.jpg)
Lakes perilous with fast flows, debris, bacteria
AUSTIN — As rain continues to fall and flood operations increase at dams along the Highland Lakes, the Lower Colorado River Authority is recommending everyone stay off the lakes for the time being.
“We Texans love being on the lakes during the summer, but this is not the time and not the place,” said John Hofmann, LCRA executive vice president of Water. “There continue to be significant flood flows throughout the Highland Lakes, and we strongly advise everyone to stay off the lakes for the next few days.”
In addition to strong flows, the lakes contain debris from recent flooding and higher levels of bacteria, which is common for a couple of weeks after a flood event.
“The best and safest course of action is to avoid being in the lakes until things settle down in a few days,” Hofmann said.
The advisory applies to Lakes Buchanan, Inks, LBJ, Marble Falls and Travis. The city of Marble Falls has temporarily closed Lake Marble Falls, and the Travis County judge has banned recreational use of the waterways in Lake Travis upstream of Mile Marker 36 and upstream of Sandy Creek Park.
LCRA plans to open at least two floodgates at Buchanan Dam, the northernmost dam in the Highland Lakes chain, early Monday afternoon. As of Monday, LCRA also has floodgates open at Wirtz and Starcke dams, which create lakes LBJ and Marble Falls, and water is flowing over the spillway at Inks Dam, which does not have any floodgates. LCRA may need to open additional floodgates as conditions change.
This will mark the first time LCRA has opened a floodgate at Buchanan Dam since May 2019.
Since July 3, Lake Buchanan has risen 16 feet and is now about 97% full, and Lake Travis has come up more than 29 feet and is about 78% full. Current projections show Lake Buchanan could rise another 1 to 2 feet, and Lake Travis could rise an additional 2 to 3 feet over the next day. With additional rain, the lake level forecasts could increase.
In that period, combined storage in lakes Buchanan and Travis, the two water supply reservoirs in the Highland Lakes, has risen almost 700,000 acre-feet to more than 1.7 million acre-feet, or 86% of capacity. (One acre-foot is the amount of water it would take to cover an acre of land with one foot of water.
LCRA continues to closely monitor inflows into the Highland Lakes around the clock and is ready to open additional floodgates if needed.
CURRENT INFO ON LAKE LEVELS, FLOOD OPERATIONS
Lake levels updated every five minutes are available on LCRA’s River Operations Report at www. lcra.org/riverreport.
• Current LCRA flood operations and lake level forecasts are available on LCRA’s Flood Operations Report at www.lcra.org/floodreport.
• The free Flood Operations Notification Service, or FONS, will call, email and/or text subscribers when flood operations begin at dams along the Highland Lakes and Lake Bastrop. To subscribe, visit www.lcra.org/FONS. This is not a flood warning service, but instead provides notification of operations at LCRA dams.
• Updates from LCRA are available on LCRA.org and on our official Facebook, Instagram and X accounts.
