{"id":4521,"date":"2012-01-16T11:00:22","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=4521"},"modified":"2012-01-15T17:32:59","modified_gmt":"2012-01-15T23:32:59","slug":"the-louisiana-to-texas-water-deal-is-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/16\/the-louisiana-to-texas-water-deal-is-off\/","title":{"rendered":"The Louisiana-to-Texas Water Deal is Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4524\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"The Toledo Bend Reservoir \" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/172381586_9dc38abf7a_z.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4524\" title=\"172381586_9dc38abf7a_z\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/172381586_9dc38abf7a_z-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/172381586_9dc38abf7a_z-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/172381586_9dc38abf7a_z-620x465.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/172381586_9dc38abf7a_z-220x165.jpg 220w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/172381586_9dc38abf7a_z-138x103.jpg 138w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/172381586_9dc38abf7a_z.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo by Flickr user DrGBB (Creative Commons)<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Toledo Bend Reservoir<\/p><\/div>\n<p>That was fast.<\/p>\n<p>A plan to suck massive amounts of water from a Louisiana lake and sell it to Texas is off, the <em>Shreveport Times<\/em> reports. The Sabine River Authority of Louisiana, which regulates the Louisiana side of the lake, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shreveporttimes.com\/article\/20120112\/NEWS01\/120112008\/UPDATE-SRA-stops-Texas-water-sales-talks\">held a meeting late last week<\/a> and &#8220;voted to suspend out of state water sales until a comprehensive water plan for Louisiana has been developed.&#8221; Some 300 people had gathered at the meeting, and when the vote against the sale went through, it was met &#8220;with applause, whoops of joy, and a few offered a hearty \u201cAmen,\u201d the paper reports.<\/p>\n<p>What exactly was the plan? For starters, one of its financial backers was University of Texas alum and businessman <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Red_McCombs\">Red McCombs<\/a>. Forrest Wilder of the Texas Observer has the details:<!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"related-content alignleft\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/09\/the-drought-beyond-the-border\/\">The Drought Beyond the Border<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/11\/texas-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-year\/\">Texas and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad\u00a0Year<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/11\/at-hearing-on-drought-signs-of-optimism-and-concern\/\">At Hearing on Drought, Signs of Optimism and Concern<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/12\/0-5-percent-of-texas-is-no-longer-in-drought\/\">Half a Percent of Texas is No Longer in Drought<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/08\/WaterinTexas1-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/water-in-texas\/\">Your Guide to Water Issues In\u00a0Texas<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Over the past year, Toledo Bend Partners, the private company backed by McCombs and two wealthy Republican Louisiana businessmen, has been negotiating with the\u00a0<a title=\"Sabine River Authority of Louisiana\" href=\"http:\/\/www.srala-toledo.com\/\">Sabine River Authority of Louisiana<\/a>\u00a0to lock up a large portion of the water in Toledo Bend Reservoir. The lake, the largest in the South, straddles the Texas-Louisiana border and is one of the last major sources of largely untapped surface water in Texas. The two states split the water evenly.<\/p>\n<p>Toledo Bend Partners and the river authority have hammered out a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.texasobserver.org\/forrestforthetrees\/red-mccombs-tries-his-hand-at-water-marketing\/item\/download\/94\">draft contract<\/a>\u00a0that would allow TB Partners to secure the rights to 600,000 acre-feet \u2014 that&#8217;s 196\u00a0<em>billion<\/em>gallons \u2014 of water per year from Louisana&#8217;s portion of Toledo Bend Reservoir and pump it to Texas. That&#8217;s a huge amount of water. The city of Austin, for example, uses about 170,000 acre-feet a year. Six-hundred-thousand acre-feet also represents about 60 percent of Louisiana&#8217;s &#8220;firm yield,&#8221; the amount of water available during the worst drought on record.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.texasobserver.org\/forrestforthetrees\/red-mccombs-tries-his-hand-at-water-marketing\">read more on the origins of the plan<\/a> (and where that water might have gone) in the<strong><em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.texasobserver.org\/forrestforthetrees\/red-mccombs-tries-his-hand-at-water-marketing\">Texas Observer<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That was fast. A plan to suck massive amounts of water from a Louisiana lake and sell it to Texas is off, the Shreveport Times reports. The Sabine River Authority of Louisiana, which regulates the Louisiana side of the lake, held a meeting late last week and &#8220;voted to suspend out of state water sales [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":4524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4521"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4526,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4521\/revisions\/4526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}