East Texas

By KELLY GOOCH
Staff Writer

With an Environmental Impact Statement very near completion, the Angelina & Neches River Authority is closer to getting a decision on a permit that would allow construction of Lake Columbia to begin, said Kelley Holcomb, general manager of the river authority.

Holcomb said the river authority started submitting sections of the draft Environmental Impact Statement to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in spring of 2008.

He said the entire EIS is submitted and the Corps is reviewing it internally while asking the river authority any questions they have.

The document is "very detailed and very technical" and includes mitigation of land and mitigation of archeological, Holcomb said.

He said once the Corps declares that the EIS is complete, they will publish notification of a period of public review and comment in the federal register.

That public review and comment will be a 60-day comment period, Holcomb said, where different agencies and members of the public can voice their opinion on the proposed Lake Columbia public water supply project.

He anticipates the Corps will formally and officially publish notice in the federal register in March or April.

"Realistically, they can take as much time as they want (to review the EIS). It is a large document with several large sections in it," Holcomb said.

Depending on what the comments are from agencies and the public, he said the Corps could decide to grant a 404 permit.

"The whole goal is that we get a 404 permit," Holcomb said. "(A) 404 permit allows us to build the dam and impound the water behind the dam."

He said he is hoping to have a permit by the end of summer 2009.

Although Holcomb noted that getting the permit is not a sure thing, he said the Lake Columbia project is "strongly supported" by various people including state officials, local legislators and local participants.

"We don't know of any direct opposition to Lake Columbia," Holcomb added.

He said Lake Columbia will be 10,000 surface acres, with the dam site located approximately two miles east of Jacksonville.

The project will primarily function as a water supply for various participants, Holcomb said, and the lake would have a firm yield of 85,507 acre-feet of water that could be taken out each year with a 404 permit.

According to the Lake Columbia project Web site, participants include Whitehouse, a 10 percent participant, Troup, a five percent participant and Jacksonville, a five percent participant.

Holcomb said this means Whitehouse could take 10 percent of the firm yield from the lake and would in turn fund 10 percent of the total project cost.

"We in Jacksonville have plenty of water right now," Jacksonville Mayor Robert Haberle said. "(Being a participant is) just a matter of being forward thinking. As we can afford more (percentage participation), we need to consider more."

The Lake Columbia project Web site states that 63 percent is the total participation percentage for the project.

Right now, project cost estimates are somewhere in the $175 million to $200 million range, Holcomb said.

As for funding the rest of the total cost, he said the river authority is in the process of getting more state participation funds from the Texas Water Development Board, which would begin to be paid back to the board through new participants signing on to the project.

Holcomb said they have already gotten approximately $16 million in state participation funds.

He projected that construction on the project would begin within a few months after the 404 permit is issued, if it is, and projected a 5-year construction period once construction starts.

No matter when the project is finished, Holcomb said "it will have a tremendous economic impact" because it will create 95 miles worth of shoreline that has the potential for development.

"I'm excited about it coming to fruition and becoming a lake. It'd be an exciting time to see a new reservoir in northeast Texas to provide safe, clean drinking water ... ," Haberle said.