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WATER POLITICS

Courtesy of the New York Times, a look at Texas’ bid for more water from neighboring Oklahoma:

It was largely overlooked last year when Fort Worth, now boasting a population of 758,000, moved closer to overtaking San Francisco in population. Yet in some ways, the Texas city’s early-21st-century growth spurt recalls the issues that San Francisco faced a century ago: if Fort Worth doesn’t get more water, its opportunities for growth will diminish rapidly.

As of the 2010 census, about 1.8 million people lived in Tarrant County, which surrounds Fort Worth — 25 percent more than a decade earlier. So, like the Bay Area in the early 20th century, the county is looking far upstream for the water to support a booming population.

Six years ago, the Tarrant Regional Water District sued the Oklahoma Water Authorities after being denied permission to take water from an Oklahoma tributary of the Red River, a water source to which both states have separate rights under a 1980 compact.

The Oklahoma Water Resources Board, backed by all branches of the state’s government, has set very high bars for any water authority like Tarrant’s that wants to pull water from its rivers. Tarrant has argued that it is in “dire need” of new supplies, and the state of Texas contends that Oklahoma’s barriers, upheld by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, put “one of the most populous and productive” areas of the country at “risk for insufficient water.”

On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.

One central argument the justices will wrestle with is whether Oklahoma’s restrictions on the transfer of its water to Texas violate constitutional prohibitions on restrictions in interstate commerce, or whether the 1980 compact, approved by Congress, clearly exempts water divisions from the interstate commerce clause.

Texas and Oklahoma have suffered prolonged, damaging droughts in the last two years, and there is some evidence a new one could be beginning. Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court’s decision, whichever way it goes, is likely to raise tempers.

Already, Oklahoma water officials are trying to block the efforts of the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes in the southeastern part of the state to exert some control over any transfer of water from their section of the Kiamichi River basin to allow for continued growth in Oklahoma City’s expanding suburbs.

If the history of the San Francisco Bay Area offers any lessons, the Supreme Court’s decision will not end the fight. Some Bay Area residents still mourn the construction of the O’Shaughnessy Dam on the Tuolumne River and the creation of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir 90 years ago and are trying to get both reversed, although most of the region is happy to be drinking water from the Tuolumne.

If the court were to rule for Tarrant County and clear the way for a water transfer, the Kiamichi River, like the Tuolumne, will be serving suburbs 100 or more miles away