West Texas Water Rights Battles Continue
Category: Local...
Posted Friday, April 30, 2004 at 09:07 PM [GMT-6]

Pecos County is pulling no punches in making it known that it intends to protect its water from those who would try to sell it elsewhere. This article in the Fort Stockton Pioneer describes the reaction of county commissioners to a proposal by something called the "Texas Mountain Canyon Water Association" to pipe water "from the Hovey Trough - an area of land in Pecos and Brewster counties, which extends to within about 15 miles of Fort Stockton - to Permian Basin cities." More background on this story is available in this Pioneer article dated April 22, in this April 4 article from the Odessa American, and in this article dated April 15 in The Desert-Mountain Times.

Former Odessa mayor Jim Reese is a partner in this venture, as is former Pecos County judge Delmon Hodges. Reese apparently claims that the water is "rechargeable" and therefore, presumably, can't be depleted. I have a hard time believing that anyone in west Texas would fall for such a claim.

To his credit, Reese is calling for an independent assessment by the Texas Water Development Board. On the other hand, there are some who might argue that this injects a degree of outside influence that will likely be unfriendly to local interests (read that as "people living in Pecos and Brewster Counties who have grown accustomed to having water, however sparingly").

It was also interesting to note that the commissioners are painting this new association with the "Rio Nuevo" brush. This tells me that nobody is going to be able to sneak this issue by unsuspecting or unknowledgeable citizens anywhere in west Texas. The antennae are raised, the bogeys are being tracked, and the guns are loaded.