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Oklahoma's iconic shape is about to change... but only a little

An image of Lake Texoma State Park near Kingston. Oklahoma and Texas are in a boundary dispute at the lake.
Lori Duckworth
/
Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department
An image of Lake Texoma State Park near Kingston. Oklahoma and Texas are in a boundary dispute at the lake.

Oklahoma and Texas are swapping a few acres of water-logged land between them to resolve a decades-old border issue.

At a meeting of the Red River Boundary Commission Wednesday, commissioners voted to shift the boundary between the two states to maintain reliable access to drinking water for millions of Texans and keep compliant with federal law.

The Red River cleaves the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas. But rivers famously shift and meander, so the location of the river is in constant flux. After nearly a century of disagreement, a Red River Boundary Commission featuring representatives from Texas, Oklahoma and the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache Nations came up with a solution.

Under that 2000 compact agreement, a permanent border was established at the vegetation line of the southern bank of the Red River.

According to the compact, the border was supposed to be based on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers survey from before the construction of Lake Texoma. But a map from the U.S. Geological survey was used instead.

That seemingly trivial swap caused problems for an existing pump station pulling water from Lake Texoma to a treatment plant in Texas. The pump station was built in 1989. It sat in Texas until 2000, when the border shifted about 100 feet and landed smack dab in the middle of the facility.

In 2000, the border shifted so that part of the pump station was in Oklahoma.
North Texas Municipal Water District
/
Screenshot from Red River Boundary Commission presentation
In 2000, the border shifted so that part of the pump station was in Oklahoma.

The debacle didn’t draw much attention or cause many problems until zebra mussels were discovered in Lake Texoma in 2009. It’s illegal under federal law to move invasive species — including zebra mussels — across state lines.

Even a pump station that pulls mussels from just a few yards inside the Oklahoma border into Texas would be in violation of federal law.

The North Texas Municipal Water District, which operates the pump station, had to stop operations until it could get a limited exemption from U.S. Fish and Wildlife. That exemption required them to build a fully enclosed pipeline to move the water from the pump station on Lake Texoma to their treatment plant about 60 miles away, where the zebra mussels are removed.

Texas re-formed a Red River boundary commission in 2013, and Oklahoma re-formed its counterpart in 2021. The two commissions have met together several times since then.

Around 2 million people in North Texas rely on the pump station for drinking water. Constructing a new facility on the Texas side of the border would have taken years and cost a minimum of $50 million, Texas officials said at a boundary commission meeting last year.

The solution agreed upon Wednesday will be much quicker and cheaper. The agreement, negotiated by University of Oklahoma President Joseph Harroz Jr., will grant 1.34 acres of Lake Texoma, including the pump station, to Texas in exchange for 1.34 nearby acres of lake that will now belong to Oklahoma.

A proposed boundary solution proposed at a 2023 meeting of the Red River Boundary Commission.
North Texas Municipal Water District
/
Screenshot from Red River Boundary Commission presentation
A proposed boundary solution proposed at a 2023 meeting of the Red River Boundary Commission.

Texas officials have agreed to shoulder up to $300,000 for redrawing the border, and they’re paying Oklahoma $10 million, which will be used for water projects.

Now that the Red River Boundary Commission has a fix, Gov. Kevin Stitt will also set a date for the Contingency Review Board to vote on it.


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Graycen Wheeler is a reporter covering water issues at KOSU as a corps member with Report for America.
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