LCRA is in Stage 1 of its drought response. Under Stage 1 conditions, LCRA allows landscape watering up to twice a week for domestic use customers that have a contract with LCRA to draw water directly from the Highland Lakes. LCRA requests its customers reduce water use by 10% and that its firm water customers, which primarily are cities, utilities and industries, implement mandatory water use restrictions.
Firm customers set their own watering schedules, but may not allow watering more than twice a week.
LCRA projections show that if July and August are extremely hot and dry, combined storage in lakes Buchanan and Travis could fall below 900,000 acre-feet, or 45% of capacity, which would trigger Stage 2 drought response and maximum once-a-week watering, by the fall.
Because of the ongoing drought, no water from the Highland Lakes has been available to most LCRA agricultural customers in Wharton, Colorado and Matagorda counties since the second agricultural growing season in 2022.
Customers in the Gulf Coast, Lakeside and Pierce Ranch operations purchase “interruptible water,” which is curtailed or cut back during droughts under LCRA’s state-approved Water Management Plan.
LCRA determines the availability of stored water from the Highland Lakes for most interruptible customers twice a year – on March 1 and July 1.
If no water is available on the March evaluation date, no water from the Highland Lakes will be available after the July 1 evaluation either. On March 1, LCRA determined that no water from the lakes would be available to most interruptible customers for the year.
The next time water from lakes Buchanan and Travis could be available to customers in those operations is after the March 1, 2025, evaluation date.
Customers in the Garwood Agricultural Division are entitled to interruptible water from the Highland Lakes this year under terms of the 1998 purchase agreement for the Garwood water rights.
