Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9005270078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: POTTSBORO, TEXAS LENGTH: Medium
Nearly a month after severe flooding began, the marina and other lakeshore properties are still under as much as 10 to 12 feet of water.
Record rain in the first days of May, following the wettest spring since 1922, made the man-made lake on the Red River rise to 28 feet above normal, flooding hundreds of properties. Water flowed over the dam's spillway for only the second time since it was built in 1944.
Residents of Lake Texoma's 1,200 miles of shoreline in Texas and Oklahoma are among thousands whose lives will be disrupted for months by flooding.
"Many months from now, the lake businesses and residents, along with more than 8 million visitors who come to Texoma every year, will still be feeling the flooding's impact," said Highport owner C.D. Loe Jr.
Only the rooftops of Loe's two restaurants and a bar can be seen at the lake about six miles north of Pottsboro. Texoma is slowly receding, but at 6 inches a day it will take two months just for water to drain from his development.
Flooding on the Red and other rivers also prompted disaster declarations for more than one-third of Arkansas' 75 counties and caused millions of dollars in damage to farmland and homes. Farther downstream on the Red, more than 100,000 acres have been flooded in Louisiana. More than 1,000 Oklahomans were affected by flooding and tornadoes, said the Red Cross.
Not far south of Lake Texoma, the same storms made the Trinity River flood in the Dallas area. Downstream in southeastern Texas, that river will continue to flood low-lying subdivisions until fall as runoff is slowly released from swollen reservoirs, said David Haun of the Texas Division of Emergency Management in Austin.
Texas croplands, many acres of which remain underwater, sustained hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, said Heather Ball, a Texas Department of Agriculture economist in Austin.
Of 24 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs on the Red, Trinity and five other river basins, 20 are still storing excess water, said corps spokesman Ron Ruffennach. It will take more than two months to drain the excess from some of them, he said.
Although the corps says the system of dams and levees built since the 1940s spared Texas from suffering more than the $500 million worth of losses already estimated, critics said more and better flood control is needed.
In Arkansas, Gov. Bill Clinton appointed a task force to examine the corps' release of water from reservoirs along the Red and Arkansas rivers.
And the Lake Texoma Association is urging the government to build more dams upstream on the Red and Washita rivers.
"It is obvious that Lake Texoma cannot hold all the water that the watershed can supply," said Loe.
by CNB