Clay Sellers: Got questions about the Brazos. No more unknowns. Ever wonder where that water comes from or where it goes? We're Unpacking the Brazos River.
Charlie L Shugart: If you have lived in Texas for more than five minutes, you know two things are always true. It's brutally hot, and we're basically always one long summer away from local water restrictions. Whenever the news starts talking about lake levels receding, the same question always pops up. People look at the Brazos River Authority, or honestly just Texas in general, and ask, why don't we just build another lake? In our heads, it sounds simple. Find a space, dig a hole, wait for rain. But if it was actually that easy, we'd probably have a lake in every community. So, thankfully, we've got some experts who are going to help answer this question for us. I'm Charlie Shugart, and this is Unpacking the Brazos River. Joining me to help answer all of our questions is Jon King, the BRA's chief strategic officer. Jon, since this is your first time on the podcast, tell us a little bit about your history with the organization.
Jon King: Thank you, Charlie. Thank you for having us. We appreciate the time to get to talk about this project. I've been with the River Authority, it will be ten years this year. It's really flown by. I was brought in in 2016 into the operational side of the organization and then have been fortunate enough to move over and work on some new exciting things like what we're going to talk about today. It's been an eye-opening experience coming into the River Authority world. It's just different. I don't think most people appreciate the work that goes on here and the importance of what is going on. Just because you turn on the faucet and the water comes out, you don't think about it anymore.
Charlie L Shugart: Absolutely.
Jon King: But because we're in it day to day, we really get a feel for the purpose and the importance of what we're doing. So, again, thanks for having us.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. Of course. So, we're lucky. Also joining us today is program manager Rachel Lane. So, tell us a little bit about your history with the organization.
And what all do you do?
Rachel Lane: Hi, Charlie. It's good to be here today. I'm fairly new to the Brazos River Authority. I'll have been here a year this March. I joined the authority specifically to work on the project we're talking about today, and it's been a really positive experience.
I've truly enjoyed working here and being part of this team. My background is in environmental permitting for mining operations, including lignite coal and precious metals like silver and gold. That was in Nevada.
Charlie L Shugart: Nice.
Rachel Lane: And often I've worked in challenging areas that are environmentally sensitive and historically complex. And so those projects that I've worked on being very complex are similar to the construction of a reservoir. We're just not going to take anything out of the ground. But I'm excited to be able to bring that history and that experience to this effort.
Charlie L Shugart: Cool. Alright. Well, let's kind of jump into this a little bit before we maybe answer the question specifically, “Why don't we just build another lake?” Let's start with some basics. How many lakes does the BRA own now?
Jon King: The BRA has constructed and owns three reservoirs. We've got Possum Kingdom, up located in Palo Pinto County, that was completed sometime in the 1940s. We have Lake Granbury, mainly in Parker and Hood County, built in the 1960s. And then our newest reservoir, built in the 1970s, is Lake Limestone located in Limestone County, I believe also in Robertson and Leon County. So, it's been a while since we've built one. Things have certainly changed since the 1970s. So, we've got a lot to do. We're learning a lot. We have some good examples to go by, but it's a little different world than it was back then.
Charlie L Shugart: So, you mentioned that Lake Limestone was built in the late 1970s. It's been almost fifty years. Is a fourth BRA reservoir on the horizon?
Jon King: Absolutely. We are certainly in the stages of getting that project developed. It's in the lower part of our basin, close to the city of Sealy. It's really between Sealy and Wallace, Texas.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay.
Jon King: If you know where that's at, south of I-10, I believe. Kind of southwest of Houston. So, it’s further down in the basin. There are some certain strategic advantages to having it located down there that we can talk about later, but it will be a great resource for us once we get it completed.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. Absolutely.
Rachel Lane: We do have a name for the proposed reservoir. It's Allens Creek Reservoir. That name was adopted by the company that owned the property before us, Houston Lighting and Power Company back in the 1970s. They were planning to build a nuclear power plant, and they needed a reservoir in that location for cooling water for the plant. That project never happened but we adopted the name and kind of cool to know that Allens’ family, that Allens Creek is named after, they were members of Stephen F. Austin's Old 300 colonists. So, there's a history in the area down in Southern Austin County and so we're reflecting that history with the name.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Cool.
Jon King: And I want to throw this out too, and a lot of people don't know this, but actually some iteration of Allens Creek, the reservoir has been on the books since the 1950s. And that period, the BRA had what I believe was called the six-dam plan, where they intended to build multiple new reservoirs up and down the river, and Allens Creek was going to be in their phase two of that plan and hasn't come to fruition yet. But it is an interesting tidbit that’s been around so long.
