area much more vulnerable to hurricane damage. The lower river, south of Orange to Sabine Lake, forms part of the Intracoastal Waterway, carrying barge traffic and some pleasure boats. As a young man, Captain Bill McDonald of the Texas Rangers operated a small store at Brown's Bluff (modern-day Elderville) on the Sabine in Gregg County, Texas. Toledo Bend reservoir Hadden's Ferry was the site of the ground-breaking ceremony held on October 5, 1961, for the 181,600-acre Toledo Bend Reservoir. Dedicated October 11, 1969, the reservoir is the largest man-made lake in the South. Flooding of lands along the Sabine River behind the dam inundated all the ferry sites within its boundary. Sabine River Diversion Canal The 1970 Louisiana Legislature passed Acts 90 and 117, creating the Sabine River Diversion Canal, for the purpose of supplying fresh river water to businesses in Lake Charles, Sulphur, Westlake, and what was Mossville (now the Sasol complex), as well as to farmers along the canal, with a total capacity of a day. The canal was completed by the Louisiana Department of Public Works in 1981. The canal is long, with about of underground pipe, and begins on the Old Sabine River north of Niblett's Bluff. Pump station #1 is located 2 miles east of the river. The canal continues running east, piped under roadways such as Louisiana Highway 109 north of Vinton, the Edgerly Big Woods road, and Highway 388, which runs to Dequincy. Just east of Louisiana Highway 27, the canal forks to the south, running around southern Sulphur. The canal is piped under Louisiana Highway 108, at pumping station #4, providing river water to the business area known as City Service in Westlake, and companies such as Equistar, which has a daily contract for 734,400 gallons a day. Other customers and their gallons of use per day are the city of Westlake (8,640,000 gallons), Air Liquide (129,600), Air Products (1,728,000), CITGO (20,160,000), Phillips 66 (3,600,000), The Axiall subsidiary Eagle US 2 LLC (20,160,000), Entergy (21,600,000), Lake Charles Co-Gen (14,400,000), Louisiana Pigment (3,038,400) that produces Titanium White, another LyondellBasell company (720,000), and Matheson Tri-Gas (175,680). The main canal continues east, crossing under Highway 27 and joined by the Houston River canal at pumping station #2, continuing to old Mossville. There it tees to the left, providing water to the Krause and Managan canal supplying the Nelson Industrial Steam Company (Nisco), which supplies steam