{"id":5502,"date":"2012-02-03T13:42:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T19:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=5502"},"modified":"2012-02-03T13:56:56","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T19:56:56","slug":"spicewood-beach-haulers-used-more-water-than-elementary-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/03\/spicewood-beach-haulers-used-more-water-than-elementary-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Spicewood Beach Hauler Used More Water Than Elementary School"},"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, Texas Monday, January 30.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>We learned this week that <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/02\/where-did-spicewood-beachs-water-go\/\">over 1.3 million gallons of water was trucked out of Spicewood Beach<\/a>\u00a0and sold to contractors. They trucked the water out of the community for use by private customers. Spicewood Beach&#8217;s wells <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/31\/when-wells-run-dry-spicewood-beach-is-out-of-water\/\">began failing Monday<\/a>.\u00a0It wasn&#8217;t initially clear how significant 1.3 million gallons was. Now we know.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/lcra\/\">Lower Colorado River Authority<\/a> (LCRA), which owns and operates the wells in Spicewood Beach, says in an email to StateImpact Texas that the total amount of water pumped out in 2011 was 34.8 million gallons.<\/p>\n<p>Of that, water haulers used at least 1.3 million gallons, and Spicewood Elementary used approximately 1.1 million gallons.<\/p>\n<p>Around 1,100 residents are served by the system. They used 32.3 million gallons of water.<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s what we can take away from the numbers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Over 1.3 million gallons <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/02\/where-did-spicewood-beachs-water-go\/\">was sold to outside haulers<\/a>.\u00a0That&#8217;s over four percent of the 32.2 million gallons of water used by residents in Spicewood Beach.<\/li>\n<li>That 1.3 million-plus gallons of water came cheap for the haulers. According to one of them, they paid around $6 for every 1,000 gallons of water (which seems to be a standard rate). That means the LCRA may have earned less than $8,000 for the water sold from Spicewood Beach.<\/li>\n<li>More water was sold from Spicewood Beach (1.3 million gallons) to the <a href=\"http:\/\/hillsoftexasbulkwater.net\/index.htm\">Hills of Texas Bulk Water<\/a>\u00a0haulers than was used by the elementary school (1.1 million gallons).<!--more--><\/li>\n<li>If <a href=\"http:\/\/hillsoftexasbulkwater.net\/index.htm\">Hills of Texas Bulk Water<\/a>\u00a0used a 2,000-gallon truck (like the other hauler, <a href=\"http:\/\/hamiltonpoolh2o.com\/\">Hamilton Pool H20<\/a>, did), that equals 650 trucks of water taken out of Spicewood Beach. That&#8217;s almost two trips a day, every day of the year.<\/li>\n<li>The average household use for water in Spicewood Beach is around 29,000 gallons of water a year. The water that was sold to haulers would have been enough for a year&#8217;s worth of water for about 45 homes in Spicewood Beach.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"related-content alignleft\"><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\/31\/when-wells-run-dry-spicewood-beach-is-out-of-water\/\">When Wells Run Dry: Spicewood Beach, Texas is Out of\u00a0Water<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/01\/why-did-spicewood-beach-run-dry-maybe-because-their-water-was-for-sale\/\">Why Did Spicewood Beach Run Dry? Maybe Because Their Water Was For\u00a0Sale<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/02\/where-did-spicewood-beachs-water-go\/\">Where Did Spicewood Beach\u2019s Water\u00a0Go?<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/02\/how-much-water-was-sold-from-spicewood-beach-before-it-ran-dry\/\">More than One Million Gallons of Water Sold From Spicewood Beach Before it Ran\u00a0Dry<\/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><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/01\/pipe-worker-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/spicewood-beach\/\">What is Spicewood Beach?<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<p>The main question is: if the LCRA hadn&#8217;t sold water from Spicewood Beach, would it have prevented the wells from failing? It&#8217;s difficult to say. But the over 1.3 million gallons of water trucked out is enough to supply the entire community (based on their 2011 use) for two weeks, perhaps more, under their current Stage 4 water restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>In hindsight, selling this community&#8217;s water certainly doesn&#8217;t seem like the right call. That&#8217;s a sentiment echoed by one of the haulers, Larry Ogden of Hamilton Pool H20. He says his company trucked out much less water than the 1.3 million gallons taken out by Hills of Texas Bulk Water.\u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t even know Spicewood Beach wasn\u2019t connected to [the LCRA\u2019s] network out there,\u201d he told StateImpact Texas\u00a0yesterday. Ogden thought Spicewood Beach was part of the LCRA\u2019s larger water system in nearby Marble Falls. \u201cIt would have been helpful for us to know that,\u201d he says. \u201cIt sure looks like, from this point of view, they should have stepped in earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/spicewood-beach\/\">Read all of our Spicewood Beach coverage here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We learned this week that over 1.3 million gallons of water was trucked out of Spicewood Beach\u00a0and sold to contractors. They trucked the water out of the community for use by private customers. Spicewood Beach&#8217;s wells began failing Monday.\u00a0It wasn&#8217;t initially clear how significant 1.3 million gallons was. Now we know. The Lower Colorado River [&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":[61,31,107,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502"}],"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=5502"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5513,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502\/revisions\/5513"}],"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=5502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}