Lake storage down 42 percent from historical average

The recent approval of a revised Water Management Plan by the Lower Colorado River Authority board of directors and proposed changes to the City of Austin's Water Conservation Code is issuing a staunch warning to regional water stakeholders: The implications of Texas' recent dry weather has wreaked havoc on water storage at the state and local levels. And, as the population continues to grow, more plans must be made to ensure water is available for future generations.

"What you need to think about with this drought is that all it's really done is put into very sharp focus the fact that there are an enormous number of people sharing a very fixed resource," said Laura Huffman, Texas director of The Nature Conservancy, during a January panel.

Although recent rains have helped the lakes to rise, it has not been enough to take the region out of danger, stakeholders say.

As of April 23, the combined storage of lakes Buchanan and Travis, the source of Austin's drinking water, was 974,979 acre-feet of water. On average, the lakes sit at 1.67 million acre-feet of water.

An improved response

The revised LCRA plan is devised to allow the regional water management agency more flexibility to respond to severe droughts. In all, the strategies would create more than 640,000 acre-feet of additional water supply by 2060.

But still, there is worry that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which issues final approval of the plan, may not rubber-stamp the revisions in time to make it effective before another hot summer.

"Last time, it took the TCEQ years to finalize it," Travis County Commissioner Karen Huber said. "It can still be changed, and competing interests will be trying to get amendments to it while it goes through the TCEQ process. The plan is not the answer to everything, but it is, as submitted to TCEQ, an extremely important first step for better assurance that our basic water supply needs on the Highland Lakes will be met."

Staving off Stage 3

With summer approaching, the Austin Water Utility has also been revising its own water conservation code.

Put simply, the city prepaid the LCRA for its water, and if the city crosses a water-use threshold for two consecutive years, it will have to make payments in the multimillion-dollar range. One of the hopes is that proposed revisions would allow the city to stretch its dollars further through conservation and continue to defer those payments, said Drema Gross, water conservation manager for Austin Water Utility.

"We're in very good position as far as watery supply," Gross said. "Of course we're concerned about drought, but it makes financial sense for the city and the utility to try and extend our prepaid amount of water as long as possible."

Moreover, the city's code, although drafted in 2007, was not intended to deal with long-term drought situations, said Jadell Hines, conservation program coordinator at Austin Water Utility.

Given that the city has beenoperating under Stage 2 restrictions since Sept. 6—the second time in about three years that Austin has been in Stage 2—the drought is indeed long-term, she said.

And while officials predict that the advancing summer will be milder than last year, public feedback gathered over the past six months indicated that residents are anxious about the prospect of another hot season.

"In looking over our code, we realized that were we to get into a Stage 3 situation, there would be some significant impacts to the community," Hines said. "Our hope [is] that we would get this code adopted prior to [water] use to get into Stage 3,"

The utility plans to present revisions to City Council in May, at which time the public is invited to comment.

Correction: The lake storage is down by 42 percent, not 99 percent, as originally reported, from the historical average.