Charlie L Shugart: While it may be new to some of our listeners, it's not something that's new to the organization.
Jon King: Right.
Charlie L Shugart: Something that's kind of been on the books and then on the horizon for a minute.
Rachel Lane: Yeah. It's exciting to get to work on this project because it does have such a history, and the people in that area, some of them have grown up with this idea that there's going to be a reservoir out there. When I meet people who have lived there for a long time, they say, what are you doing here? And I say, well, you know, I'm working for the Brazos River Authority, we're getting started on this project, and they're relieved and excited to hear that something is happening. You know, I think there's a lot of public interest, and really positive interest in the project. We do, well for years, the Brazos River Authority has sponsored some events down in Wallace, including their Independence Day event, and so they know some of the faces, you know, some of the longtime employees of the Brazos River Authority, and so it's really neat to finally be able to deliver on that project.
Charlie L Shugart: Why do you think it's important that we participate in some of those local events?
Rachel Lane: Well, it's helpful to me to get to know some of the local people, for them to be able to have a contact if they do have any concerns or issues. And also, to hear their input because we're still in the very early stages of even envisioning what this project is actually going to look like in the area. So, it's really important, I think, to instead of just someone picking up the phone and calling a number in a book or on a website, to be able to put a face to a name and get to hear their concerns and ideas firsthand. Even members of TxDOT, I mean, all kinds of people will stop us while we're out there to say, what are y'all doing? What's going on behind those fences? So, I really enjoy getting to know the people down there, and they've been great to work with.
Jon King: And we really want to be a good neighbor. If we're going to be in the community, we want to be engaged and, you know, be seen as a quality neighbor, someone that you would like to have adjacent to, and that's something we do at all of our other reservoirs, and this project site will be no different.
Charlie L Shugart: Awesome. That's very cool. So, Possum Kingdom Lake and Lake Granbury sit on the Brazos River itself and damming up the river, capturing water from upstream. Is Allens Creek Reservoir going to do the same thing?
Rachel Lane: Our plan for this project is not to put another dam across the Brazos River. Allens Creek Reservoir will be filled and refilled by an intake structure that's near the river. At certain times when there's more than enough water flowing downstream for environmental needs, then we'll turn on pumps in the intake structure and that's what will fill the reservoir. So that's why we call it pumped storage reservoir.
Jon King: So basically, Charlie, what'll happen is when there's enough flow, as Rachel just mentioned, we'll pump it and fill it, and we'll store it there for a time when the Lower Basin customers might need additional water. And this will be, in simple terms, it'll be another bucket that we can store water into, but it will not be located on channel of the river. Again, it'll be pumped over. Physically moved.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay. Pump storage. Moving it, from one location to another. I like it. Why this specific patch of dirt? Brazos River Basin is huge. What is it about this location that made us go, yeah. This is it. Let's build here.
Jon King: As we talked about already, this project has a long history starting way back in the 1950s. And though it may have changed in nature a few times, it's always had the potential to really benefit the people who live in our basin. Now fast forward to 2022 when the BRA became the sole owner of the project, we really took control of our ability to make this project a reality. One of the unique aspects about this site is it's located deep in our lower basin where it could provide for some strategic benefits to the way we manage our water supply system. Because when we're managing a water supply system like ours, it's good to have flexibility. Meaning flexibility of where to store water, where to release it from. This new reservoir could really help improve the efficiency of how we operate our overall water supply system.
Rachel Lane: Jon, do you have that number about how much water we release to the Gulf of Mexico. I think that's a cool fact.
Jon King: Yes. In our 2024 reservoir accounting summary, it showed a total of over 3,000,000-acre feet in flood releases from our system of reservoirs. Now, obviously, not all of that could be captured, but that's still a lot of water.
Rachel Lane: You know, that's another thing that I hear people say from time to time is, you know, why don't we just collect more water? Why don't we have more water? Well, it's kind of hard if you don't have a storage facility that's open like this. We're limited on how much water we can store in any of the reservoirs in Texas because there needs to be room for flooding, and so those are operated differently, and since this one will just be for water storage, then you know sometimes we'll pump it almost dry and then we'll add more water in when the water is available, and we won't have that need for keeping a flood pool for flood storage, or prevention, flood prevention downstream because as we're designing it, we'll look at things like how is this going to impact flooding in the area? Does it have an impact on flooding in the area? All of that's part of our work, our design work early on in the project.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. And when you're looking at the Brazos River itself, we have Possum Kingdom, Lake Granbury, and Lake Whitney, which is owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers. But after Lake Whitney, there isn't another reservoir on the Brazos River. So, everything kind of released from that area and captured from rain or runoff or anything really does, if not taken up by plant uptake or evaporation or people taking water from the side really does just continue to flow down to the Gulf.
