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Texas simply altered its border with Oklahoma. Effectively, a small sliver of it, anyway. And, no, Texas didn’t develop into any larger.
After years of dispute over how the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma must be drawn on the Purple River, the 2 states reached an settlement final month that shifted Texas’ northern border simply barely, Texas Land Commissioner Daybreak Buckingham introduced on Thursday.
The issue started in 2009 when the North Texas Municipal Water District, which offers water to a number of Dallas-area cities, discovered about invasive zebra mussels in Lake Texoma, the place it was working a water pump station.
That raised the query of whether or not the pump station was in Texas, or in Oklahoma. Federal legislation prohibits transporting zebra mussels throughout state traces. The North Texas water district paused pumping to keep away from violating federal legislation. And Texas started investigating which state precisely the pump station sat in.
The state discovered that the pump station was inside Texas borders when it was inbuilt 1989. However a brand new boundary established by Texas and Oklahoma in 2000 — the vegetation line alongside the south financial institution of the Purple River — meant that a part of the station now sat within the state’s northern neighbor.
In 2021, Texas despatched Oklahoma a proposal for a brand new boundary that may make sure the station lived wholly in Texas. After years of debate, the 2 states lastly reached an settlement on how the boundary must be drawn. The Texas and Oklahoma Purple River Boundary Commissions executed the brand new border on Oct. 30.
“This redrawn boundary line will ensure that millions of north Texans’ water comes from a secure source in Texas,” Buckingham mentioned.
Texas and Oklahoma exchanged roughly 1.34 acre of underwater land, or a few soccer area every. Neither of the states grew or shrunk — if both state had gotten larger, approval from the U.S. Congress would have been required.
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The North Texas Water Municipal District additionally agreed to pay Oklahoma $10 million for water initiatives that profit North Texas and as much as $800,000 to cowl the College of Oklahoma’s authorized, engineering and surveying charges associated to the boundary, the water district mentioned.
The swapped land is managed by the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers, which is liable for Lake Texoma. The lake serves as the first water supply for all of Sherman and Denison, two cities in North Texas, in accordance with the North Texas water district.
The Texas Common Land Workplace mentioned that the brand new boundary would guarantee the supply of round 30% of the consuming water provide for greater than 2 million individuals within the space.
The ultimate settlement, which maps will likely be up to date to mirror, closes the most recent chapter of controversy over the Texas-Oklahoma border, which was the topic of long-running disputes all through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
After the Louisiana Buy of 1803, the Purple River served because the boundary between the US and Mexico, and, after the Texas Revolution, between the US and Texas.
However as the scale of the river waxed and waned by way of pure processes, federal treaties created Indigenous reservations and oil was found in North Texas, the precise website of the border grew to become the topic of an ongoing turf warfare with the federal authorities, Texas, Oklahoma and Indigenous peoples all laying a stake within the matter.
The U.S. Congress handed the Purple River Boundary Compact in 2000, based mostly on laws signed by then Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating establishing a everlasting border marked by seen landmarks.
Twenty-four years later, due to zebra mussels and a water pump station, the states’ boundaries have shifted once more.
Disclosure: Texas Common Land Workplace has been a monetary supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full record of them right here.
