Waiting for the Next Spicewood Beach

February 14, 2012 5:45 am by: Mose Buchele

Water levels at the Pedernales River near Spicewood are indicative of the dire situation caused by drought conditions. Photo by Mose Buchele/KUT News

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When Spicewood Beach in Burnet County became the first town to run out of water in the current drought, it raised a lot of questions. How could a town perched on the shores of Lake Travis run dry? And which town could be next?

As KUT’s Mose Buchele reports for StateImpact Texas, the answer to those two questions could be related.

One of the persistent complaints in Spicewood Beach is the way the Lower Colorado River Authority warned people their town’s water system was in trouble.

“What warning? We didn’t get any warning,” said Robert Salinas, laughing.

Salinas is taking a lunch break from a construction job with his friend Martin Peterson. They’re actually on the same road the LCRA now uses to haul water into town in tanker trucks. For Salinas, the three weeks between the time the water authority stopped selling Spicewood Beach’s water and when the well failed doesn’t seem like a warning at all.

Peterson says the agency should have known the well was in trouble just by casting a glance to the water level in Lake Travis right next door. He says well water and lake water – it’s one in the same.

Read the rest of this story at StateImpact Texas.