David Hall, Richardson junior and president of the Student Government Association, began the lecture by introducing state Senator Bob Deuell, R-Greenville to a round of applause.
“It really is good to be back here at North Texas”, Deuell said.
Deuell was a freshman music student at NT in the late ’60s when he knew Henley, who was an English student at the time.
“Don got real successful with the music and I’m still learning English,” he said, joking.
Deuell said he had already promised Henley he would help save Caddo Lake, even though it is not in his district.
“What the Caddo Lake Institute has let me do as a senator is that I can go and use environmental facts and sound science and use it in legislation,” he said.
Deuell said he was part of a non-partisan group of senators who proposed Senate Bill 3 to the Senate in Washington, D.C. to stop construction at Caddo Lake. That bill did not pass.
Henley took the podium and spoke in a low-key and gruff manner before showing a 12–minute video excerpt from a documentary being filmed at Caddo Lake.
The video highlighted the history and creation of Caddo Lake in eastern Texas, when water from an adjacent basin spilled over and formed the lake.
The lake is called “Caddo,” because the Kadohdacho American Indians inhabited the watershed for roughly “1000 years before the arrival of Fernando DeSoto,” Henley said.
Henley reminisced about his days as a child in the ’50s, growing up in Linden, near Caddo Lake, in eastern Texas.
“I remember the first time I saw a bass fish come out of the murky depths...my eyes were like saucer plates, and my heart was beating in my frail chest,” he said.
Henley said his fishing trips with his father formed his ideas about the environment and his work with Caddo Lake.
Henley went to NT from the fall of 1967 to the spring of 1969 and said his time here further shaped his “conversion” to environmentalism.
“I had a good academic experience here, with the exception of the music theory class I failed,” he said, laughing.
He said reading writers steeped in nature, such as Henry David Thoreau helped him become environmentally aware.
Henley said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building levees and canals to use the Caddo Lake area for commercial shipping in 1990.
Henley founded the Caddo Lake Scholars Program with the help of the former Governor Ann Richards, D-Texas in 1992. Soon after, they convinced budget appropriators in Washington D.C. to halt the Army project at Caddo Lake.
“We know … that once we get one thing stopped, another comes along,” he said.
Henley said business magnates in Marshall, near the lake, are attempting to build an industrial park near a biological refuge for animals at Caddo Lake.
“I would like to speak more on that but there is ongoing litigation,” Henley said.
He said he constantly travels to Austin and Washington D.C., working with state senators and representatives to stop the construction.
It is difficult because Caddo Lake resides in Texas and Louisiana and has “at least four agencies in each state with jurisdiction there, not to mention the federal level,” he said.
In addition, he said the Caddo Lake Institute is helping educate residents there about the scientific details of the watershed’s activity.
