Lake Travis is now 99% full

[J D the Obscure]

Thanks El Nino!

 

[RockyBalboa]

Every two years or so Lake Travis goes dry and the environmentalists scream about how it will take 20 years to refill. Instead, it's full again two years later. Every time.

 

[mcbrett]

Rocky-

those damn environmentalists with their damn clean water and damn sufficient water concerns! Damn them!

 

[hooklahoma]

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[YoLaDu]

I am very happy it is close to full. I still remain concerned about clean and abundant water for future generations.

 

[Third Coast]

Thank God for rain.

 

[EJC+1]

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[halsteadfrost]

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[mcbrett]

Actually Halstead,

You should worry about abundant water. There's more of us, and we're all using more of it, while the amount of fresh water has stayed relatively constant.

Think this is a chicken little scenario? Have you already forgotten the crisis in Atlanta two years ago? The fights between Tenn/GA/FL?

How about the fights in the West between AZ, CA, NV and Mexico over the Colorado river?

Or as a native of San Antonio, I can tell you the aquifer has come up short many years- not because of the aquifer itself but because of our over consumption.

So yes, this is a real issue, today.

 

[RomaVicta]

I've never heard environmentalists talking about "20 years" to refill the lake.

Lake Travis does seem to get very low more often than it did thirty years ago. My guess is because the population has dramatically increased. Under that kind of pressure, how can one not see the resource as potentially strained?

Do you think clean water just bubble up everywhere? It doesn't. We have developed a liking for sunny, dry places so we build or grow cities in places (Phoenix and LA) where water has to be diverted from the places it naturally flows. That impacts river flows downstream and the marshland environments where the rivers flow into the sea.

I'm not an environmental scientist, but I try to take my head out of the sand every once in awhile.

 

[Perham1]

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[A. BETTIK]

When Travis is full I consider any prior summer droughts to be over. Arbitrary but whose got a better method?

Given the age of the Earth, I don't think we have to worry about water. Transportation of water is another matter, easily solved by pipelines, canals and lakes.

Desalination plants on the coast powered by solar and wind arrays along a transport pipeline right of way would seem adequate to the task.

It seems like you could rig a pipeline with small internal damns of say a quarter the diameter of the pipe. You would want ridges leading downward from the top of the pipe's interior to uphill damns to channel water condensing on the interior surface. A series of these damns and ridge streams would slowly but surely transport water uphill during the day. At least so I theorize.

 

[HornsForever'93]

Good. Devils Cove will be rocking even more this year than usual.

 

[SeaGail]

Halleljuah ... the last time we were in Austin, about 3-1/2 years ago, it was horribly low. I look forward to seeing it this summer when we come down to see a new grandson and EAT!!!

Gail in WA

 

[LITNIN HORN]

DAMN THE PIPELINES!

 

[wherzwaldo]

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[Not that Bob]

The problem is not too little water. The problem is too many people. Stop breeding.