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RED RIVER, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — A bill in the Texas Legislature that would eliminate plans for a controversial reservoir in East Texas has cleared an early hurdle, but it still has a long way to go.

Marvin Nichols is a proposed reservoir project that would flood 66,000 acres of the Sulpher River Basin, located in Northeast Texas, encompassing all or portions of Fannin, Hunt, Lamar, Hopkins, Red River, Franklin, Titus, Morris, Bowie, Cass, and Delta counties.

“Every year, Region C, which is the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, they put the Marvin Nichols reservoir in their plan. Since 1968, they’ve been doing that. Region D, which is Northeast Texas, doesn’t put it in their plan, and there’s this conflict that is unsettled,” says Cass County Judge Travis Ransom.

House Bill 2109 would settle that conflict once and for all, requiring the removal of projects that have been part of a Texas Water Development Board water plan for more than 50 years without starting construction.

“I think you would agree that it’s unreasonable to think that the state has the right to call dibs on private property to be taken at some point, more than 50 years in the future. This is not fair to these hardworking Texans, and this runs counter to the very spirit of what it means to be a Texan,” said the bill’s author, District 1 State Representative Gary VanDeaver, during the Natural Resources Committee’s hearing on the bill on May 2nd.

Judge Ransom was one of many who went to Austin, TX., to testify in favor of the bill.

“I felt like the House Committee hearing on natural resources was the most substantive discussion, specifically about the Marvin Nichols reservoir, that I’ve seen in over 20 years fighting about this issue,” says Judge Ransom.

Water has been a big issue during this Texas legislative session, and opponents of the bill say that it would limit Texas’s ability to meet the growing state’s needs. Proponents argue that there are options that reservoirs are an outdated water supply method and that the state should be looking at new ways to meet the need that do not infringe on property rights.

“Desalination is on the horizon at a reasonable rate, and reuse is available, and leaky infrastructure can be fixed and repaired with modern technology. Necessity is the mother of invention. I have confidence that we’ll innovate and figure this out without… putting a big shallow mud puddle, 66,000-acre mud puddle, in Northeast Texas,” says Judge Ransom.

The bill passed through the committee by a twelve-to-one margin but has yet to be placed on the calendar for full-floor discussion in the House.

“I’m optimistic. I think those that say we’re going to be outspent and out politicked are wrong. I think that right’s right and private property rights should matter in Texas and they still do and, and I think we’re winning slowly but surely, I think we’re winning,” says Judge Ransom.

The one dissenting vote in the Natural Resources Committee, State Representative Ramon Romero Jr. of Tarrant County, also sits on the calendars committee. That is the group responsible for adding bills to the the house’s schedule.

Judge Ransom says they are exploring multiple avenues to pass HB 2109 before the session ends on June 2nd.