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Posted
I'm a bit perturbed how the local water districts and Austin Water won't remove Stage 2 restrictions until the DCP exit conditions are met for 4 months continuously.  I.e. the two variable level lakes must have a combined storage over 1.2MM acre-feet for 4 months continuously before they will lift the restrictions from Stage 2 to Stage 1, then to no restrictions.  Nevermind we just crossed the 1.7MM a-f storage mark, and would take a few years worth of usage and evaporation to back down to the 1.2MM a-f mark.  I guess the water districts need a way to fine the hell out of the customers and make some good side cash.

Few years of usage? Didn’t it immediately go back down last time it was this high? Genuinely curious if I’m imagining that.
Posted
3 minutes ago, PvilleStang said:

I'm indifferent about the lawns, but not being able to wash your cars, or use a pressure washer, or fill a kiddie pool because of big brother...

Kinda weird to still be using kiddie pools as an adult

@South Austin jinx you owe me a some coke

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Posted
1 hour ago, 4th_and_18 said:


Few years of usage? Didn’t it immediately go back down last time it was this high? Genuinely curious if I’m imagining that.

takes several years. 637 ft at LT was 6-7 years in the making. we will have a reasonable lake level for several years.

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Posted

We need more projects like the (controversial) Austin injecting water into the cardoza aquifer. I predict there will be more of those in the coming decades. I want more. Take this surface water and pump it underground. Bring back to life springs. Liberalize cross water basin projects. Cloud seeding. Send more of that sweet Brazos water down from Palo Pinto to the Pecan Bayou. And then share Colorado water on down to Guadalupe, Frio, Medina, Neuces. Desalination with solar (who cares if it's interrupted power?) and pump it upstream. I want a verdant hill country, flowing creeks, people bitching their well levels are too high, caulking the wagon to ford the wide Pecos, plump and pretty women on the Little, houseboats on Amistad, canoeing through Boquillos canyon in November, catching minnows on the South San Gaberiel at the dinosaur tracks, jet skis on OC Fisher. Water abundance. Bring it. Drown me in it.

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Posted
10 minutes ago, CleverNickname said:

We need more projects like the (controversial) Austin injecting water into the cardoza aquifer. I predict there will be more of those in the coming decades. I want more. Take this surface water and pump it underground. Bring back to life springs. Liberalize cross water basin projects. Cloud seeding. Send more of that sweet Brazos water down from Palo Pinto to the Pecan Bayou. And then share Colorado water on down to Guadalupe, Frio, Medina, Neuces. Desalination with solar (who cares if it's interrupted power?) and pump it upstream. I want a verdant hill country, flowing creeks, people bitching their well levels are too high, caulking the wagon to ford the wide Pecos, plump and pretty women on the Little, houseboats on Amistad, canoeing through Boquillos canyon in November, catching minnows on the South San Gaberiel at the dinosaur tracks, jet skis on OC Fisher. Water abundance. Bring it. Drown me in it.

I'd love for Texas to have a system to use some of this water for aquifer recharge.  I know there are some site around Texas but it seems to me there needs to be more. 

Posted
4 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

I'd love for Texas to have a system to use some of this water for aquifer recharge.  I know there are some site around Texas but it seems to me there needs to be more. 

ASR (aquifer storage and recovery) is absolutely part of the mix for water supply in the state water plan.  

Availability of water isn't our issue, believe it or not.  The issue is the COST of available water.  People want two kinds of water: 1) lots of it, and 2) cheap.  Turns out, you can only have one or the other, not both. I worked with an old water engineer who had a great way of putting it: "Shit, water is free, it falls from the sky.  It's the catching it, holding it, treating it, and transporting it that costs so much damned money."

We can build more reservoirs, build very expensive transport pipelines, do expensive ASR and desalination, all that stuff.  It costs lots and lots of moolah (we've discussed transport pipelines here before -- people think and ask "how much could it be?" not realizing that the answer is "a metric fuckton of dollars, that's how much" is the truth).  So, we can do all the stuff Clever suggests and more.  You're just gonna get a bill for it.  Which you'll scream about.  So, very little of it will actually ever get done.

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Posted
11 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

ASR (aquifer storage and recovery) is absolutely part of the mix for water supply in the state water plan.  

Availability of water isn't our issue, believe it or not.  The issue is the COST of available water.  People want two kinds of water: 1) lots of it, and 2) cheap.  Turns out, you can only have one or the other, not both. I worked with an old water engineer who had a great way of putting it: "Shit, water is free, it falls from the sky.  It's the catching it, holding it, treating it, and transporting it that costs so much damned money."

We can build more reservoirs, build very expensive transport pipelines, do expensive ASR and desalination, all that stuff.  It costs lots and lots of moolah (we've discussed transport pipelines here before -- people think and ask "how much could it be?" not realizing that the answer is "a metric fuckton of dollars, that's how much" is the truth).  So, we can do all the stuff Clever suggests and more.  You're just gonna get a bill for it.  Which you'll scream about.  So, very little of it will actually ever get done.

