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JACKSONVILLE\u2013 Hundreds of people across East Texas packed into Jacksonville\u2019s City Hall for the groundwater board\u2019s public hearing on the 21 high capacity well drilling permit.<\/p>\nJACKSONVILLE\u2013 Hundreds of people across East Texas packed into Jacksonville\u2019s City Hall for the groundwater board\u2019s public hearing on the 21 high capacity well drilling permit.<\/p>\n
According to our news partner KETK, the Neches and Trinity County\u2019s Groundwater Conservation District voted unanimously to send the contested hearing to an independent state agency for mediation.
\nPeople who spoke at the meeting were resident, mayors, county commissioners, county judges, water companies and state representatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of rural East Texas, all of our rural East Texas counties, will be affected. Our cities will not be able to have businesses. Everyone\u2019s going to have to move away,\u201d New Summerfield resident, Jennifer Murphy-Vick said.<\/p>\n
Other community members spoke out about how this issue may be the size of a drop of water now, but could turn into an ocean of problems if nothing is done.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to bring the folks in (new residents) and then we are going to give one tenth of our water away?\u201d one resident said to the city. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t make sense to me, one tenth is a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company, Red Town Ranch Holdings LLC spoke at the meeting and said the well is for exploratory and data collection. The data would prove that the aquifer is capable to support the application of production.<\/p>\n
The company added that the filed permits would not drain the county dry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state water development board says there is 170-million-acre feet in Anderson County in the aquifer. I am asking for less than one tenth of one percent of the water,\u201d the applicant, Kyler Bass said.<\/p>\n
Private well residents and water companies said in the meeting that the aquifer is drying up and this project is critical to their livelihood.<\/p>\n
The board did not make a final decision on the application, but they did vote unanimously to turn the hearings over to the State Office of Administrative Hearings. SOAH is an independent agency that manages and conducts inquiries in contested cases. The board also requested that SOAH does not schedule a hearing for 90 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cSOAH also has the ability and training in mediators to do mediation,\u201d said Ed McCarthy LLP.<\/p>\n
Chairman of the Natural Resource Committee and state representative, Cody Harris announced that he is calling an investigative hearing into the motives of the company and how this would affect East Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope we actually find the root motive behind why they want to drill this many wells and export this much water,\u201d Rep. Cody Harris said.<\/p>\n
The committee hearing will take place at the capitol July 15th and 1pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JACKSONVILLE\u2013 Hundreds of people across East Texas packed into Jacksonville\u2019s City Hall for the groundwater board\u2019s public hearing on the 21 high capacity well drilling permit. According to our news partner KETK, the Neches and Trinity County\u2019s Groundwater Conservation District voted unanimously to send the contested hearing to an independent state agency for mediation. People … Continue reading Hundreds gather in opposition to well permits in Jacksonville<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1420661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/06\/2025-06-20_034600-202x200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1420649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-08 22:22:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2025\/06\/2025-06-20_034600-202x200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1420649"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1421059,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420649\/revisions\/1421059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1420661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1420649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1420649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1420649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}