State agency gives LCRA approval to cut off water to rice farmers - Asher Price Austin American-Statesman Rice farmers will almost surely go without water from Central Texas reservoirs for the third straight year after the top official at the state environmental agency on Monday granted the regional water authority emergency, drought-period powers. Short of a biblical deluge over the next month, the Lower Colorado River Authority will not have to provide agricultural water to most rice farmers under the emergency order signed by Texas Commission on Environmental Quality executive director Richard Hyde. The decision essentially ratifies a contentious November vote by the LCRA board. Because of the ongoing drought, now in its seventh year by LCRA’s reckoning, the river authority requested that it be excused from releasing water to farmers if volume of lakes Travis and Buchanan are less than 1.1 million acre-feet on March 1. Currently, the lakes contain 764,323 acre-feet, or 38 percent of their capacity. An acre-foot is roughly equal to the amount of water needed to cover a football field nearly one foot deep. In 2012 and 2013, the LCRA had set a threshold of 850,000 acre-feet before cutting off farmers. The November effort by upper basin board members, who represent constituents along the Highland Lakes, to raise the threshold was met with outrage by lower basin board members, who represent the farmers. But Dave Lindsay, a board member of the Central Texas Water Coalition, which represents lakeside communities, said the situation of the lakes, the chief reservoirs for more than a million Central Texans, remains precarious. If the emergency order had been denied, the LCRA would have had to release agricultural water, “and the water levels would drop to record lows,” said Andy Saenz, a spokesman for the state environmental agency. An emergency disaster proclamation issued by Gov. Rick Perry in July 2011 — and renewed monthly ever since — declares that “All rules and regulations that may inhibit or prevent prompt response to this threat are suspended for the duration of the state of disaster.” The farmers have long paid far less than cities and industry for water, with the prospect it could be cut off in time of drought, Lindsay said. “It’s as if they never saw the risk involved and built an economy on an interruptible supply of water,” he said. State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who represents the upper basin, said he supported the TCEQ decision. “We’re living through a continued drought of unknown intensity and unknown duration,” he said. “Getting through this will require unprecedented actions, like that taken today by the TCEQ.” The state environmental commission will meet in February to confirm, reject or modify the order.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Jan 2014 21:09:42 +0000
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