Another said it would flood ancestral lands that have been in his family since the s. They traveled to Austin last year to voice their opposition to a 16,acre reservoir that the city of Wichita Falls wants to build in Clay County, approximately 30 miles east of the city. City leaders have applied for a state permit, arguing that building Lake Ringgold is vital to help the city avoid running out of water during droughts, which climate change has made more common and more intense.
If the city is granted the state water rights permit from TCEQ, it would next need to apply for a permit with the U. Army Corps of Engineers; the city needs both a state permit and a federal permit for the project. The seeds for the Lake Ringgold plan began about three years after Russell Schreiber took a job as the director of public works for Wichita Falls in Schreiber faced the nearly impossible task of finding water during one of the worst droughts to ever hit North Texas.
From July to July , the city tried something new: direct potable reuse , a water recycling process that purifies waste and sewer water using a filtration system. The system allows the filtered water to be immediately used as drinking water. After the drought finally ended in , the city applied for a water rights permit with the state to build the Lake Ringgold reservoir.
The reservoir would be formed by building a dam on the Little Wichita River approximately half a mile upstream from its confluence with the Red River and downstream from Lake Kickapoo and Lake Arrowhead. An acre-foot of water is enough to cover one acre to a depth of one foot. The city would need 24, acres of land for the reservoir site, which includes the lake, pump station facilities and transmission line to send water to treatment facilities in Wichita Falls.
The city owns approximately 6, acres of the land needed for the reservoir, but would still need to acquire the remaining land through purchase or eminent domain. Opponents of the project say it would force more than 25 Texas ranching families to sell all or part of the land. Swallows, a common songbird in the area, glided from underneath a bridge to the trees and back. Less than 5 miles away, Deborah Clark, a cattle rancher in Clay County, said a portion of her land would be seized through eminent domain if the project is approved.
