Lake Ralph Hall

While everyone is breathlessly talking about Bois D’Arc, another lake is set to open in a couple of years near Ladonia! Just think… right when BDA is coming into its own, Lake Ralph Hall will be opening! Hopefully, by then, all these crocodile tears will have dried and folks will have given Fork enough rest that she’ll start back turning out the huge fish she used to. It’s amazing to me that all I’ve heard for the past year or more is Bois D’Arc over and over, but now that it’s open, folks are complaining about how terrible the parking is and how awful the locust trees are.

It was by accident I saw something on YouTube about Lake Ralph Hall. All the fish shelters and habitat and structure they’re making and building for the fish is beyond amazing to me. I should be retiring about the time LRH opens and is available to the public! To me, this lake seems to be the one everyone should be excited about!

JR

just another good cat fish lake...

https://www.facebook.com/reel/385569421051504

Another lake too dang far to help the Houston area. You know, Houston, the 4th largest city in the USA? Soon to be the 3rd largest.........

It's good they are getting Ralph Hall complete soon. Based on what I saw in DFW this weekend they probably already need the capacity, The lakes that are proposed east of me here in Delta county are being fought tooth and nail by the locals. I figure with the demand for water headed where it is they are beating a dead horse. They'll probably start building those as soon as Hall is complete.

sadly a lot of the time the “locals” are led to protest by a “pied piper” who has other intentions and the “locals” are simply pawns in their game

loud and only informed of one side of an issue is dangerous, yet it’s what seems to be the norm these days

Marvin Nichols is an interesting reservoir that hopefully will be built.

Looks like several houses along 34 were the new bridge went in where the lake will start filling in 2026, thats got to suck for those folks

As vocal as these folks are getting I'm afraid this one might actually turn violent. I get e-mails from the group representing the property owners, no threats but they are letting the state know they won't go down without a fight.
I noticed on the map I recently saw they've taken the other lakes off the table apparently that were supposed to built between where I live and Marvin Nichols. One of those was supposed to back right up to the Cooper Lake Dam. If they built that one they would probably get my place. I wouldn't be in the lake but probably the flood plane.
I drove across the 34 bridges at Ralph Hall yesterday. The one thing I noticed is it will have some really good deep crappie holes.

Can someone explain how North Texas keeps getting lakes when they have so many already? The rest of Texas REALLY needs more lakes. The fat get fatter....

Lakes are put where the watersheds that can support them are. In Texas, that means where it rains and the rivers/creeks flow. In addition, you put water sources as close to where they are needed as possible. If I remember this right, the DFW MSA/CSA area (Waco to Durant) is the 5th largest in the country. And the population of greater than the rest of the state combined.

Correction, the CSA is #6 and is over 26% or the entire state's population, not more than half.

Because that area gets rain, OH Ivie and Choke are good examples of lakes that never fill up

It's the rate of DFW population growth that is driving the new lakes. Based on what I saw this past weekend while I was there by the time they get Ralph Hall on line they are going to still not have enough capacity to feed everything. Honestly I wish they'd look at building lakes in the Trinity Basin south of DFW. They could recirculate a lot of the water they are using. From what I understand the city of Atlanta, Georgia is already doing something similar.

My place must be fairly close to you but on higher ground. The last time I looked either Marvin Nichols or Marvin Nichols 2 would cover about 20 acres of my low areas....but I would have a peninsula with Lakefront on all 3 sides. I figured it would be done way after my time but it looks like maybe a possibility if they ramp it up....

I get that, but the fact that we dont get much rain is the very reason we need more lakes. Lakes like Canyon, Travis and Medina are going dry because SA/Austin is growing like crazy also, in addition to the drought. If we had more lakes to draw from, the lakes we have wouldnt constantly be drying out. Saying we are building lakes where it rains seems counterintuitive to me. Like feeding fat people instead of the starving ones. We are starving down here, and it only seems like it is going to get worse. For those of you who dont know how bad it is, Medina is at 2% capacity, and most of our other lakes are around 50%.

Dubai has been in the news lately for the flooding there. I’ve been to Dubai numerous times when I was working in Iraq and Afghanistan. They normally get less than 5” of rain in a year’s time. Recently, as I read, they ‘seeded’ the clouds experimentally, and they got floods that wreaked havoc on the area. Normally, they pull sea water and desalinate it.

As I watched the news about Cali and Utah sucking their lakes dry, I’ve wondered to myself about why they don’t do the same. I did read an article saying that it would be too expensive. REALLY? More expensive than drilling an aqueduct through the mountains to take water from Eastern rivers?

Same question… Why doesn’t Houston pull water from the Gulf of Mexico and desalinate it? It’s pretty much an endless supply! No hate towards the folks in the Houston area. My son lives in Alvin. I just don’t know why all the tree-huggers want to take the sun’s energy and the wind’s power to generate electricity, but they don’t figure out how to make fresh water out of the seas that are supposedly rising and going to destroy all the coastal areas?

JR

Lakes are built to sell the water back to municipalities. If they can’t get a product to sell then why invest the money.

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Dubai has been in the news lately for the flooding there. I’ve been to Dubai numerous times when I was working in Iraq and Afghanistan. They normally get less than 5” of rain in a year’s time. Recently, as I read, they ‘seeded’ the clouds experimentally, and they got floods that wreaked havoc on the area. Normally, they pull sea water and desalinate it.

As I watched the news about Cali and Utah sucking their lakes dry, I’ve wondered to myself about why they don’t do the same. I did read an article saying that it would be too expensive. REALLY? More expensive than drilling an aqueduct through the mountains to take water from Eastern rivers?

Same question… Why doesn’t Houston pull water from the Gulf of Mexico and desalinate it? It’s pretty much an endless supply! No hate towards the folks in the Houston area. My son lives in Alvin. I just don’t know why all the tree-huggers want to take the sun’s energy and the wind’s power to generate electricity, but they don’t figure out how to make fresh water out of the seas that are supposedly rising and going to destroy all the coastal areas?

JR
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Desalination is energy intensive. More load on the grid. Produces a lot of salt also.

But, y’all have the gulf to fish.

It’s not but 7,500 surface acres.

I saw it on a map that had both Bois D'arc and Ralph Hall Lakes. It appeared on that map as being about half the size of Bois D'arc. I think Pat Mayse is around 7500 if my memory serves me correctly, so there is something to compare it to. I've driven over the river that feeds it for last 30 years and seen how it reacts to rain. It will probably fill up in less than a year or as fast as week or two once they close the dam like Cooper did; a little history on Cooper for those of you that weren't around it or were to young to recall the event. Cooper was supposed to take about 4 to 5 years to fill and it filled in about a two week period. It rained so much during that time frame the whole entire Sulphur River Basin flooded everything from it's head waters to the Red River Basin, of course everything else in this part of the country flooded as well.

A little more history on Cooper Lake: When it opened, there was a big ceremony with a 5k race across the dam. Since the dam was more than 3.1 miles long, they took the runners in a bus to the point where the odometer clicked over at 3.1. They let us out, and the wind was white-capping the lake… of course in the direction where we had to run into the wind. I was in my prime at that time in my life, and I won the race that day. It was the only race I ever crossed the finish line first overall. And now you know the rest of the story!


JR

All this talk about the lakes got me to wondering where things were with all the other proposed lakes. I come across this article from The Paris News from 2022, it was the latest info I could find. It's kind of an interesting read. The Paris News