Jon King: I'm glad you mentioned evaporation because, again, evaporation is another thing when you're talking about managing water, and you've releasing from the upper end of our basin and has the all the travel time down to the lower end. Evaporation can play a part in that as well. So having, again, a local source is just a significant benefit to us there.
Charlie L Shugart: Interesting fact about evaporation that I didn't know until I started, you can actually measure evaporation, and that's something that our hydrologists and lake offices do. And so, the reservoir accounting summary that Jon mentioned earlier that we do every year, lists how much evaporation is lost throughout the system. And something that I found just really, I feel like, shocking whenever it was that I started, evaporation often consumes twice as much water as the total amount used by cities, industry, agriculture, and mining from the BRA system of water to water reservoirs, and that was just I mean, something that always just surprised me at the impact that that has on our lake levels.
Jon King: Yeah. When I first got here, somebody said that evaporation was our biggest customer, and I was like, what do you mean? And then they explained the impact that it has on water supply, and it's just the average person, again, just doesn't have any grasp of how much water that involves. It's a lot of households that could be served.
Charlie L Shugart: So, for Allens Creek Reservoir, the property that we have down in that area, is there anything on it now?
Rachel Lane: Currently, we have it leased, and have for many years, leased for agricultural use. So mostly right now it's corn and hay and some cows. Those tenants are local, and they kind of help us watch, you know, keep an eye on the property. They've helped me get to know the area better, and all of that helps. It'll help when we go into construction because we'll understand what flooding looks like there, what rain events do there.
Charlie L Shugart: They probably have a very unique perspective and understanding of that property if they're out there
Rachel Lane: Yes.
Charlie L Shugart: Working it. Yeah.
Rachel Lane: Absolutely.
Charlie L Shugart: Cool. Interesting. So, before we get into the weeds too much about the project, why are we doing this? Why do we need another reservoir?
Jon King: Well, we can all see the growth that continues in Texas, and with this growth comes an increase in demand for water. You really can't have one without the other. And if you look at the latest regional water plan, our basin alone is projected to nearly double in size by 2080. That will put us around 10,000,000 residents by that time.
Charlie L Shugart: That's incredible.
Jon King: And that's more than a few new faces around town. The big takeaway here is that water doesn't magically show up just because people move here. It takes being intentional today in preparation for tomorrow. We're already working under conditions where we don't have any extra water to sell right now. So, it's part of helping the situation and building the supply to help meet the need that's coming because, as we all know, as we look out the door, you know, even Waco, it's changing. There are rooftops where there wasn't and industries where there weren't before. And it's like that all the way through the basin. So, we're seeing that it isn't just isolated events.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. So, with a project like this, where do you even start? I'm assuming you don't just rent a bulldozer and start digging?
Rachel Lane: No. Not at all. Reservoir projects have unique considerations and characteristics that require years of work to support the permitting and design efforts ahead of construction. It's estimated that the total time that we will spend in planning, permitting, and implementation of the project is going to take many years. Other recent reservoir projects in Texas have taken ten to twenty years. Of course, all of the permitting and planning is site-specific, so we can't just take a blueprint from another reservoir and put it on this property.
Charlie L Shugart: Just kind of starting from scratch for the area.
Rachel Lane: Yes. Most of that time will be spent in permitting and design. And some of the early studies that will help us define where the constraints are for this particular piece of property. We can't start construction until we have all the permits in place, and those can come from multiple different entities as well. So, we'll coordinate all of those together, and then eventually we will get a bulldozer. It's a ways off.
Jon King: For me, this is actually the fun part of the whole process. I know a lot of people think the exciting part is when big equipment shows up and dirt starts moving, but this is where the real shaping happens. It's kind of like planning for a road trip. Before you ever get in a car, you're deciding which route makes the most sense. Where the potential trouble spots are, and what risk you want to avoid. That planning is what determines whether the trip goes smoothly or turns into a disaster. It's really the same here. And like Rachel mentioned, there's no off the shelf blueprint for projects like these. Every site is different and has its own unique quirks, challenges, and opportunities that directly influence what it ultimately looks like. That's why the work we're doing now is so important. These early decisions, evaluating the information, understanding risks, and balancing all the different project drivers, are what ultimately will shape what this project becomes.
