Other technical aspects were treated with equal thoroughness. Doing that homework allowed critical debate on the main points about allocation, and minimized the usual scenario of dueling technical experts. Not everyone got all the water they needed, not even the fish and wildlife, but the process was a balanced one that all interests could clearly follow and participate in with confidence. That seems more and more rare these days and a model worth following. In a great part of Texas, practically all of the state west of Interstate 35, which runs from Dallas to Laredo, an interesting phenomenon manifests itself.
Reservoirs turn upside down.
In the forestlands of East Texas water generally is abundant in large rivers such as the Trinity and Sabine. It has been those rivers and their tributaries that have been dammed to form the surface reservoirs that dot that landscape. Many are very large, like Texoma, Toledo Bend and Sam Rayburn, because of the abundance of water. Precipitation there exceeds evaporation. Lake Meredith, north of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle, is an example.