Well, at least one thing went well this past week.
Laura Buckman for The Texas Tribune
Texas just altered its border with Oklahoma. Well, a small sliver of it, anyway. And, no, Texas didn’t become any bigger.
After years of dispute over how the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma should be drawn at the Red River, the two states reached an agreement last month that shifted Texas’ northern border just slightly, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham announced on Thursday.
The problem began in 2009 when the North Texas Municipal Water District, which provides water to several Dallas-area cities, learned about invasive zebra mussels in Lake Texoma, where it was operating a water pump station.
That raised the question of whether the pump station was in Texas, or in Oklahoma. Federal law prohibits transporting zebra mussels across state lines. The North Texas water district paused pumping to avoid violating federal law. And Texas began investigating which state exactly the pump station sat in.
The state found that the pump station was within Texas borders when it was built in 1989. But a new boundary established by Texas and Oklahoma in 2000 — the vegetation line along the south bank of the Red River — meant that part of the station now sat in the state’s northern neighbor.
In 2021, Texas sent Oklahoma a proposal for a new boundary that would ensure the station lived wholly in Texas. After years of discussion, the two states finally reached an agreement on how the boundary should be drawn. The Texas and Oklahoma Red River Boundary Commissions executed the 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 said.
Texas and Oklahoma exchanged approximately 1.34 acre of underwater land, or about a football field each. Neither of the states grew or shrunk — if either state had gotten bigger, approval from the U.S. Congress would have been required.
:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/a2eb1e91017143006fc84dffc91a9e89/Lake%20Texoma%20LS%20TT%2001.jpg)
Good thing it didn’t need to go through Congress, I’m sure Ted Cruz would have filibustered it. Also good to know we can still solve some border disputes without involving the National Guard. I don’t have anything to say really, I just liked the story and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to crack a couple of cheap jokes. I’ll stop now.