Charlie L Shugart: Sure.
Jon King: The two reservoirs, one built and one under construction, you know, here recently, they took many years to get done too. They all started at different points, though. One of the big advantageous things that we have is that we have a site that we own. We have the project site for most of what will need to happen. And we also have a water right permit. That's another important piece of this puzzle. So having those two, that puts us a little bit ahead of where others have started, but we've still got a ways to go through the other permitting needs.
Charlie L Shugart: And if any of our listeners want more details on what exactly a water right is, episode four of the podcast. We've got a duo who sit down and, like, really break it down to help kind of explain the history of it and what all goes into a water permit. So, where are we in the process right now? If I'm driving past the site, am I going to see BRA trucks and crews or hard hats, or is most of the work in the office?
Rachel Lane: We do have crews on-site. We have work going on on-site. Have had for the last year. Even down on the river, we're doing studies throughout that segment of the Brazos River. Just to give you a frame of reference, the property itself is two miles across, and it's five miles north to south, so it's a big property. When we have crews working out there you might not see them because once they leave the road, there are not roads going through the property. You might not be able to see the work that we're doing at the project sites, a lot of it is field crews on the ground looking at environmental things, archaeologists looking at cultural things, and so there hasn't been a lot of big equipment out there. We did do a drilling program where they looked at the geotechnical aspects of the foundation materials that are under, you know, essentially what will be underneath the reservoir to see how strong it is, to see what kind of pressure it can withstand. And so, we did have, I think, up to five drills at one time this past summer doing that work. We also have people working in labs, following up with testing from that. We have employees who are out on the property regularly. We've had environmental crews for years going down there and testing the water along the Allens Creek itself, the creek itself. So, locals may see our trucks a little bit more often. I'm told, and I've had this experience where if I pull up to a gas station, people are looking at the placard to see who we are because we have the Texas on the side. And then, you know, they'll see us in some of the local restaurants.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah
Rachel Lane: We love some of that down there. Hopefully, by the end of this year, we'll have an office out at the site.
Charlie L Shugart: Oh, that's exciting.
Rachel Lane: Now that we have a dedicated project office in plans and a full-time staff now stationed on the site, the Allens Creek Reservoir project has reached an important milestone. In 2025, we completed our early work phase. This initial tranche of work allowed the project team to become fully reacquainted with the site and align our past knowledge with today's regulatory environment. While the site, it has been studied before, environmental and cultural survey requirements have evolved over time. So as part of this early work phase, the team completed updated environmental and cultural resource investigations, and we designed those to meet the current regulations and inform us about those details about the site.
Charlie L Shugart: That's interesting that that's part of the process.
Rachel Lane: So, we're building on the foundation of what's been done in the past, and then we're also advancing our knowledge of the site with technical studies- including soil and geotechnical investigations and other site-specific assessments that will support future permitting. All of that effort reduces uncertainty, it identifies potential constraints early, and will provide the data needed for environmental analyses, impact evaluations, permit documentation, everything that we're going to need to be able to move this project into construction. So looking ahead, we'll do more extensive studies. We'll begin those to support both permitting and our conceptual design, which is the fun part that Jon was talking about earlier, where we really get to brainstorm all of the different potential outcomes of this project. The geotechnical work, in particular, helps us determine how well the site can hold water. So essentially, we're ensuring that the reservoir will function as intended, and it identifies suitable material sources on-site for the construction of the dam.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay.
Rachel Lane: So, I mentioned earlier that we weren't going to have a dam across the Brazos River, but we do know that we'll have to stop the water and hold it in this area, and we'll need to have a borrow area for that. Altogether, this early investment in data collection and analysis positions the project for an efficient permitting process and represents a meaningful step forward for a project of this scale and complexity.
Charlie L Shugart: Ok
Jon King: To build on what Rachel said, with projects like these, I just want to stress. It's crucial to have a firm baseline of information to start from. You need to know what you're working with before you can make any smart decisions. We do have some useful historical information on the site. When you couple that with the additional information we're getting now, it really does give us that firm baseline that we need. All of the information feeds directly into how we evaluate the project specifics. As Rachel mentioned, the design options, the constraints, the tradeoffs. It's not guesswork. It's informed decision-making. Everything that we're doing and all that we've done up to this point is helping define our permitting path for the project. And getting that path right depends on having this good information from the start. That's what really sets the foundation for a smoother process and a successful project overall.
