A regional plant supplying a few
million gallons of water a day to Cedar Park and Leander shut down this
week because Lake Travis has dropped too low, said Tom Gallier, the
plant’s general manager. It can only reopen when lake levels rise.
The
$140 million Brushy Creek Regional Utility Authority plant, which began
operating in July 2012, was built in cooperation between those two
cities and Round Rock, which has not yet connected to it. Cedar Park was
getting about 10 percent of its water from the plant, while Leander was
getting a little more than half, but officials say both cities can turn
to alternate supplies.
“It’s not going
to impact us,” said Leander City Manager Kent Cagle. “We have another
water treatment plant. For us, BCRUA was all about the future.”
Brushy Creek appears to have the only intake now threatened by dropping
lake levels, though another, Windermere Oaks which serves an area near
Spicewood, is drawing water from a pool that is now separated from the
rest of Lake Travis, according to the Lower Colorado River Authority,
which manages the Highland Lakes.
Both situations illustrate the
kinds of problems created by the drought gripping Central Texas. The
surface of Lake Travis is 623 feet above sea level, 42 feet below where
it typically is this time of year. Travis and Buchanan, the reservoirs
that supply much of Central Texas’ water, are 35 percent full, near the
all-time low. They are expected to drop below 30 percent in the fall.
That is the last trigger for the LCRA to declare this drought the worst
on record.
The Brushy Creek water plant was built to serve the rapid
growth in Williamson County. The plant relies on a barge on Lake Travis
to pump water back through hoses to the shore until a permanent deep
water intake is built, a project that could take up to a decade. The
problem is the barge cannot get to deep enough water to continue
supplying the plant, Gallier said.
In the meantime, Cedar Park will
turn on an interconnect with Round Rock and buy up to 2.8 million
gallons a day, at a cost of $3.53 per thousand gallons to supplement
water coming from its own Lake Travis plant. Leander will ramp up output
from its water treatment plant near the Sandy Creek arm of Lake Travis,
which can more than meet the city’s peak demands, Cagle said.
“The major concern is the financial hit,” Cagle said. “We’re paying debt service on a plant that is not operating.”
Leander has paid about $4.5 million in debt service this year and will pay another $5 million next year, he said.
A
deep water intake for the Brushy Creek plant is planned for the next
phase of expansion, which would allow the lake to drop to about 590 feet
before a shutdown occurs. The start of construction is tied to growth
in the area.
The plant is on a 25- to 30-year expansion timeline and
will eventually be able to supply 106 million gallons of water a day. It
will ultimately become a primary water source for the three cities,
Gallier said.
“It seems odd that the plant is shutting down in a
drought when it was built as a contingency, but I don’t think anyone
foresaw the lake getting this low,” Gallier said.
Austin’s two
treatment plants are on Lake Austin, which stays full unless Buchanan
and Travis are nearly empty. Austin is building a third treatment plant
along Lake Travis that, when it opens in 2015, will have three intakes.
One of those intakes will be operating at a given time. The deepest of
the intakes is near the bottom of the deepest part of Lake Travis.
No comments:
Post a Comment