This article is based in large part on a presentation by James Kowis, manager of water supply planning for LCRA, to the board of directors of the Brushy Creek Regional Utility Authority on March 24, 2008. Certain exhibits from that presentation will be linked to this article should the reader want more detail on a particular subject.
 
When all of the water rights in Texas were sorted out by adjudication in the 1980's, and the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) received its 1.5 million acre-ft. water right for the Highland Lakes, the legislature attached a caveat. That caveat was the requirement that LCRA must write a management plan explaining how they planned to apportion the water they had acquired among all of the water users in the Colorado basin. LCRA was already the biggest of the river authorities in Texas, and this requirement was a step toward their goal of also being the best. LCRA remains the only river authority in Texas that is required to prepare a water management plan.
 
Quentin Martin, then head of water resources planning for LCRA, was largely responsible for writing the first Water Management Plan (WMP) in 1989, under the direction of Bill West, now General Manager of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority. That plan has been amended three times, and each amendment must be approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
 
The latest update to the WMP was submitted to TCEQ in May, 2003, and so far has not been approved. The reason is that several applications that LCRA has pending at TCEQ, in addition to the WMP application, are contested, and approval of a contested application can be a lengthy process. The details of those contested applications will be covered later in this article.

 What is the Water Management Plan?
 
The WMP is an amendment to the water rights for Lakes Buchanan & Travis. It basically spells out the day-to-day operations of the water operations for Lakes Buchanan & Travis, and describes how the water inflows both above and below Austin will be allocated.
 
Key Elements of the WMP
 
The WMP establishes a "firm yield," which is defined as the estimated volume of water available on a firm or sure basis during a repeat of the drought of record. The drought of record is the basis for most water planning in Texas. LCRA staff recognizes the possibility of a drought worse than the drought of record, and one part of the WMP lays out the criteria by which the onset of  a "super-drought" might be recognized in time to take effective action.
 
An important part of the WMP is the estimate of the total supply of firm water, and what means LCRA has available to increase that supply. 

Another key element of the WMP is the establishment of trigger points to control the water supply during a drought. These trigger points set percentages of total storage capacity at which actions are to be taken to mitigate the effects of a drought. For example, when the combined volume of the reservoirs drops to 84% of the full level, the environmental flows are reduced from the "normal" level to a lower "critical" level. Likewise, firm water customers (mostly cities) are directed to commence voluntary conservation measures when the storage volume drops to 79%, and these measures become mandatory when the storage volume drops to 45% of the full level. triggers 

 

The balance of this article may be found by clicking on this link