{"id":6444,"date":"2012-02-27T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=6444"},"modified":"2012-02-27T09:56:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T15:56:58","slug":"for-spicewood-beach-dry-is-the-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/27\/for-spicewood-beach-dry-is-the-new-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"For Spicewood Beach, Dry is the New Normal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Terrence Henry\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

What was once a marina is now a cliff overlooking a dry riverbed in Spicewood Beach<\/p><\/div>\n

To get to Spicewood Beach<\/a> from Austin, you first drive through the Hill Country. You’ll pass a parcel of land scorched by wildfire and drive over a Pedernales River that has been reduced to a trickle, with docks awkwardly resting on the dry riverbed. When you get to the rusty barbecue smoker with the Confederate flag waving from its stack, you’re almost there.<\/p>\n

Once you arrive, you’ll find a verdant golf course (as long as it’s rained recently). When things are right at the lake, you can stand on the green and look out to a vast expanse of water. But when things are dry, as they’ve been over the last year, it looks like a curtain’s been pulled back unexpectedly. Instead of a swimming area and marina, you find yourself standing at an awkward cliff. Below is a sandy bed and boulders not used to seeing sunlight.\u00a0To the south, stairs that used to lead to the lake now dangle in the air.<\/p>\n

Since Spicewood Beach’s wells began to fail nearly a month ago, the Lower Colorado River Authority <\/a>(LCRA), which owns and operates the water system, has been trucking water in to keep the taps running.<\/p>\n

“So far, so good,” says Cathy Mull, who’s lived here about ten years, of the water hauling.\u00a0“We’ve always had water since they started it.”<\/p>\n

But just as they were getting used to the three or four truckloads a day, residents were warned things may soon have to change.<\/p>\n

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