Last week’s rain buys Central Texas a little more time
Posted:
7:49 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013
By Marty Toohey
- American-Statesman Staff
Last week’s heavy rains can be
measured in more ways than inches and feet. They can also be measured in weeks.
The 2 to 5 inches of rain that fell
in parts of the Hill Country amounts to a few weeks’ worth of water use
trickling into Central Texas’ main reservoirs. That in turn means the most
restrictive Central Texas water rules in living memory probably won’t take
effect until some time in November, instead of as early as mid-October.
“It’s not a drought buster, but
it’s definitely welcome,” Lower Colorado River Authority General Manager Becky
Motal said in a statement.
The region’s main reservoirs, lakes
Buchanan and Travis, are 33 percent full, according to the LCRA, which manages
the lakes. The LCRA had predicted the lakes would dip below 30 percent full
some time in October. When they hit a threshold just under 30 percent, the region
will have surpassed the last measurement to consider the current drought to be
the worst on record, surpassing the epic drought of the 1950s.
Entering the “drought of record”
means additional water restrictions for much of the region.
Many Central Texas cities and
water-distribution districts buy their water from the LCRA. When the current
drought is declared the worst on record, the LCRA will tell its customers to
cut back water use 20 percent from 2011 levels.
The requirement will affect
communities differently. Some have already cut back. Some have not. Austin,
thanks to its water-conservation policies, largely will be exempted from the 20
percent curtailment.
Even so, Austin water managers plan
to enact additional restrictions when the region enters the drought of record.
For instance, for 21 of the past 23 months, Austin has limited automatic
lawn-watering systems to one-day-a-week use. On designated watering days,
automatic sprinkler systems are allowed to operate between midnight and 5 a.m.
and between 7 p.m. and midnight. When the LCRA declares the drought the worst
on record, Austin will limit watering to one time a week, during either the
morning or evening, according to the city’s water utility.
It’s not clear exactly when that
will happen, assuming the area sees little rain in the coming weeks, though
LCRA calculations point to some time in November. Water from the recent rains
is still flowing into lakes Buchanan and Travis. By Tuesday, the combined
storage of Buchanan and Travis had reached 657,642 acre-feet, “up from 637,300
acre-feet early Friday,” according to an LCRA release. The rains added the
equivalent of the water used by 6,780 typical Central Texas homes use in a
year.
But that rainfall is a relatively
small drop in the Central Texas bucket. Lake Travis was full in spring 2010, a
time when Buchanan was nearly full as well. Before the recent rains, they were
31.7 percent full. As of Tuesday afternoon they were 32.7 percent full.
