{"id":8741,"date":"2012-04-16T13:04:48","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T18:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=8741"},"modified":"2012-04-16T13:23:07","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T18:23:07","slug":"rice-farmers-used-more-than-three-times-as-much-water-as-austin-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/04\/16\/rice-farmers-used-more-than-three-times-as-much-water-as-austin-last-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Rice Farmers Used More Than Three Times as Much Water as Austin Last Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Jeff Heimsath\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

Rice farmer Billy Mann says that in the future, they'll have to grow more rice with less water.<\/p><\/div>\n

New numbers <\/a>put into perspective just how much water rice farmers<\/a> in southeast Texas used out of the Highland Lakes for their water-intensive crop compared with city-dwellers in Austin last year. The Highland Lakes consist of\u00a0two large reservoirs, Lakes Buchanan and Travis, and several pass-through lakes. Buchanan and Travis are still only half-full, despite a wetter-than-average winter.<\/p>\n

A new report<\/a> from the Lower Colorado River Authority<\/a> (LCRA), which manages water in the Highland Lakes for the city of Austin and farmers downstream, shows that rice farmers used 367,985 acre-feet of water from the lakes in 2011. (An acre-foot is a\u00a0measurement of water<\/a>, i.e., how much water it would take to cover one acre with one foot of water, which is roughly equivalent to 325,800 gallons.)\u00a0Another 65,266 acre-feet of water was released from the lakes downstream but not used, due to evaporation, seepage, or “conditions changed that eliminated the need\u00a0for the water,” according to the LCRA, bringing their total to 433,251 acre-feet used from the Highland Lakes.<\/p>\n

The city of Austin, on the other hand, used 106,622 acre-feet of water from the Highland Lakes, less than a third of the amount used by rice farmers. And the same pretty much holds true for previous years. (Another\u00a0192,404 acre-feet of water straight up evaporated from the lakes last year.)<\/p>\n

So why do rice farmers get to use so much water, when some towns are running out<\/a>?<\/p>\n

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Graph by LCRA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Rice farmers downstream on the Lower Colorado will tell you it’s because they were here first.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a sense it\u2019s our water,\u201d Haskell Simon, a rice farmer and representative of the industry in Matagorda County told StateImpact Texas earlier this year. \u201cIn order to give a more assured supply of water for that burgeoning industry, there was a pressure to develop those storage facilities which are now the Highland Lakes,\u201d he\u00a0said. Texas water laws can be confounding<\/a>, but in the case of the rice farmers it essentially boils down to this: they were here first, so as long as there is enough water around, they get to use it for their crops.<\/p>\n

The LCRA says as much on their website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to state water law, first in time is first in right. Downstream rice farmers were given first water rights in the Colorado basin, and these rights are senior to LCRA\u2019s water rights for the Highland Lakes. In fact, without the support of the rice farmers, the Highland Lakes and dams might never have been built. Rice farmers were among the strongest supporters of building the Highland Lakes and dams in the 1930s. They recognized the value of the dams in easing flooding and making water available during droughts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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