Chinatown GIFs | Tenor

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Posted
5 hours ago, PvilleStang said:

I'm a bit perturbed how the local water districts and Austin Water won't remove Stage 2 restrictions until the DCP exit conditions are met for 4 months continuously.  I.e. the two variable level lakes must have a combined storage over 1.2MM acre-feet for 4 months continuously before they will lift the restrictions from Stage 2 to Stage 1, then to no restrictions.  Nevermind we just crossed the 1.7MM a-f storage mark, and would take a few years worth of usage and evaporation to back down to the 1.2MM a-f mark.  I guess the water districts need a way to fine the hell out of the customers and make some good side cash.

I see Tarrytown is chiming in...

 

(Just kidding, we know everyone in Tarrytown waters 3x a week)

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Posted
26 minutes ago, troph said:

crazy. can't see how LT doesn't cross 670 now.  already up 30 feet in 10 days.

Less than 3 feet away and still rising fairly rapidly. It'll probably hit 670 sometime tomorrow. 

Posted
5 hours ago, PvilleStang said:

I'm a bit perturbed how the local water districts and Austin Water won't remove Stage 2 restrictions until the DCP exit conditions are met for 4 months continuously.  I.e. the two variable level lakes must have a combined storage over 1.2MM acre-feet for 4 months continuously before they will lift the restrictions from Stage 2 to Stage 1, then to no restrictions.  Nevermind we just crossed the 1.7MM a-f storage mark, and would take a few years worth of usage and evaporation to back down to the 1.2MM a-f mark.  I guess the water districts need a way to fine the hell out of the customers and make some good side cash.

It is not the individual water districts.  It is the LCRA then the WTCPUA and Austin that set the tone for Austin and west of Austin.  Once they go to stage 1 then the water districts will follow suit.  If the districts go first then the LCRA and the PUA can fine the districts themselves.  

Posted

Yeah I think 670 is all but guaranteed now.  And with streamflows near 20K on the Llano and near 40K near Colorado Bend, forcing 3 floodgates open at Buchanan dam, it could happen pretty quickly.

 

Oh and the answer to the last time flood gates were open at Buchanan-- 2019.  Six years ago.

 

 

Posted
35 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

YARN | Take us to DEFCON 3. Get on to SAC. | WarGames ...

3 gates open on Buchanan, 1 was already open on Wirtz and 2 on Starcke. Any of you engineer types want to say how many more gates they will have to open on Wirtz and Starcke to keep up??

math-thinking.webp

Posted
Just now, 1978horn said:

It is not the individual water districts.  It is the LCRA then the WTCPUA and Austin that set the tone for Austin and west of Austin.  Once they go to stage 1 then the water districts will follow suit.  If the districts go first then the LCRA and the PUA can fine the districts themselves.  

WTCPUA has no verbiage for the 4 month hold like Austin does. I've got a smart sprinkler system, and haven't actively watered the lawn in 3-4 weeks now.  But having only one water day / week, I currently water morning and night (if the system hasn't detected rain or saturation amounts causing the schedule to bypass), but if I had 2 water days per week, I would water both just once a day, and actually use less water in the long run.

https://www.wtcpua.org/wp-content/uploads/DCP-WTCPUA-241118.pdf

Posted
2 minutes ago, Hpara759 said:

3 gates open on Buchanan, 1 was already open on Wirtz and 2 on Starcke. Any of you engineer types want to say how many more gates they will have to open on Wirtz and Starcke to keep up??

math-thinking.webp

I'm an electrical engineer but my guess is... all of them.  All the gates.

And/or "TheLimitDoesNotExist.jpg"

Posted
2 minutes ago, PvilleStang said:

WTCPUA has no verbiage for the 4 month hold like Austin does. I've got a smart sprinkler system, and haven't actively watered the lawn in 3-4 weeks now.  But having only one water day / week, I currently water morning and night (if the system hasn't detected rain or saturation amounts causing the schedule to bypass), but if I had 2 water days per week, I would water both just once a day, and actually use less water in the long run.

https://www.wtcpua.org/wp-content/uploads/DCP-WTCPUA-241118.pdf

The PUA is waiting on the LCRA once that happens it will cascade down to them and then all the other water districts.  They recently changed it from 1.1 million gallons to 1.2 million gallons to go back to stage 1.  But inflows also need to be up(which they are).  They also need to make sure that they have capacity....which in my opinion the PUA has promised more water than they can deliver in peak times, so that can hinder them going back to stage 1.

Posted

I'm not an engineer, but LCRA has seemed to be much more proactive the last few days on keeping the water levels in Lake LBJ a foot or so below normal. I've heard from a few friends with places on LBJ that owners were highly pissed about how the water was passed through last weekend because too little was let out timely enough resulting in several docks getting flooded and boats/jet skis floating off. 

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Posted
Just now, ftf82 said:

I'm not an engineer, but LCRA has seemed to be much more proactive the last few days on keeping the water levels in Lake LBJ a foot or so below normal. I've heard from a few friends with places on LBJ that owners were highly pissed about how the water was passed through last weekend because too little was let out timely enough resulting in several docks getting flooded and boats/jet skis floating off. 

In unrelated news, my friends with a lakehouse on LBJ recently acquired 2 new jet skis and a boat...

