Video Tour: Bois d’Arc Lake Starts Filling With Water

Bois d’Arc Lake, Texas’ first new reservoir in nearly 30 years, has started filling with water, a major milestone in a sprawling, $1.6 billion program designed to start providing water to 1.7 million residents of a fast-growing 10-county area in 2022.

Owned by the North Texas Municipal Water District, Bois d’Arc Lake covers 16,641 acres and also will provide a new source of recreation economic activity for North Texas and for Fannin County, where it is located.

NTMWD has been formally planning Bois d’Arc Lake since 2003, and construction started on several components in May 2018. Freese and Nichols has helped lead the program, which involved multiple partners. Components include a dam and spillway, pump stations, pipelines, a raw water treatment station, environmental mitigation, roadway relocation, a lake operations center and boat ramps, and land use/zoning regulations.

Numerous Freese and Nichols staff members across several practice areas have contributed to the program, from design to planning to program/construction management. Our roles have included:

• Program management, construction management and inspection for five construction packages:
  • CMAR 1 – Archer Western – Dam, Reservoir, Reservoir Clearing and Terminal Storage Reservoir
  • Full-Service Provider – Resource Environmental Solutions – Environmental Mitigation at Riverby, Upper Bois d’Arc Creek and Additional Mitigation Sites
  • CMAR 3 – Garney – Leonard Water Treatment Plant, High Service and Raw Water Pump Stations and Dam Maintenance Facility
  • CMAR 4 – Austin Bridge and Road – FM 897, Fannin County Roads, Recreational Boat Ramps and Lake Operations Center
  • CMAR 5 – Garney – Raw Water Pipeline and Leonard to McKinney Treated Water Pipeline
• Management and assistance with required permitting
• Design of the dam, raw water pump station, terminal storage reservoir, one segment of the raw water pipeline, high service pump station and initial design work on the mitigation areas totaling more than 17,000 acres
• Regular drone footage updates of construction progress
• Comprehensive planning/zoning regulations for the lakeshore, in partnership with Fannin County

Rainfall is projected to fill the lake sufficiently to begin providing treated water for customers in 2022. Meanwhile, construction continues on the dam embankment, raw water pump station, lake operations center, water treatment plant in Leonard, and pipelines between the lake, Leonard and the regional water system distribution point in McKinney. The first major component of the program was completed in 2020 with the opening of 11 miles of county and state roads, including 6.2 miles of FM 897 and its accompanying bridge.