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 mon

How zebra mussels and a Lake Texoma pump station spurred Texas to redraw its border with Oklahoma

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2024-11-18 20:30:03

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.