 

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Posted (edited)
26 minutes ago, Deej said:

4 down, 33 more to go. 

which ones are open aren't some large most small?  I read the smaller are like 7k cfs the larger are over 18k cfs.

Edited by troph
Posted
2 hours ago, ftf82 said:

3rd floodgate just opened at Buchanan

 

1 hour ago, Orange&White said:

Just announced a fourth gate opening at Buch dam

 

1 hour ago, troph said:

crazy. can't see how LT doesn't cross 670 now.  already up 30 feet in 10 days.

 

Here comes 675!!!

giphy.gif

Posted
30 minutes ago, troph said:

which ones are open aren't some large most small?  I read the smaller are like 7k cfs the larger are over 18k cfs.

 

Not sure which ones are currently open, but this is the skinny:

Discharge capacity

348,000 cubic feet per second (cfs):

  • 7 large floodgates at 18,800 cfs each
  • 30 small floodgates at 7,030 cfs each
  • 2 turbines at 2,090 cfs each
  • 1 turbine at 1,760 cfs

 

https://www.lcra.org/water/dams-and-lakes/

Posted
1 hour ago, ftf82 said:

I'm not an engineer, but LCRA has seemed to be much more proactive the last few days on keeping the water levels in Lake LBJ a foot or so below normal. I've heard from a few friends with places on LBJ that owners were highly pissed about how the water was passed through last weekend because too little was let out timely enough resulting in several docks getting flooded and boats/jet skis floating off. 

 

1 hour ago, utee94 said:

In unrelated news, my friends with a lakehouse on LBJ recently acquired 2 new jet skis and a boat...

 

With 4 Lake Buchanan gates open, might see some docks and boats break loose and flow into Lake LBJ from Colorado river side...   

Most of the previous boats and docks that broke loose last week onto Lake LBJ came from the Llano river side...

Posted

Inks is currently dumping 27,000 CFS into the Colorado arm. Wirtz is passing through 38,000. With the additional water coming into the Llano LBJ is either going to start filling up again or they're going to need to open more gates at Wirtz. Trust me. I'm a notary public.

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, 1978horn said:

The PUA is waiting on the LCRA once that happens it will cascade down to them and then all the other water districts.  They recently changed it from 1.1 million gallons to 1.2 million gallons to go back to stage 1.  But inflows also need to be up(which they are).  They also need to make sure that they have capacity....which in my opinion the PUA has promised more water than they can deliver in peak times, so that can hinder them going back to stage 1.

In 2026 the PUA is going to be handed back a decent chunk of water from a few MUDs. Enough for them to once again oversell water. Good thing is that there isn't much more development possible in their CCN. Between conservation land and wastewater unavailability, coupled with high land cost and acreage lots becoming a thing of the past, they might just make it. It is over 2k LUEs they will get off the books.

Edited by HOOKEM4
ousux
Posted
22 minutes ago, ftf82 said:

Inks is currently dumping 27,000 CFS into the Colorado arm. Wirtz is passing through 38,000. With the additional water coming into the Llano LBJ is either going to start filling up again or they're going to need to open more gates at Wirtz. Trust me. I'm a notary public.

LBJ Boat Dock guy told me that Wirtz Dam wasn't allowed to drain Lake LBJ too quickly last week -- something related to power and electric that is handled at the dam.

Wonder how many gates will be opened now at Wirtz???

Posted

About to say a lot of dock work, but dont most docks have a push button? Saw a guy at lakeway marina get both his hands shattered trying to let out during a rise. I still wanna puke. 

Posted
3 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

We can build more reservoirs, build very expensive transport pipelines, do expensive ASR and desalination, all that stuff.  It costs lots and lots of moolah (we've discussed transport pipelines here before -- people think and ask "how much could it be?" not realizing that the answer is "a metric fuckton of dollars, that's how much" is the truth).  So, we can do all the stuff Clever suggests and more.  You're just gonna get a bill for it.  

I respect your learned opinion. But I'm like Lincoln on this. McClellan, you're fired. Pope and Burnside, fired. Hooker? Fired. McClellan: Fired again. You either fight, or you sit down.

I said I want plump and pretty women on the Little River. Not little women on the Pretty River. I want it all. Desal. Fanning county? More like Fan-flooded county. Big ass pipelines stealing water from Aggy and piping it to Sand Aggy. And then when they piss it out, I'm shipping the piss back to Waco. I'm going to pump so much water into Ogallala that the sand hills of Nebraska will flush down to Kanasas and make it interesting. Money? We got money. We don't spend it on education or health care, what the fuck is money for? Im gonna take Commanche County and make it a giant hole and fill it up. I like holes and fuck those sundown town racists. 

"Stop, Clever, stop! It's too much water!" Hell no. We filling this damn bathtub, and I dont care how many turds have to float to make it happen. Jacob's Well ain't just gonna run, its gonna be a fucking geyser. We will fill up DKR like the Coliseum, and Fozzy Whittaker is going to ski jump over Katy Perry's left shark.

Twenty-five years ago I promised my drunken longhorn peers a lazy river to cirumnavigate campus, and now is the fucking time.

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