National Guard. The notorious governor even packed his antique revolver and visited the battle zone himself.<\/p>

It looked like the issue had finally been settled in 2000, the last time the border was redrawn, but more than a decade later, errors have been found in the latest line.<\/p>

And as\u00a0The Texas Tribune<\/em>‘s Jim Malewitz reports<\/a>, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed legislation creating a commission to address the issue, but is apparently in no hurry to find a fix:<\/p>\n

In June, Perry signed legislation creating the Red River Boundary Commission, a five-member body meant to study and possibly redraw the border along Lake Texoma to fix a mapping error that helped form a sea of troubles for North Texas water managers. The law instructed the governor to make the appointments “as soon as practicable” after passage “but not later than December 1.”<\/p>

\u2026 But the clock ran out on Sunday, with no word about the appointments.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Oklahoma Water Resources Board spokesman Brian Vance told Malewitz neither the Oklahoma agency, nor Gov. Mary Fallin’s office have heard a word from Texas about this issue, though a Perry spokeswoman says the appointments are still going though the process, and an announcement would be made “at the appropriate time.”<\/p>

The commission’s first meeting is set for the end of January.<\/p>\n

The new Red River Boundary Commission is supposed to study the dispute’s latest episode, which involves a mollusk infestation. \u2026 the North Texas Municipal Water District discovered that [the 2000] boundary bisected its water pumping station in Lake Texoma, where officials discovered an infestation of havoc-wreaking zebra mussels, which have disrupted underwater food chains across the nation and clogged power and water plants.<\/p>

The mussel swarm left 28 percent of the district’s water supply untapped because federal law bars the cross-state transfer of zebra mussels and other “injurious species.”<\/p><\/blockquote>

The commission’s first report isn’t due until January 2015, with a final report scheduled to be released a few months later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exactly where the border between Oklahoma and Texas lies along the Red River has never been completely clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":17504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[384,507,103,427,93],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17497"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17497"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17521,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17497\/revisions\/17521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}