The North Texas Municipal Water District last month received its state water rights permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, marking a milestone for its Lower Bois d-Arc Creek Reservoir project.

The LBCR represents the water district’s long-term strategy for sustaining the region’s rapid growth. Located in Fannin County, the reservoir is the first of its kind to be constructed in Texas in the past 30 years.

The TCEQ permit is granted following extensive hydrologic and environmental reviews and a public approval process.

"Obtaining permits and constructing reservoirs is no small feat. Our board of directors, staff and partners deserve the credit for working as a team to achieve this important milestone,” said Tom Kula, NTMWD executive director, in a news release. “This is a huge step toward the goal of meeting our region’s urgent needs today and ensuring that our children, and our children’s children will have the quantity and quality of water they need in the future.”

Building a reservoir in Texas requires two permits: one from the TCEQ and a Clean Water Act permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, NTMWD Deputy Director Mike Rickman said. The latter is still in the review process, as the Environmental Protection Agency has included comments to the Army Corps of Engineers related to the mitigation of wetlands and hardwoods near the reservoir site, Rickman said.

“We’re hoping to get [the permit] late this year or early next year but there’s nothing set in stone there,” he said. There’s a process we have to go through to meet certain requirements.”

One of the requirements the district and its member cities had to meet in order to obtain the TCEQ’s permit was the demonstration of effective and collective conservation efforts, Rickman said.

“A lot of the reservoirs we use today were constructed after the drought of 1950s, and we’ve been living off of those by being good stewards through water conservation,” he said. “But we’ve done everything could do with [what we have]. We have to show purpose for both permits.”

The NTMWD has been working to develop the reservoir for the past 10 years. When completed, the $992 million project is expected to supply Fannin County and the water district with about 108 million gallons per day. It will play a major part in the district’s water plan through 2040.

District spokesperson Janet Rummell said the project is on schedule to start operating in 2020.