Austin, not rice farms, must be LCRA’S chief priority during drought
It is unjustifiable that the LCRA plans to release water to its interruptible customers while ignoring the obligations it has to its firm customers.
The
board of the Lower Colorado River Authority must take action immediately to preserve the primary and often sole water supply for over a million Central Texans.
To give you a little background, the LCRA has a permit from the state of Texas for the water rights they manage on the Lower Colorado River. The permit authorizes LCRA to provide water through contract to two types of customers: firm and interruptible. Cities and power plants are firm customers and pay $151 an acre-foot for a guarantee that they have water. Downstream rice farmers, who are interruptible customers, pay $6.50 an acre-foot because they have agreed to be curtailed when necessary, to meet the demands of firm water customers.
A recent LCRA decision guarantees a release of nearly 150,000 acre-feet of stored water to downstream interruptible customers this year. That amount equals more than a year’s water supply for the city of Austin. Furthermore, the release would occur in a time of extended drought as intense as this region has seen in recorded history. The Highland Lakes would be down to the lowest level in their history. A release of water at this time, in these drought conditions, blatantly ignores LCRA’s obligation to protect the water that our tax dollars and utility bills have paid to utilize and reserve.
Currently, our region is facing an emergency situation with the ongoing and ever-worsening drought: 2011 was the most severe year of drought ever recorded, and in 2013 the already low Highland Lakes will continue to fall if the forecast of little or no rain proves true.
And the people we have managing the water at the LCRA need to be paying better attention.
They weren’t paying attention in early 2011 when they agreed to release an amount of water from the Highland Lakes to the rice farmers that exceeded twice the amount of all municipal use required for the same year. At the same time they released the water, LCRA called for water restrictions on firm customers, such as you and me, who pay for a guaranteed water supply.
They continue to enact policies that will ensure the release of water to those same interruptible rice farmers instead of protecting the water for the purposes of basic needs like drinking, bathing and fire protection. Austin and the other cities of the Upper Basin are concerned that a release of water and continued drought could lead to domestic water rationing, a ban on outdoor watering, and, in a worst-case scenario, a reduction in power plant output.
It is unjustifiable — and quite possibly illegal — that the LCRA plans to release water to its interruptible customers while ignoring the obligations it has to its firm guaranteed water customers. The LCRA’s water permit is supposed to provide a safeguard so that an ongoing supply of water will be available in 2013 and beyond to its firm water customers.
Because of the drought, the city of Spicewood is currently having water trucked in to meet its needs. If Austin and other cities are put in a similar situation, there is no BandAid, like trucking water, that can be put in place to provide water for populations of this size.
As they understood last year, LCRA must again be reminded that the way things have been done in the past aren’t options in times of drought. Even though the entire basin can share the water in times of abundance, in this time of shortage the LCRA has obligations it must honor before it can provide bargain-price water to others.
We demand that the LCRA board vote immediately to protect the rights of its firm customers and stop the release of water to the downstream rice farmers during this drought. Endangering the water supply of more than 1 million people is the wrong thing to do. The citizens of the Highland Lakes and Austin need to have comfort in knowing they will have drinking water available today and for their future needs.