Rain in Austin/Lake Travis, Lake Levels ?

[Serious News]

665.99 Less than a foot rise for a change.

[Serious News]

Rising Lake Travis has both positive and negative impact

Full story with video: http://kxan.com/2015/06/01/rising-la...gative-impact/

LAKE TRAVIS, Texas (KXAN) — The debris is starting to clear from Lake Travis, and boats and jet skis torn from docks are now finding their way back home. Still, bits and pieces are not where they are supposed to be.

“If it hadn’t have been for the wind, we’d be great,” said Chris Leach, VIP Marina manager. “The wind is what did the most damage to our marina.”

The rising levels have been a welcome sight to all, but recent storms also caused damage on the lake. Strong winds twisted and tore apart the walkways to the marina, even tearing up concrete. Metal posts were bent from the force of the wind.

As for the water levels, that’s a different story.

“The water’s the best thing that’s happened,” said Leach. “The fact that we can move our marina back in and we’re closer to shore, it’s more easily accessible to us.

“…That walkway for our shuttle boat, that was sitting on the ground, now it’s underwater,” said Leach, pointing to a dock in the water.

Mason Nichols, who docks a boat at the marina, could not believe how much the lake had risen.

“It used to be all cliffs in the back right here, and now it’s all underwater,” he said.

Nichols also predicted a busier summer on the lake.

“I think a lot of boat traffic is going to be on the water,” he added. “So, everyone needs to be safe, because that means more boats, more problems.”

Leach said an insurance assessor was heading out to the marina Monday to take a look at damage and loss. Only a few boats were damaged from the storms

[Serious News]

[Ratickle]

It looks to be at 667.21 currently, really slowing down. But, if it goes up to 668, it will be at the highest level the lake has been since November 30 of 2010. 681.00 is considered full. On September 19th of 2013 it was all the way down at 618.58.

[Serious News]

Highest level since November 19, 2010.

[Serious News]

[Serious News]

Versus before the May rains

[Ratickle]

That's pretty cool running the video's at the same place on the lake at the same time.

[Serious News]

Lake Travis on the Colorado River upstream from Austin saw its water level jump more than 45 feet in the past month, with the lake's surface growing from 9,200 acres to 16,300 acres.

[Ratickle]

Well, it looks like the Lake Travis watershed will be hit by a Tropical Storm with severe flooding danger, up to 10" of rain, over the next three days!!

[Serious News]

Less than 10' from full!

[phragle]

Then there was the lake erie water level last weekend... I need to get the boat out and shake it down before BT but Im afraid to dunk it with all the trees, dock parts and junk in the water.....

The main dock there has floating docks for the boats... the floating docks are about 2' above the water with the main dock about 3' above those....

[Ratickle]

Damn!!!!

[phragle]

Damn!!!!

Your telling me.... I just put a drive together for the Avanti and I need to make a good test run tomorrow before I start packing stuff for BT..... Im scared chitless to run it because there is so much crap in the water. Whole trees, docks, firewood, all kinds of crap floating around. My friend Spence with the helicopter flew over and said there is so much more than you can see....

[fund razor]

Your telling me.... I just put a drive together for the Avanti and I need to make a good test run tomorrow before I start packing stuff for BT..... Im scared chitless to run it because there is so much crap in the water. Whole trees, docks, firewood, all kinds of crap floating around. My friend Spence with the helicopter flew over and said there is so much more than you can see....

I was out before the last round of storms and the 6 inches of rain or whatever we had. It was too much debris THEN. And that was like two weeks ago. I started up the Maumee and came off plane just after Bayview. Now there is wood in the water from every property and every dock from Ft. Wayne to Toledo in that water. Entire trees with rootballs.Telephone poles. Pallets. Entire docks. A stray boat here or there. I heard north cape has a debris pile instead of a beach.
(Sorry for the hijack, we now return to our regularly scheduled Texans.)

[Ratickle]

Lake Erie, Lake Travis, they both start with Lake and have an I in their name. How could that possibly be a hijack?

[phragle]

And hen there is the pond behind my parents house.....

[Ratickle]

You'll have to rename it Lake Phragleli to stop this from being a hijack......

[Serious News]

Lake Travis is past full!!

[Ratickle]

When I was chatting with Jim, Mobilemercman, he was hoping the lake would never get full because he was afraid they'd start releasing the water again to subsidize the rice farmers. Looks like he was correct.

BURNET COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) – It has been years since Paula Haynes could hear the lapping waves of Lake Buchanan from her back porch.

