|
|
FYI
|
|
The longest river in Texas?
The Rio Grande, which begins in Colorado and covers 1,896 miles, second only to the Missouri-Mississippi.
The second longest?
The Red River, which forms the border between Texas and Oklahoma and Texas and Arkansas.
The shortest river?
The Comal, which is only two and a half miles long.
The biggest aquifer?
The Ogallala, which covers four states and in 1974 had more than 281.7 million acre-feet of recoverable groundwater. By 2031, this total will have been reduced to 76.1 million acre-feet in Texas.
|
|
|
Texas has 191,228 miles of streams and rivers, and 11,247 rivers and
streams have been given names by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Texas law, relying on the public-trust doctrine of English common law,
has long recognized the public's right to use navigable streams for canoeing, swimming, and fishing. They are considered "highways of the
state." Under Texas law dating from 1837, a river is considered navigable (and therefore open to public use) as long as its bed averages at least 30 feet wide from its mouth up.*
Erecting fences and other barriers across navigable rivers is forbidden.
Hundreds of streams in Texas meet this navigability test. Unlike regulation of the coastal beaches, however, no state agency has
day-to-day responsibility for protecting or securing the public's right of access to rivers. Moreover, no state agency has undertaken the task of
identifying all these navigable streams. Limited budgets and the need for field investigations have made state agencies reluctant to respond to
public inquiries about the navigability of streams.
The beds of navigable streams are generally owned by the sate, in trust for the public. Also, the state owns the beds of
perennial streams, regardless of navigability, where the original land grant was made under the civil law prior to
December 14, 1837. Under a 1929 law popularly known as the Small Bill, the state in some situations has relinquished
to the adjoining landowner certain property rights in the bed of a navigable stream. However, the public may still use these navigable streams.
Public access is limited even for the major rivers known to be navigable, such as the Brazos, Trinity, Colorado, and
Guadalupe. Under state law, the right of access to lakes, streams, and rivers rests with the owners of the land that
borders the surface water, and the majority of this "riparian" land is in private hands. Therefore, the public depends on
public parks, boat ramps, or highway rights-of-way to gain access to rivers. A citizen survey conducted in 1987 showed that Texans wanted more public accesses.* Also, a 1990 TPWD survey of citizens and recreation professionals showed
that 67 percent of the respondents wanted more public recreation areas along rivers and streams.*
Maintaining water flows (aka instream flows) in many of our rivers and streams has become a major issue of concern.
How Texas preserves instream flows in light of the demands of agriculture and growing municipal water needs is being
confronted. Adequate water in rivers and streams is not only necessary for recreational users, but is critical to support
the natural life in and around these waterways and the Texas coastal bays and estuaries into which they empty. During
the 2003 session of the Texas Legislature, the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense and
other conservation groups pressed the legislature to set up a 2-year study commission to examine instream flow issues
and report back to the Legislature. The conservation groups also urged the Legislature to put a mororatorium on the issuance of new surface water permits until the study was coompleted.
|
MAJOR RIVERS
|
|
|
|
|
