Austin's water woes continue

[Komeht]

Originally Posted by CptnRn

The vast majority of the water used in the last 3 years has gone to the rice farmers. The total water consumptionwill be far less now that they have been cut off. The following Austin numbers is for outdoor landscape irrigation, all numbers are in acre-feet of water. //www.city-data.com/forum/30915470-post4.html

And yet lake travis continues to drop like a stone losing 8 feet in July and August alone. Of course if that happens for another month we'll be below the previous low set back in the mid 1950s when our population was a small fraction of today.

http://www.lcra.org/library/media/pu...vls/travis.xls

Run along people - no need to worry, Captain Ron has guaranteed our continued abundance of water.

[gpurcell]

Did you bother to look at his graph, Kohmeht?

The lake level has NOTHING to do with lawn irrigation and EVERYTHING to do with water to the rice farmers.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Part of the problem is that much of the water is lost right now to evaporation and/or to required minimum stream flows (you don't really want to kill the entire CO river downstream of Austin). At some point in the not-so-distant future (next summer?), they really may need to ban lawn watering all together. 'Inside' water use has an almost negligible impact on the lakes.

As for releasing water to rice farmers, I think someone did post that analysis and it was something like 22 feet higher if they had not released water to the farmers in 2010.

Originally Posted by CptnRn

The vast majority of the water used in the last 3 years has gone to the rice farmers. The total water consumptionwill be far less now that they have been cut off. The following Austin numbers is for outdoor landscape irrigation, all numbers are in acre-feet of water. //www.city-data.com/forum/30915470-post4.html

I thought the point made by Trainwreck above regarding water lost by irrigation was interesting and wondered how much that contributed to the problem.

There was an article in the Statesman Sept. 9, 2013 that addressed that.

Lake Level Ideas Bring Flood of Angst:

The six Highland Lakes - which include Austin, Buchanan, and Travis - lost 145,000 acre-feet to evaporation alone in 2012. An acre-foot of water is roughly equal to the amount three average Austin homes use in a year.

So the annual loss by evaporation in 2012 was equivalent to the total amount of water used by 435 homes in a year.

Another way to look at it:

Water lost by evaporation in 2012 = 145,000 acre-feet.
Water used for irrigation 2008 - 2011 = 77,000 acre-feet.

So it would take Austin roughly 8 years of irrigation to use as much water as was lost to evaporation in one year.

It kind of makes our efforts to conserve water by reducing irrigation seem miniscule.

[EzPeterson]

Well, if Ingrid doesn't make a hard right turn, looks like we'll have to bring back the Springer show with everyone in central TX chanting Jerry! Jerry!