The deep-blue Central Texas reservoir is back and almost brimming for the first time since 2008. Haynes said she’s finally enjoying the scene that lured her to the area: warm wind whipping over the clear water, swooping pelicans, chirping songbirds, boaters striping white wakes in the distance.

But Haynes, and others, fear the recent return of those simple pleasures could be short-lived. The Lower Colorado River Authority decided in early March it would resume releasing water for coastal agriculture for the first time in four years.

“Ever since 2012 … all our neighbors have been praying for rain,” Haynes said. “It finally comes, and then to our surprise the LCRA is going to turn around and give it to the rice farmers again.”

Gauging the lake levels, weather and other factors, LCRA leaders have agreed to release up to 202,000 acre-feet of water from lakes Travis and Buchanan through mid-summer. That’s enough to fill Lake Austin nine times over (an acre-foot of water is about 325,000 gallons). The river authority could decide to release a second 76,500 acre-foot batch later in the year, depending on conditions. The water releases could be smaller than those maximum amounts, according to the LCRA.

Many Central Texans have blamed the LCRA’s 2011 water release for downstream farmers, coupled with epic drought, as major contributors to the low lake levels that slammed businesses and tourism in recent years. In 2011, LCRA sent more than 433,000 acre-feet to agriculture users below Austin, according to LCRA data. Only in the past year have lake levels recovered significantly.

In response to the possibility of prolonged drought and a steadily ballooning Central Texas population, last year LCRA rejiggered its water management plan. The plan’s latest iteration is more conservative in the amount of water that can be released, said John Hofmann, LCRA executive vice president for water.

Under the new water management plan, LCRA now weighs the amount of water in the lakes, along with the potential impact of future weather and historic weather patterns, including 2011, which was the driest single year in recorded Texas history, Hofmann said.

“We have the awesome responsibility of trying to manage a shared resource that people up and down this river depend on for their livelihood,” Hofmann said. “Those reservoirs were built to tame the Colorado River, to manage floods, to make water supplies available for the heart of the state of Texas and for providing hydroelectric generation.”

Myron Hess, with the National Wildlife Federation, said his organization focuses primarily on environmental issues, but it also recognizes the value the rice farms provide, for instance, to migratory waterfowl. Beyond agriculture, he said a healthy flowing river helps Matagorda Bay’s freshwater needs and fish species in the Colorado River, he added.

“One of my big concerns is that over time in Austin, as demands continue to grow, there is going to be less and less water available for the environment,” Hess said. “The issue of water management is a contentious one. It is always scary to see lake levels drop, but that is the way the system was created.”

The new plan is more conservative, according to LCRA documents. Nevertheless, Lake Buchanan residents still fret about the return of drought and a shrunken, nearly inaccessible waterfront.

Following 2011, Highland Lake tourism was hit hard by the ever-shrinking lake, particularly in Tow, a town at the northern end of Lake Buchanan. In optimal conditions, the brimming lake fills sloughs along Tow’s edge. Boaters can dock in their backyards. At its worst, Tow residents have lost sight of the lake’s edge.

Those low lake levels exacerbated the relationship between Lake Buchanan residents and rice farmers to the south.

Haynes, and others, said they felt the downstream rice farmers have held outsized influence, and received bargain prices on water, compared to Central Texans.

But those farmers have suffered, too, since receiving the last shipment of water in 2011. The LCRA held back on releasing water for four years.

From Bastrop to La Grange and down to El Campo and Matagorda, businesses along the lower stretch of the Colorado have been hard hit, said Kirby Brown, a board member of Lower Colorado River Basin Coalition, which advocates for stakeholders south of Austin that use Highland Lake water.

“It’s tough. People are laid off. People didn’t go to work; fields were fallow for four years. A lot of those guys lost their businesses, the rice businesses, their farms,” Brown said. “We had a lot of implement dealers, local banks in those small communities closed…it was just a lot of different folks that were affected: the guys at the gas station, guys who fly the planes to put fertilizer out.”

Brown said a new reservoir being constructed in Wharton County should help. LCRA expects to complete the Lane City Reservoir in 2018. It will hold about 90,000 acre-feet of water.

Just as the residents of Lake Buchanan worry about the release of water and a depleted lake, so do Brown and downstream farmers worry about being cutoff.

“All of these things are all part of the whole that we have to look at and talk about and consider the impacts to everyone,” Brown said.

http://kxan.com/2016/03/17/rising-la...for-residents/