Question: What is the name of the ill-fated proposal that would have transported water from the Mississippi River to the Panhandle and West Texas?
Answer: The Trans-Texas Canal. It was actually one of two proposed aqueducts in the 1968 State Water Plan. Estimated to cost up to $14 billion at the time, the plan was the brainchild of Marvin C. Nichols, the first chair of the Texas Water Development Board and the namesake of a massive reservoir proposed in Northeast Texas.
The plan would have tapped the Mississippi River below New Orleans and connected to the Sabine River near Orange, where the Coastal Canal would transport water to the Rio Grande Valley. It called for reversing the flow of the Sabine and building the Trans-Texas Canal through Northeast Texas to Lubbock and then El Paso through 62 new reservoirs. Twelve nuclear power plants would provide the power to pump 12 to 13 million acre-feet of water across the state. Texans rejected the proposal by a mere 6,000 votes.
