LCRA-SAWS Water Sharing Plan
 
The LCRA-SAWS water sharing plan involves the capture of rain events in the Colorado River basin below Mansfield Dam, using off-channel reservoirs, thereby capturing water which would otherwise be lost for most beneficial uses by flowing into Matagorda Bay. Sixty percent of the captured water was to have been used locally as irrigation water by the rice industry, thereby relieving the Highland Lakes of a significant portion of that annual obligation, and the other forty percent was to have been piped from the mouth of the Colorado River back north to the City of San Antonio. San Antonio was to have paid the entire cost of the project.
 
Although the project was first introduced by LCRA in June, 2000, as a "win-win" proposal for all parties concerned, there were skeptics. The rice industry was intended to be a major beneficiary of the project, but farmers first saw the off-channel reservoirs as a threat to their land, and later criticized the backup groundwater supplies in the water sharing plan as a potential threat to their local aquifer.
 
As the required environmental impact studies progressed over the years, the projected economic payout from the project deteriorated. The following table shows how the projected yield of water for San Antonio has declined while the estimated cost of the infrastructure has escalated.
 LCRA/SAWS Water Sharing Project
    
         Source: Schneider & Associates