With concerns looming about future water shortages, consumers and manufacturers are looking for ways to reduce residential consumption.
Brad Meyer of the Conroe Courier News reports that the “Responsible Bathroom Water Conservation Tour,” sponsored by American Standard, showcases new products being developed to help homeowners reduce water consumption without sacrificing convenience and comfort.
“Newly developed toilets, faucets and showerheads use significantly less water than those that were in use just a few years ago,” said Brian Kisiel, American Standard spokesman. “New products are helping to eliminate excessive water use.”
Until recently, most toilets used 3.5 gallons for every flush, esaid Bob Swanborn, regional sales manager for Coburn’s, a Conroe-based distributor or plumbing supplies. Newer low-flow toilets using 1.6 gallons per flush will be replaced by ones that use only 1.38 gallons per flush.
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The Texas panhandle’s dairy industry is raising questions about water usage, and it has everything to do with the nature of the business, according to Ryan Cody of KFDA News Channel. The large quantity of dairy cows in the high plains is something relatively new.
“Going back 15 years you’re getting to where it was just starting to develop here in the panhandle. There’s always been some dairy production but nothing like it is now,” says Darren Turley of the Texas Association of Dairymen.
And that’s raising questions about how to better preserve one of the least renewable resources we have.
“We will see less water going towards irrigation of crops and more water proportionally being used in the dairy and cattle feeding industry,” says agronomist David Bauer.
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ADDISON, TEXAS – Addison’s planned new water tower is destined to be noticed — and not just because it will be 195-feet tall. The water tower will be among the first in the nation to be powered by wind turbines mounted on top.
Ten eight-foot-tall wind turbines will supply enough power to run the tower as well as street lights on Arapaho Road in this suburb north of Dallas. Adding to its uniqueness, the $5 million project will include a community classroom in the pedestal base, where school children will be able to learn about wind energy and water distribution.
The project also calls for use of native and drought-tolerant landscaping (continue with story).
CENTRAL TEXAS – Bob Rose with the Lower Colorado River Authority says that “The overall drought in our region has ended,”. “We’ve had so much rain. We have a lot of soil moisture now, and the effects of the drought are really pretty much over. It’s just the hydrologic part of the drought; it’s still ongoing.”
News 8 Austin reports that water elevation in Lake Travis has reached its average for the month of February, but Lake Buchanan is still about 8 feet below its average elevation for February.
“We still have a way to go, but conditions have improved and we are starting to come out of this drought.”
More rain is also expected to fall in Central Texas over the next few days.
LCRA News – A Travis County judge Monday dismissed a $1.23 billion lawsuit filed against the Lower Colorado River Authority by the City of San Antonio.
State District Judge Stephen Yelenosky ruled in favor of LCRA and against the San Antonio Water System. San Antonio had requested that the discussion of whether its suit was valid be delayed while it developed more legal information and depositions. SAWS said it wanted to interview state officials, county judges, more river authority Board and staff members and others. SAWS had already been given hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and e-mails by LCRA, but said it needed more time and information to prove its allegation that LCRA had defrauded the city.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram: FORT WORTH — The Tarrant Regional Water District has received $101.6 million in financial assistance from the Texas Water Development Board to help with the design and planning of a 179-mile pipeline that will bring more water from East Texas to the Metroplex.
The $1.9 billion pipeline is a joint project with Dallas Water Utilities.
It would run from Lake Palestine to Benbrook Lake and add 197 million gallons a day for the water district. Tarrant Regional already has two pipelines bringing water from the Cedar Creek and Richland Chambers reservoirs in East Texas.
For Dallas, the pipeline would connect the city with Lake Palestine for the first time and add 150 million gallons per day.
The water district, which supplies water to 11 counties, hopes to have a contract with Dallas Water Utilities by March. The Tarrant district hopes to have the added capacity by 2018, when new supplies will be needed.
Austin-American Statesman: According to the Lower Colorado River Authority, we’re still in a drought.That was the message at a meeting last week of the board of the LCRA, which oversees the doling out of Colorado River water.
Yes, we had a rainy fall, and, yes, the LCRA told cities along the Colorado that they could lift their drought restrictions. Yes, Lakes Travis and Buchanan, the main reservoirs for Central Texas, are now 60 percent full, up from 39 percent in mid-September.
But when you measure the lack of water streaming into the lakes, Central Texas continues to be in a water supply drought, LCRA officials say. Since Jan. 1, 2009, the lakes have an “inflow deficit” of about 240,000 acre-feet. Inflow deficit is defined as the amount of water flowing into the Highland Lakes as compared to a similar period during the drought of record, the 1950s drought which the LCRA uses for water supply planning. 240,000 acre-feet is roughly equal to the amount of water 720,000 average Austin homes use in a year.
“The drought as it affects water supply is not over,” Mark Jordan, head of LCRA’s river management division, told the board at the meeting last Wednesday. “The rains have not resulted in sufficient inflows to get us back to where we were just a year ago.”
Abilene Reporter News: LUBBOCK — Former Texas gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams is suing a West Texas water district for denying his application to pump water from beneath his land.
Williams claims in a lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Midland that several of his Constitutional rights were violated when the Middle Pecos Groundwater Conservation District denied his plan.
The wildcatter, rancher and multimillionaire who lost the 1990 Texas governor’s race to Ann Richards is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
An attorney for the water district says the application was rejected, not denied, because it was incomplete.
Texas’ rule of capture law gives landowners the rights to the water under their property.
