These two lakes serve as sources of water in key cities and tens of hundreds of farmers, as well as several power plants. With Texas gripped by drought water level has fallen sharply. Combined, the two lakes now hold 28 percent less water than their average long-term.
"This is Scary," said Janet Caylor, who owns two marinas on Lake Travis, the larger of the two lakes and he had to move its docks as Lake levels are dropping.
The current drought, drying than any other October through may extend in the history of Texas, was increased posed in the already contentious long-term water planning over the Battle with these lakes which feed on the lower Colorado River, and runs South-East of the Gulf of Mexico. It has pitted fast-growing cities such as Austin, which depend on drinking water and Recreation against rice farmers in the vicinity of the Gulf region who need huge quantities of water for irrigation.
Lakeside residents and business owners as Mrs. Caylor, frustrated by dropping water levels, you want to maintain as lakes.
Last week, the lower Colorado River Authority, the Organization of the powerful States, which controls the water in the two lakes and much of the River, deferred the decision to award the contract to another user. Coal plant planned near Bay City, downriver near farmers of rice, had sought to pay L.C.R.A. 55 million dollars up front, plus an additional fee, the building of a reservoir and ensuring the supply of 40-year water to cool the plant.
L.C.R.A. officials say have enough supply for the coal plant, called the white Stallion Energy Center. The facility representatives say that their water needs will not harm Travis Lake or Lake Buchanan. But the lakeside residents are persuasive and the potential of water g?odnych coal has angered environmentalists as well as farmers and other persons in the basin of the Colorado River.
The Board also chose the new L.C.R.A. General Manager last week, although how much this affects water planning process is unknown. The Agency Gets the majority of its revenue from the production of electricity (including the dam of a hydroelectric on its lakes) and handling. However, the management of water, the main reasons for which the Organization was created in the 1930s, causing some of its biggest headaches.
More than 70 years ago, engineers dammed the Colorado River and created Lake Buchanan and Travis, mainly for the abstraction of water for the growing region. In the decades from the Lake levels have fluctuated, with a trough extended in the 1950s, which still count as the worst drought in the history of Texas.
In the meantime, the population exploded to Austin and other cities in the u.s. State of Texas. Water consumption in Austin to triple from 1970-2010.
But a sharp increase in the consumption of urban farmers still do not match, mainly rice growers near the coast, which together employ more than twice the amount of water L.C.R.A. that Austin. Rice farmers used the water of the Colorado River long before L.C.R.A. create and partly because of this history, they get considerably cheaper water: L.C.R.A. City customers pay more than 20 times more for their water than rice farmers, although rice farmers to pay hefty fees to cover the cost of supplying water to their fields, often through the channels.
In return for cheaper water for rice farmers agree to allow their supply cut off or reduced in times of drought. In the past, but never had their supplies reduced to frustration over Lake residents and of other water users.
This most likely will change. If the current drought has not soon abate — and meteorologist L.C.R.A. is not forecasting significant rainfall — at least until the collapse of the rice farmers lose one of their two annual crops the next year, said Suzanne Zarling, L.C.R.A., Executive Manager of water services.
Expects to lose even more crops in the future plan for the management of water 10 years building and eventually require the approval of the L.C.R.A. and environment controls.
Farmers are rozpórki for him.
"I am not going to say that it wants to zdewastowa? us," said Paul Sliva, Matagorda County rice farmer. "But it's going to put the hurt on us."
The long-term plan will require around the victim. Austin, for example, but want to keep more water in lakes, than the evolving consensus, "said Greg Meszaros, Director of the Austin water utility because if the Lakes get too low, the city will be asked to cut their water use, harming local landscapes.
Austin already limited to sprinkler use twice a week, but L.C.R.A. may ask Austin and other cities enact further protection measures, as soon as this fall, if dry conditions reduce the combined volume of Lakes to 900,000 acre feet, said Ms. Zarling L.C.R.A. Lakes, which dipped below the trigger in 2009, now at 1.2 million acre feet.
Of another consideration emphasized by environmentalists is to maintain enough water flowing down the Colorado River, we pride ourselves on our organisms and ensure sufficient flows into Matagorda Bay, where the river empties into the Gulf. Bay oysters, already suffering from higher salinity reductions in river flows as during a drought.
"If not we get a break in the drought from now until November, I'm predicting dire consequences for the oysters," said Sammy Ray, a professor in the Department of marine biology at Texas A and M University at Galveston.
In the meantime, rice farmers — who are trying to cut their water use by protecting — and environmentalists both argue that the waterlogged rice fields provide crucial Habitat held lugubrious.
L.C.R.A. Hunt for more supplies of water. Recently got approval from the State governing environmental water storage in the downriver from more of Lake Travis and Buchanan and outside the main flow of the Colorado, a key first step in potentially building new reservoirs. Ground water, part of which is as brackish water that may require desalination, is also being considered by the L.C.R.A.
Many participants in water planning process, Poe is clear: the habits of the water must adjust to the new restrictions.
"I think we have taken water, granted," said Myron Hess, program manager of the Texas water for the National Wildlife Federation. "And I think we have to change attitudes about water."
kgalbraith@texastribune.org
Erika Aguilar and Matt Largey KUT 90.5 FM, Austin's NPR affiliate, contributed reporting. This is the first of a series of five into the waters of the lower Colorado River Authority, which runs this week at The Texas Tribune and KUT.
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