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Water Matters
The newsletter of the Highland Lakes Group
 
In This Issue
HLG Election
Policy Changes at LCRA
Rice Acreage
HLG Directors 
 
Rusty Allen - Lago Vista
Harold Butler - Lakeway
David Deeds - Jonestown
John Graham - Tow
Jay Harris -  Buch. Dam
Dewey Hollingsworth -
     Spicewood
Will Mitchell - Austin
Barker Keith -  Hills      
Cole Rowland - Lakeway
Leon Seidl - Kingsland
David Steed - Austin
Pat Wendland - L'way
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HLG Election

The voting members of Highland Lakes Group reelected incumbents Barker Keith and Cole Rowland to the HLG board of directors for new three-year terms. 

 

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Volume 16-2                     March, 2009

 Policy changes at LCRA 
Divestiture 
Two recent announcements by LCRA suggest some possible changes in operating philosophy since Thomas Mason took over the general manager's job from Joe Beal last year. The LCRA board passed a resolution on April 16, 2008, that the LCRA will attempt to divest itself of its assets in Williamson County. These assets include the ownership of the Brushy Creek Water & Wastewater Utility, which supplies retail water and wastewater services to several cities in Williamson County, including Cedar Park, Leander and Round Rock. A smaller utility operation in Hutto is also up for sale, presumably to the local municipality if possible.
 
No announcement from LCRA has been made regarding the divestiture of other of the LCRA's retail water and wastewater plants. However, the board said in its April 16 minutes that LCRA's retail water and wastewater utilities should be "financially self-sustaining." Apparently, not all of the retail water and wastewater utilities owned by LCRA have met this criterion. Travis County Water Control & Improvement District 17 (WCID 17) is known to be currently studying the possible acquisition of the LCRA's West Travis County Regional Water System, headquartered in Bee Cave.
 
Simultaneous Drawdown
 
In late February, LCRA announced that irrigation operations were about to begin supplying the rice industry in the lower three counties of the Colorado River basin with the large volume (200,000 to 400,000 acre-feet) of water that industry needs each year during the rice growing season, March through October.
 
The announcement said that the procedure for supplying the water this year would differ from that used in previous years. Each of the two Highland Lake reservoirs, Lake Buchanan and Lake Travis, as usual, will contribute a share of the required water proportional to the volume of each lake when full.
 
In the past, the timing of the releases of the water from each lake was quite different. Normally, all of the water is taken from Lake Travis during the first half of the irrigation season (March through July), and the other half of the water is taken from Lake Buchanan during the second half of the season, August through October. The result was that one lake (Travis) bore 100% of the adverse effect of low water conditions during the boating season, and the other lake (Buchanan) was exempted from that handicap.
 
This year, the two reservoirs will be drawn down simultaneously during the entire rice season. The reason given for this temporary change was that low lake levels make a "spill" from Lake Travis highly unlikely. 
 
 (To read the rest of this article, click here.)

Rice Acreage
The acreage of rice planted in the lower three counties of the Colorado River is a rough indicator of the volume of irrigation water that may be expected to be used during the coming rice season. The estimated acreage of rice this season is 65,300 acres, up less than five percent compared to the 62,258 acres planted a year ago.