{"id":5309,"date":"2012-01-31T15:26:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T21:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=5309"},"modified":"2012-02-02T12:53:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T18:53:30","slug":"what-do-you-do-when-a-town-runs-dry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/31\/what-do-you-do-when-a-town-runs-dry\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do You Do When a Town Runs Dry?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5310\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"A contractor trucks in water to a storage tank in Spicewood Beach, Texas Monday, January 30.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/IMG_2182.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5310\" title=\"IMG_2182\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/IMG_2182-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/IMG_2182-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/IMG_2182-620x413.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/IMG_2182-220x146.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo by Terrence Henry\/StateImpact Texas<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A contractor trucks in water to a storage tank in Spicewood Beach, Monday, January 30.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Another milestone in the <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/drought\/\">ongoing drought<\/a> was reached yesterday when Spicewood Beach, a small community of about 1,100 people outside of Austin, <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/31\/when-wells-run-dry-spicewood-beach-is-out-of-water\/\">ran out of water<\/a>. As trucks began rolling in to replenish the town&#8217;s water tank, questions inevitably arose. It&#8217;s still not clear how things ended up here (the agency that owns the system blames the drought; locals say the wells running dry is due to mismanagement), and it&#8217;s unknown how long it will take for a real solution to be found.<\/p>\n<p>For answers on some of those questions we turned to<a href=\"http:\/\/intera.com\/about-intera\/personnel\/barney-austin-phd-pe-director-of-hydrologic-services\/\"> Barney Austin<\/a>,\u00a0Director of Surface Water Resources Division at <a href=\"http:\/\/intera.com\/\">Intera<\/a>, a water resources and environmental consulting firm out of Austin. He typically consults for water systems on how to best avoid situations like the one Spicewood Beach currently finds itself in.<\/p>\n<p>He spoke recently with <a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/2012\/01\/spicewood-beach-goes-dry\/\">Andy Uhler of KUT News<\/a>, who has been co-reporting on Spicewood Beach with StateImpact Texas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>Who\u2019s going to pay for the trucking in of water?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>You know, I really don\u2019t know. Someone\u2019s going to have to pay for it, clearly. And someone is going to have to pay for the development of new water management strategies.\u00a0 Ultimately, the rate-payer will have to lift that burden.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q:\u00a0<\/span>Is there a long-term solution, other than rain?<!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"related-content alignright\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/25\/rain-tornadoes-hail-no-the-drought-aint-over\/\">Rain! Tornadoes! Hail! No, the Drought Ain\u2019t\u00a0Over<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/27\/more-than-a-rain-dance-one-lawmakers-plan-for-a-thirsty-texas\/\">More Than a Rain Dance: One Lawmaker\u2019s Plan for a Thirsty Texas<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/26\/during-texas-drought-will-spicewood-beach-be-the-first-town-to-run-dry\/\">During Texas Drought, Will Spicewood Beach Be the First to Run\u00a0Dry?<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/31\/when-wells-run-dry-spicewood-beach-is-out-of-water\/\">When Wells Run Dry: Spicewood Beach, Texas is Out of\u00a0Water<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/08\/Lake_Travis_Economic_Impact_Pics-103-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/lcra\/\">What Is The Lower Colorado River Authority?<\/a><\/p><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/119835727-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/drought\/\">Everything You Need to Know About the Texas Drought<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>Obviously rain fixes everything, right? But, as for the long-term \u2013 what we really need to figure out is whether we\u2019ve got a trend toward lower in-flows and a hotter and dryer climate, or whether or not we\u2019re going to be back to normal within a year or two. We\u2019re all hoping that we\u2019ll be back to a normal situation within a year or two, but until that happens, we\u2019re going to be scrambling with these emergency measures and we\u2019re going to be trying to figure out what we can do to augment supplies and accelerate conservation measures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>Where is the water that\u2019s being trucked in to Spicewood Beach going to come from?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>I don\u2019t know. But I assume it\u2019ll be from another of <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/lcra\/\">Lower\u00a0Colorado\u00a0River Authority<\/a>\u2019s (LCRA) treatment plants. [The LCRA owns the water system in Spicewood Beach and<a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/lcra\/\"> manages water for much of Central Texas<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>Is another party going to be out water because they\u2019re trucking this water in?