Remarks prepared for the NETMWD Directors by David Simpson of Avinger, March 24, 2025
Walking around Jefferson last week with my wife and grandson, we stopped at a bust of Thomas Jefferson and read his words:
“When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as a public property.”
The manner in which this board has considered itself for several years defies this description.
Instead of viewing yourselves as public property you have hidden yourselves, your contact information, your plans, and refused to seriously consider scientific studies.
You aspired to sell a large amount of water without an objective study of its effects—with the justification that you have a license to do it and you are in the business of monetizing assets. That is reckless.
Were it not for the public outcry, your plans may have been consummated.
Last week, among other presentations by biologists, engineers, and scientists, Aqua Strategies, who specializes in hydrology, made a presentation to federal, state, local officials, and landowners at a conference hosted by the Caddo Lake Institute, and to which the district was invited.
Aqua Strategies showed what the lake levels would be if the flows necessary for the health of our downstream neighbors and a demand for water of 122,085 acre-feet per year were met from both Lake O’ the Pines and Ellison Creek Reservoir. From 2000 to 2021 the model shows the lake levels dropping way below SWEPCO’s intakes, to 201 feet, the bottom of the conservation pool and the top of the dead pool—not once, but twice in 2007 and 2013.
I hope that sinks in and forever kills the idea of selling that amount of water.
Draining the lake to the top of the dead pool would not only ruin recreation, but water quality, aquatic life and our precious cypress forests.
Science shows that flowing water through the lake is not wasted, it does not just go to the Gulf; it sustains life all along the way.
Acknowledge your refusal to “follow truth, justice and plain dealing” (to put it in Jefferson’s words); be grateful for a vigilant citizenry and allow others who are committed to operating in the sunlight to take your places.