Where is our recreational lake?  Where is our water source?
 

The "industrialization" of Lake Travis continues at a rapid pace!  Bright lights and loud noise scream from the WTP4 deep water intake staging area at Keller Marina on the main body to the intake site below the Oasis near Mansfield Dam. When complete, the City of Austin will still have only one water source--the oversold, over-used Highland Lakes.  Austin water users will have ridiculously high water rates, and, due to the drought, will probably be on mandatory water rationing by spring.  If the city sells less water, how will it pay for the billion dollar mistake on the lake?  Raise rates even higher causing only the wealthiest Austinites to be able to water their lawns? What do these extremely dry lawns do to increase fire damage?  Just ask the people of Bastrop!

Austin needs to pipe the water south and east because no water is needed in northwest Travis County--the plant's location.  The transmission line is planned to tunnel through some fragile areas.  Once destroyed, will our ground water ever recover?

Austin has made significant first steps toward conservation and reuse.  These "baby steps" have a long way to go before the City needed this enormous industrial complex labeled WTP4.  How can the City get serious about conservation when they need to sell more water to pay for their "project"?

The Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) funded $182 million for "Phase 1A" of the BCRUA Project for Cedar Park, Leander and Round Rock in Lake Travis on July 8, 2009, totally ignoring Leander's amended water rights pending at TCEQ. Water Rights needed for Phase IA were figured by using Round Rock's Lake Georgetown and Stillhouse Hollow water--a long way from Lake Travis!  TWDB refused to redo the water certification even with DELTA's pleading!  Governor Perry appoints these people.

The property owners along Trails End have endured the BCRUA stripping and trenching for their water line.  Now BCRUA has declared they will put  an intake and pump station at the end of Jackson in the Village of Volente.  Will this mean more trucks, heavy equipment and trenching even through the residential neighborhoods of the Village? 

LCRA released 465,000 acre feet (af) for the farmers in the lower basin in this exceptional drought year--leaving over 700,000 af left in combined storage in Lakes Travis and Buchanan.  (One acre foot equals slightly less than 326,000 gallons, or what 2 families of 4 use in one year.)  After the water is gone, the LCRA Board is working on a new Water Management Plan that just might curtail the farmers instead of allowing them totally unrestricted usage!  Governor Perry appoints these people.

With La Nina gaining strength, by all accounts, we are in for more drought. According to tree rings, the only year since 1550 with a drought as severe as 2011, was 1789--the year George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States! 

Finally, after we are to our knees, our State Legislature is beginning to "study" the situation...We, the people of the State of Texas, are to blame for allowing this...