The Science Behind Caddo Lake’s Water Future
Caddo Lake is one of North America’s most ecologically significant wetlands — and keeping it healthy requires more than good intentions. It requires water, managed with scientific precision.
For over 20 years, the Caddo Lake Institute’s Environmental Flows Project has used research-backed water releases from Lake O’ the Pines to sustain the natural flow regimes that support fish spawning, forest health, and water quality downstream. The science is working.
But a proposed inter-basin water transfer to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — totaling up to 109,484 acre-feet per year, more than double the historic high use from that reservoir — threatens to undo that progress.
To understand the potential impacts, CLI commissioned an independent hydrological analysis from Hazen and Sawyer using Texas’s own Water Availability Model. The findings are clear: without a formal framework to protect environmental flows, Caddo Lake’s ecological health cannot be guaranteed.
The full context and conclusions are detailed in two documents: the Caddo Lake Institute’s introductory brief, “Context and Introduction to Hydrology Modelling to Address In-Basin Needs and Potential Out-of-Basin Transfers of Water in the Cypress Basin,” and the accompanying technical analysis, “Water Availability Analysis of Lake O’ the Pines, Big Cypress Bayou, and Caddo Lake Under Future Projected Demands with Environmental Flow Achievement” by Hazen and Sawyer. Both are available via the links below.
Caddo Lake Institute Intro Context for HS Water Availability Analysis Oct 2025
Water Availability Analysis Summary H&S Hydrology Memo Oct 2025