AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- As drought conditions continue to worsen across Central Texas, Lower Colorado River Authority officials have determined that no water from the Highland Lakes will be available to its interruptible agricultural customers in the lower Colorado River basin.
The determination affects LCRA's interruptible water customers in the Gulf Coast, Lakeside and Pierce Ranch agricultural operations in Colorado, Wharton and Matagorda counties. It's part of a state-approved plan that requires LCRA to cut off water to those customers in order to maintain water supplies for cities, businesses, and industries.
"This is a serious drought," said John Hofmann, LCRA executive vice president of Water. "The majority of the Hill Country has only received between 5 and 10 inches of rain since October, well below average, and the amount of water flowing into the Highland Lakes from January through June is the lowest on record for that six-month period."
The agency provides water to two types of customers - firm and interruptible. Firm customers are entities such as cities, municipal utility districts, businesses and power plants that purchase water that will be available even during a repeat of the worst drought this region has seen, while interruptible customers are agricultural customers in the lower basin that purchase water that will be cut back or cut off during droughts.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, all of the Hill Country watershed that feeds the Highland Lakes is considered to be in extreme drought. The combined level in Lake Buchanan and Lake Travis, the two water supply reservoirs in the Highland Lakes chain, has fallen below 1.278 million acre-feet and is expected to continue to decline throughout the summer.
Based on the declining lake levels and the water cutoff to interruptible customers, LCRA now has entered drought response Stage 1 under its Firm Customer Drought Contingency Plan and is requesting that its firm customers voluntarily reduce their water use by 5%. Each firm customer has its own drought contingency plan that will determine whether to impose additional restrictions on its end users, such as residences and businesses.
"We have plenty of drinking water supplies available in the Highland Lakes, but we need to start tapping the brakes on water use because we don’t know when this drought will end," Hofmann said. "Last week’s scattered showers were welcome, but weren’t enough to do much good in terms of water supply. We have been extremely hot and dry since late last year, which means evaporation is up and customers are using more water. Those factors, combined with the scarce amount of water flowing into the Highland Lakes since last fall, have caused lake levels to drop."
LCRA last curtailed available water to interruptible customers in 2018, and cut off water completely to those customers from 2012 through 2015. It's the first time a cutoff has been ordered under the latest revisions to the Water Management Plan, which went into effect in 2020.