AUSTIN, Texas — The KVUE Defenders have been tracking water issues in Central Texas, including how population growth, climate change and other factors drain our water supplies.
To make sure we don't run out of drinking water, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) announced on Wednesday it's working to develop new water supplies.
LCRA's new focus comes as the agency announced it has enough water for commitments, or how much water utilities plan to use.
But LCRA officials said they need new water supplies to keep up with future growth. That future growth is happening in what the LCRA calls the Upper Reach, or an area that encompasses Central Texas down south to Wharton County.
New figures released on Wednesday show by 2030, we will need 48,000 acre feet of water to meet commitments and a cushion, to help deal with the unexpected. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or enough water to cover an acre of land one foot deep.
By 2080, the LCRA estimates it will need 64,000 acre-feet of water to meet commitments and that cushion.
LCRA General Manager Phil Wilson said the new water supplies are just for Central Texas customers and not the agricultural customers downstream.
"We're able to use the Arbuckle Reservoir to meet many of those demands down there, which will be in Wharton County. Right now, as with the population growth we have here, the tens of thousands of people that seem to be coming to Central Texas every year, more than 1,200 people a day moved to Texas, and it seems some days they're all moving to Austin," Wilson said.
The KVUE Defenders have been tracking the Arbuckle Reservoir's development for years. Construction started in 2018 but hit a delay. It's now expected to be online late next year with a price tag of $419 million.
The LCRA has already halted water releases to most agriculture customers.
Conservationists and leaders from several Central Texas counties want all water releases stopped to rice farmers in Wharton, Colorado and Matagorda counties, which is why they asked the agency to move into Stage 3 of its drought contingency plan. Those commissioners include Joe Don Dockery from Burnet County, Brigid Shea from Travis County, Ann Howard from Travis County, Terry Cook from Williamson County and Linda Raschke from Llano County.
Moving to Stage 3 would restrict outdoor watering to once a week for all LCRA customers. The goal for Stage 3 is to cut back on water use by 20%.
Right now, different cities have different watering restrictions.
For example, the City of Austin is under Stage 2 water restrictions, which allows for watering once a week, but the City of Georgetown issued Stage 3 water restrictions for its western portion, where outdoor irrigation by hoses or an automatic sprinkler system is prohibited.
In August, the LCRA issued its Stage 2 drought response measures after the combined storage in Lakes Buchanan and Travis dropped below 900,000 acre-feet. Per agency guidelines, moving to Stage 3 would take the combined storage of lakes Buchanan and Travis to fall below 600,000 acre-feet.
Shannon Hamilton is the executive director of the Central Texas Water Coalition. She believes we can't wait until we hit that marker.
"We're going to have people running out of water and that's too late, and that's the problem with [the] water management plan – our cutoff should happen sooner," Hamilton said.