Central Texas drought gettin' bad

[Armybrat]

Popular bar/marina Carlos & Charlie's on Lake Travis near Austin closed the other day.

Looks like the old adage "take a long walk off a short pier" would result in a drop of almost 40' to the rocks......

http://ktbc.images.worldnow.com/images/23201117_BG1.jpg

[Longitude Zero]

Truthfully it is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. And it is not due to AlGores bogus human caused Global Warming lies either.

[dkmatthews]

My home state has plenty of oil & not enough water. Bad times a-comin'.

[phil413tx]

Wow...I have talked to a lot of people about the drought in Central Texas but I did not realize how bad it was. We have a drought in Huston but nothing like that....

We need to pray for some rain!

[mr surveyor]

unfortunately, all you folks near the "Big Cities" are seeing the drought due to your over population. In Northeast Texas we are doing every thing possible to keep Dallas from using all the political clout at their disposal from sucking our lakes dry. I would say the conditions are just cyclical, and in terms of weather that would be true .... the massive influx of people into the Austin area (as well as Dallas, San Antonio, Houston) in the last 30 years or so has to be a catastrophic burden on the water system. What if the "chain of lakes", which was originally constructed for flood control, hadn't been built? The Austin area probably wouldn't have near the population explosion nor the water shortage problems.

Another thing to consider is that Texas only had a single natural "lake" (Caddo) to begin with. All the other lakes were built for either water sources or flood control on an as needed basis. Prior to the mid '70s, locals could design and build lakes as needed .... now with all the sillyassed federal regulations, it takes no less than 10-15 years after determining need, studies, securing funding and engineering design, to get through all the unnecessary environmental studies and federal approval.

We could be much better stewards of our water ..... without federal BS

[Longitude Zero]

Fortunately the courts slammed to door in the face of Texans trying to leach off OK water.

[Armybrat]

Fortunately the courts slammed to door in the face of Texans trying to leach off OK water.


Tell you what, we'll let y'all keep poaching our good high school football players if we can pump some of your water down here. :D

[muggsy]

I live on the shores of Lake Erie with it's sparkling blue waters. Maybe if you ask nice I'd be willing to trade some for your dirty black oil.

[TheTman]

That's so weird, just north of you all we had the 2nd wettest August on record, in the Wichita KS area. And 2 years ago my water well ran dry. So maybe yours is coming next year Texas.

[laserfish]

We have a place on Bridgeport Lake, just north of Ft. Worth and it is 20' low now. Long way from my dock to the water. We were to be the lake the OK water was pumped into, but someone decided to file suit and insist that all that water that could have been used wisely be allowed to dump into the Red River and be ruined. Oh well, common sense is not so common these days.

[Longitude Zero]

OK had the foresight to set up a water program decades ago. Frankly the water is ours and should stay in-state. Want the water, then move north outta South Oklahoma. And the excess water WAS NOT planned for are was dumped into the Red River.

The information is that the lake that you are talking about was built and paid for by the City of Oklahoma City for its exclusive use. When the city began plans for a pipeline the Tribes threw a fit and in order to settle the dispute the sale to South Oklahoma was correctly stopped. In this water case common sense did prevail.

Riparian aka Water rights are a very serious issue in my home state. TX better wake up and soon or they may find themselves high and dry. The High Plans Aquifer and the Edwards-Trinity Aquifer are dwindling in supply and one day could be so low as to be unusable.