Drought persists in Central Texas, Water Management Plan under review

The Highland Lakes, including Buchanan and Travis, were created to retain water for homes, businesses and agriculture during drier conditions, and Tuma said Lake Travis is “designed to fluctuate.”

Despite the updates, local advocacy group Central Texas Water Coalition said the changes to the water management plan aren’t enough to protect all of the communities that depend on the Highland Lakes for their water supply.

The specifics

The LCRA submitted a Water Management Plan update to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in March, following several months of planning, hydrology review and public feedback. The TCEQ required the update process to begin in 2025. The plan updates firm water requirements as demand in the area has increased, as well as updated hydrology through 2032.

The CTWC was established in 2012, during the drought of record, to advocate for a sustainable water supply. While Executive Director Shannon Hamilton said that the plan is better, she is concerned for communities north of Lakeway that have fixed intakes for water.

The CTWC advocated for a higher combined storage to provide better protections for these areas, but these changes were not included in the plan update.

Water inflows play a significant role in lake storage. Hamilton said that man-made ponds are causing reduced inflows by retaining water that would normally flow into Lake Travis or Buchanan.

“It's something that we've been concerned about for a while,” Hofmann said. “We're kind of at the early stages of trying to see what [aerial] technology can do to allow us to better get a handle on how these impoundments might factor into the amount of runoff that we see in the water supply reservoirs."

Managing the impact

As of March 17, 66% of the Southwestern Travis County Groundwater Conservation District is under extreme drought conditions. Under extreme drought conditions, people tend to utilize more groundwater, according to SWTCGCD General Manager and hydrogeologist Lane Cockrell.

“As folks look to groundwater to keep their landscape alive, neighbors next door who use [it] for their indoor potable use might turn on their faucet one day, and their pump will pump air,” Cockrell said. “It really does put people’s water supply at risk, whether they use that for irrigation or indoor plumbing.”

While surface water supplies can be replenished by large amounts of rainfall, similar to last July, groundwater doesn’t work the same way. The rocks that make up the Trinity Aquifer—partially managed by the SWCGCD—don’t readily accept water, resulting in low yields. Cockrell said there are areas of the Trinity Aquifer that would take thousands of years to recharge, depending on how deep they are.

There’s a chance that El Niño conditions will emerge this summer, Cockrell said. El Niño is a period of warmer sea-surface temperatures, often leading to increased rainfall.

“El Niño conditions can exist,” Hamilton said. “It doesn’t mean Texas will get rain. ... El Niño is a hope, not a promise. And it’s hard to hope for a flood because that is devastation.”

Tuma said that it will not necessarily take flooding to replenish the lakes, but it will require a significant amount of rainfall within certain conditions, such as location and soil moisture.

The TCEQ is currently reviewing the LCRA’s Water Management Plan update, but it could take a couple of years for it to be implemented if there are formal protests, Hofmann said.