39° F
2 BY ELENI HIMARAS
reporter@ltview.com
Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) Water Quality Studies Supervisor John Wedig spoke to the Protect Lake Travis Association Annual Meeting on the quality of water in Lake Travis. His colleague, River Management manager Mark Jordan spoke on quantity.
Needless to say, Wedig had much better news. Jordan told the gathered crowd of about 20 that he would be unsurprised to see 2009 surpass the 1940s and 50s drought of record.
“This drought is significant and it’s serious,” he said.
Lake Travis is currently at about 645 feet and expected to dip into the 630s within the coming months if the heat wave continues. The last time it was that low was 1984.
Despite the gravity of the situation, Jordan assured the audience that the drought did not mean there wasn’t enough water for the critical needs of the area and that a strong tropical storm later this year could turn the drought around.
“The historic low for Lake Travis is 614. That happened at the drought of record in 1951,” Jordan said. “The interesting thing is after we got to the lowest level of Lake Travis, we had a rain bomb. We had a rain bomb back then on the Pedernales and the lake jumped up 50 feet in 24 hours.”
He also outlined the Water Management Plan that automatically sets certain water restrictions into place when the highland lakes hit predetermined lows. When the combined water in the highland lakes equals 1.1 Million Acre-Feet on Jan. 1 of any year, the LCRA will begin curtailments for the interruptible supply of water for irrigation. If it reaches 900,000 MAF at any time, local water authorities must begin implementing mandatory water restrictions.
According to a graph provided by Jordan, if the summer continues to be as dry as it has been, the lakes, now at 1.1 MAF, could reach the 900,000 MAF cut off for mandatory water restrictions by August or September.
Beyond water restrictions, the low lake level is seriously affecting recreational users as well.
“Currently the only boat ramp operating on Lake Travis is at the Mansfield Dam, and I’m trying to keep that in the water through the Fourth of July,” he said.
Only two of the four lanes of that public ramp are operating and it can only continue to operate as long as the lake level remains above 640 feet.
Members of the audience called into question the concern for recreational users when the dropping lake could mean a cut off of their water supply when they are pumping it directly out of coves.
John Wedig’s discourse on water quality had a far brighter outlook. He discussed the water clarity of the lake as a function of chlorophyll production and factored in three variables, wastewater and urbanization, the TCEQ discharge ban, and contributions from upstream.
Without hard data for the future of those variables, they calculated out the water clarity with various assumed values.
“Analysis shows that Lake Travis has a very limited ability to process nutrients impacting water quality,” he said. “We have to decide if we’re willing to allow it to get a little greener in the future.”
Wedig faced criticism from the audience that the water quality test was based on the relative clarity of the lake and not quantifiable values from organism.
“If the data existed, we’d use it,” he said.
They performed the recent water clarity study in an attempt to see how much nutrient loading the lake could handle.
“We wanted our endpoint to be water clarity but water clarity in Lake Travis is not based solely on chlorophyll production,” Wedig said.
For more information on the LCRA or the Protect Lake Travis Association visit www.lcra.org or www.protectlaketravis.org.
As Vice-president of Protect Lake Travis Association, I want to publicly thank the Lake Travis View for covering our annual meeting and to thank LCRA for providing two excellent speakers. Water quality and water quantity – both matter greatly to PLTA members and to all users of Lake Travis.
But speaking just for myself only, I do think that lost in all the excellent information presented at the meeting was the underlying threat of future discharges of so-called “treated effluent” – sewage – into our lakes. Calling it “effluent” or “treated wastewater” does not change what it really is – sewage – and it’s bad for any waterway used by people for recreation and water supply.
Our lake is threatened by cities like Round Rock that want to pump out millions of gallons per day of drinking water to fuel their own economic growth (at our expense) and by developers and wastewater plant operators who would prefer to take the cheaper, easier route of getting rid of sewage by dumping it into the Highland Lakes. Lately, some of these developers and plant operators have tried to leverage concern over lower lake levels by touting the “benefit” of adding the treated effluent back into the lake to increase the water supply. Do you really want to send Lake Travis water outside the river basin and to replace it with “treated” sewage? That is a very bad deal for Lake Travis and we should not fall for it.
PURPLE PIPE carries treated effluent back to the same communities that paid for the water the first time, only it is used for irrigation purposes.
IRRIGATION ACCOUNTS FOR 60% OF PEAK DEMAND USAGE. Why pay for and treat the water twice when communities could use their own treated effluent without compromising the water quality of the water we drink.