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BI-State Alliance
Meeting Minutes
April 24, 2000
The Meeting was called to order by Larry Kelly
The opening prayer was conducted.
Attendees were introduced.
The minutes of the March 2000 meeting were approved as presented on the web site.
Janna Lehman gave the treasurers report. A motion was made seconded and passed that the report be accepted as presented.
Committee Reports
Bill Heugel presented the Region I report. He did not attend the meeting but has received two draft reports prepared by the committee. One describes Region I the other describes the water resources of Region I. Both are available for review. Bill also made note of the fact that many companies including T Boone Pickens are purchasing land and water rights and offering to provide pipelines to the areas such as San Antonio.
Charles English presented the DETDA report. He had no major issues to present most of the meeting was spent discussing the harvest of timber in the National Forest.
Old Business
Lake Level Project
A discussion about getting the candidates for state senator to come to a meeting to make presentations and hear our concerns.
Larry Kelly and Dean Albright attended the meeting of the Toledo Bend Project Organization. This organization decides how much money will be spent on projects. Larry made a presentation at the meeting on the allocation of power and showed some photos of when the lake was low and when it was at approximately 168ft MSL. This material will also be sent to FERC.
Communication with the Power companies continues. They plan to take power early in the prime power period as they did last year. This means they will be taking the power during the higher inflow period which should result in higher levels in September. The normal method of taking power is to take 60% of it in the last three months.
The Louisiana SRA board meeting was scheduled for April 25th. The Louisiana SRA has some serious financial problems They committed to indebtedness and seemed to ignore the possibility that they would have a year where there would be little or no secondary power generated. Louisiana SRA gets 64% of its revenue from water and power sales from Toledo Bend. The Texas SRA only gets 20% of its revenue from the lake because it has other projects such as Lake Fork etc. that contribute to their total income.
FERC Meeting.
Larry stated that the Sabine River Action Coalition wanted to attend the FERC meeting. However since it is a closed meeting and they were not invited they will not be allowed to attend. The coalition wishes to discuss issues occuring below the dam.
Mr. Robinson who signed the initial letter about the FERC judgment will be at the meeting representing FERC. Other representatives will be from the SRAs and from the BI State Alliance. At the meeting the SRAs and the BI State Alliance will make presentations and then FERC will cover the options and define the procedure to be followed. A final decision by them will be made at a later date.
Cormorant Problem
There will be s special meeting at the Texas Parks and Wildlife site at Athens Texas. The meeting will be at 7PM on May 23rd. The purpose will be to discuss the problem and to look at various approaches. Linda Mauer will attend for the BI State Alliance.
Membership
The Sabine Chamber of Commerce submitted its resignation from the BI State Alliance. The primary reason for the resignation was that someone had improperly judged that the BI State Alliance was a Political Action Committee. If the Alliance was a PAC the Chamber would not be eligible for some funds from the Tourism board. The BI State Alliance does not contribute to any political activity or candidate. We have only presented information to the candidates and the political committees. Concern was expressed that the BI State Alliance be improperly tagged as a PAC.
Larry recommended that someone prepare a presentation to the Commissioners Court on the BI State Alliance to make sure they know it is not a PAC.
New Business
Larry had a discussion with Bob Neal of the Land owners and Lease Owners Association. Their objective is to improve hunting regulations in Texas. They did influence legislation this year on poaching. They will check with their membership to see if their is some common interest.
Pay Bills
Bills totaling 106.29 were presented. A motion was made seconded and carried that the bills be paid.
Larry again requested that members and friends write to FERC and copy Congressman Turner, and Senators Gramm and Hutchinson. Letters need to be in before May 11th.
The meeting was adjourned. The next meeting is May 22nd.
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