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>I\u2019m sure what will happen is that the water treatment plant will draw water out of the lake directly. The water will be treated somewhere and trucked into the community. So, it won\u2019t be trucked in from a long way away, they\u2019re not coming in from Houston, I shouldn\u2019t think. LCRA is not going to be short of water. There are all sorts of emergency measures in place. And there could be a loosening of rules and regulations for these types of emergency situations. It\u2019s not going to cost the people providing the water. Someone is going to have to pay for the trucking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>So, a loosening of regulations would be where the TCEQ (<a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/tceq\/\">Texas Commission on Environmental Quality<\/a>) comes in?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>Right, they need to make sure that the water is of adequate quality, obviously, but there\u2019s a loosening of permit requirements and things like that, in order to make sure that community gets the water that it needs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q:\u00a0<\/span>Is this drought completely new ground for you?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>You know it really is. I was at the Texas Water Development Board doing surface-water planning. This is not unprecedented for a community to have water have to be trucked in to them. But the situation that we\u2019re facing right now with a community living right on a highland lake \u2013 a lake that has so much water \u2013 running out of water is kind of unusual and it is kind of worrying.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>There\u2019s certainly an irony about being able to see the Colorado River from a community that has run out of water\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>And there\u2019s a real complication with this situation because, in theory, groundwater wells should be drawing from groundwater way down, a few hundred feet, usually. And then there are surface water diversions that are diverting from rivers and lakes. This situation is a little bit different in that the well is almost certainly drawing lake water. So the whole regulation of surface water that\u2019s being drawn out of a well is very complicated. You\u2019ve got to figure out that exact interaction. And there\u2019s a separate set of regulations as there is for ground water, so you can imagine how complicated it can get.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>How long will it take for us to recover from this drought? Are we looking at a year or two to recover? Longer?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>There\u2019s a progression of curtailments when we face this type of situation. At the moment it\u2019s looking very likely that rice farmers in the lower part of the basin won\u2019t get any irrigation water next year \u2013 or at least a severe curtailment of that irrigation water next year. They\u2019re going to feel the economic impacts immediately. People around the lakes right now who may want to sell their property; they\u2019re already feeling the impact. The city of Austin is having to implement very strict conservation measures, which also has an economic impact. So, economic impact is being felt very hard already. If we get another year like we\u2019ve experienced in 2011, then those economic consequences are going to be extremely severe. The lakes won\u2019t completely empty by the end of next year, but they\u2019ll be very low and it\u2019ll take a while for them to fill up again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>When you say \u2018a while\u2019 there\u2019s no telling how long?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>There\u2019s no telling. You know, it\u2019s interesting because 2006 was a very dry year, 2008 was a very dry year. 2009 and 2010 were a little bit below average, and 2011 was very dry. But 2007 was a very wet year. And, despite the fact that it was so dry in 2006, the lakes filled up in 2007 and have ended up being progressively drawn down since that time. So, if you get a good gullywasher, like we call it in the business, a good rainfall over the entire watershed, those lakes can fill up pretty quickly.<\/p>\n<p>Read more on <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/31\/when-wells-run-dry-spicewood-beach-is-out-of-water\/\">Spicewood Beach running out of water here<\/a>. And you can also <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/drought\/\">read our topic page on the current Texas drought<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another milestone in the ongoing drought was reached yesterday when Spicewood Beach, a small community of about 1,100 people outside of Austin, ran out of water. As trucks began rolling in to replenish the town&#8217;s water tank, questions inevitably arose. It&#8217;s still not clear how things ended up here (the agency that owns the system [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":5310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[61,31,107,33,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5309"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5458,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5309\/revisions\/5458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}