With water involved, it’s a War Between the States.

A recent proposal by the Tarrant Regional Water District to pump hundreds of millions of gallons of water out of Oklahoma into the taps of North Texas has Oklahoma lawmakers, environmentalists and policymakers threatening a border war.

While it may not attract the crowds of the football rivalry between the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma, the brewing fight over water has stirred up similarly harsh feelings.

Fueling the anger is a federal lawsuit filed by the water district against two Oklahoma water-control agencies contending that a moratorium on out-of-state water sales is unconstitutional. If it wins in court, the district could take the water and not pay a dime for it.

“To allow this issue to be decided by the courts would gut democracy and the result would be Communism without a firing squad,” said state Rep. Jerry Ellis, a Democrat from southeast Oklahoma and a key backer of the moratorium, in a recent statement.

“Oklahomans should be outraged.”

Duane Smith, executive director of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, said his agency is prepared to defend the moratorium and to thwart any efforts by Texans to take water unless directed otherwise by the governor or the Legislature.

“We think the statutes are constitutional and what we don’t like, to be blunt about it, is Texas coming to Oklahoma to exert some kind of legal priority through litigation for the taking of Oklahoma water,” Smith said. “We don’t think that is appropriate, and we will do all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Permits sought
The water district filed permit applications last week to capture water from three basins in south central and southeastern Oklahoma. The district is seeking to divert about 7 percent of the water before it enters the Red River and takes on too much salt to be drinkable.

District officials say the water is needed to serve the region’s growing population, which is expected to hit 4.3 million by 2060. They propose paying Oklahoma for the water and point out that Oklahoma can use the money to improve its water system and pay off a $68 million debt to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for building a reservoir.

Simultaneously, the district sued the Oklahoma Water Resources Board and the Oklahoma Water Conservation Storage Commission to keep the state from dismissing or denying the permit applications while the matter is in court. Any deal to take water out of Oklahoma would have to be approved by several federal agencies, including the corps, a district official said.

On Friday, Oklahoma agreed in federal court to take no action on the applications until the case is complete. A federal judge had originally scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on the water district’s request for a temporary restraining order.

Jim Oliver, executive director of the water district, said what he’s heard so far is not surprising or substantive.

“They are all emotional, political arguments,” Oliver said.

Fighting words
Make no mistake, Ellis gets emotional when talking about sending his state’s water to the other side of the Red River. A rancher and weekly newspaper publisher in Valliant, Ellis vividly remembers the mid-1950s droughts that devastated the state.

“I can remember my dad laying down on the ground and putting his arm in a crack in the soil and never touching the bottom,” Ellis said. “People have strong feelings about this.  . . . And this is not a neighborly way to go about it, to file a lawsuit.”

After recently surviving three consecutive years of below-average rainfall, 7 in 8 Oklahomans oppose out-of-state water sales, he said. When Ellis wrote the bill extending the original moratorium to 2009, it had broad bipartisan support in the House and Senate.

“Dry weather has caused havoc with tourism, industries like oil and gas and agriculture. There is nothing that it doesn’t affect,” Ellis said. “I raise cattle, and my calves are the sorriest in a long time because of the stress on the system.”

Instead of talking about selling water, Oklahoma should complete a study of the state’s water needs for the next 50 years, he said.

“Water is our future. Texas wants our water for their growth, and if Oklahoma wants to grow, we must maintain control of our most valuable resource. Texans can get their water where they get their workforce — Mexico,” Ellis wrote in a recently distributed column.

Oklahoma state Rep. Mike Reynolds worries that any deal to sell water to Texas would put Oklahoma at a disadvantage if there is a drought or considerable population growth. He said he is not entirely opposed to selling water but wants the state to complete its study to make sure that Oklahoma has water to sell. He supports keeping the moratorium in the interim.

“When a state begins selling water to another state, it doesn’t matter how bad conditions get in the state, the first priority is to sell to the out-of-state people,” said Reynolds, a Republican from Oklahoma City.

Reynolds recently refiled a bill from a previous session that allows for creating a citizen lake committee to give the public more say in water planning. He has amended that bill to provide for repayment of the state’s debt for the construction of Sardis Lake.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Oklahoma’s appeal of a lower court ruling that it owes $68 million, plus interest, for construction of the reservoir in southeast Oklahoma. The corps built Sardis Lake in the mid-1970s.

Reynolds doesn’t want Oklahoma to hastily make a deal with Texas because it suddenly has had a huge bill come due. Tarrant water district officials were aware that Oklahoma may lose its appeal, and using the district’s money to repay the loan was part of their presentation.

“Two days after the Supreme Court decision, I get a DVD on the importance of selling water and how it will bail out the Oklahoma economy, no pun intended,” Reynolds said. “It almost seemed orchestrated.”

Wasted water?
Environmentalists don’t think the excess water being sought by Texas is necessarily a waste. They are afraid the Red River could eventually turn into a trickle.

Water district officials like to say that the water they want, from the Cache Creek, Beaver Creek and Kiamichi River basins, is wasted after it hits the Red River because it takes on so much salt.

But there has been increasing debate among environmentalists and even the Texas Water Development Board about the amount of fresh water needed to sustain the state’s rivers and ecosystems.

“It’s wasted in the Red River?” asked David Franklin, chairman of the Oklahoma chapter of the Sierra Club. “It benefits us all to have a healthier river.”

Franklin said Texas — particularly the water district — should do more to conserve its own water before going north of the Red River.

Water district officials say they have been called “water hogs” over a proposal to build the Marvin Nichols Reservoir in East Texas, and one study indicated that Dallas and Fort Worth ranked first and second in consumption among the state’s largest cities. Water district officials say the study does not properly account for industrial and commercial use.

“There is room for conservation,” Franklin said. “I think they are coming to Oklahoma because they can’t build a lake in Northeast Texas.”

Hopper Smith, a former Oklahoma lawmaker hired to lobby for the Texas water district in Oklahoma City, knows that some of his former colleagues will take offense at his working to sell water to Texas. He plans to go person to person to share the facts of the water district’s proposal.

“We don’t want to agitate the people of Oklahoma,” Smith said. “All we want to do is buy a surplus commodity that they are letting go. What is wrong with that? It falls from the sky.”