Rachel Lane: And the BRA has some top-rate experts within the building. We have some consultants that are partnering with us who are the best in their field, but we don't do, we don't make all of these decisions on our own. There's public involvement, there are other public entities that will be involved. As we get our idea for what we're wanting to build together, then they will be part of the process, they'll have input. And if we do discover anything that constrains, you know, a constraint that we can't work around, then we work with those other specialized entities in Texas or federal, in order to handle those things, mitigate those things that we've identified in the appropriate way. That's what permitting is.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay. Yeah. Sounds like you have to be really flexible at this stage and kind of go in the direction that …
Jon King: Absolutely.
Charlie L Shugart: … you know, directed, and as you move forward. Okay. Interesting. Once the thing is finally full, how much water are we talking about?
Jon King: So, our water right permit allows us to impound around 145,000-acre feet. And it may have been explained on the podcast before, but you can think about an acre-foot as basically a football field one foot deep of water. So, 145,000 of those. Out of that impoundment water, we're authorized to get an annual yield of around 100,000-acre feet. So, a significant water supply source. If you were to convert that over to how many families that could serve, that's around 400,000 families.
Charlie L Shugart: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Jon King: So, with the potential to provide close to an additional 100,000-acre feet per year, this is an important project. There's a lot of talk in the industry right now about options for potential new water supply projects. And guess what? By and large, they're all really expensive. A lot of those options probably aren't feasible right now, at least not without some serious hurdles. But this project, we really feel like it's different. We're confident it's doable, and we're genuinely excited to see it moving forward.
Charlie L Shugart: Well, speaking of cost, I mean, this sounds like it could be expensive. How are we funding this?
Jon King: Well, reservoirs are expensive projects. As you can imagine, something that's on the timeline that we're on with the amount of moving parts, it's going to take resources. We're going to explore all funding resources that are available to us. The water development board has some funding low interest loan resources that we'd like to take advantage of. For other things, we may have to look at other avenues. But as far as cost, it's really hard to tell.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay.
Jon King: And I say that based on everything that we've already talked about. Until you know what you're building and you're within enough certainty to be able to go out and get opinions of probable cost, it's a little premature to talk about that. We know it's going to be expensive. Like we talked about before, the most recent reservoir we built was in the 1970s. We know it's going to be a lot more than that. But as far as getting firm numbers, that's also where we're at in the process over the next couple of years. We'll be able to start zeroing in on, you know, what infrastructure needs to be developed, what kind of that looks like, and that'll help inform us what our cost projections look like. So that's, that's one of those we'll just throw out. More to come.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. Okay.
Jon King: Well, Charlie, do we have the opportunity to ask you questions? Because I feel like it wouldn't be a good one if we didn't have a chance to do that.
Charlie L Shugart: I mean, yeah. Go right ahead.
Jon King: Okay. I'm going to test your knowledge here. Do you know what is the first recorded dam built in history? When was it built and where?
Charlie L Shugart: Oh, no. I don't know that. I'm hoping you have the answer and weren’t banking on the fact I might know it.
Jon King: I do. I was just going to let you go. Look, whatever you said, I probably wasn't going to argue with, but I did find something that was interesting. So, it says it's called the Jawa Dam, and it was built in what's in what's in modern day Jordan, and it was around 3,000 BC.
Charlie L Shugart: Wow.
Jon King: So, people have been damming water and building conveyance for a long time, and it's all about supporting civilization. If you look through history where civilizations have, you know, really flourished and sprung up, it's been around rivers because of that supply that really is a lifeblood of civilization. So interesting tidbit for you.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. No. I love it. Well, I mean, we covered a lot of details and ground. What did we leave out? Was there anything else that you want to make sure people listening walk away with that they know?
Jon King: Right now, there's a lot of positive momentum with the project, and we're determined to keep it moving forward. Things are happening, and it's exciting to see it all come together. For me, this project is easy to get behind. It's full of purpose. It will benefit our basin for generations to come. There's just a lot of upside to it. It's really one of those projects you can look back over your career and really be proud of. We're doing something that is needed and good. It's really a worthy venture. Our team is proud of the work we're doing, and we're committed to getting the job done. We hope you'll have us back down the road to be able to share updates on our progress.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. No. That'd be great.
Rachel Lane: And also, we are keeping updates available for the public on our website, and maybe you have this already linked on there, but it's brazos.org/allenscreek, and we will be putting out more information as we gather it there. But, yeah, thank you for having us. We'll talk about this all day long.
Charlie L Shugart: No. I appreciate you guys coming on and sharing the details. Well, huge thanks to Jon King and Rachel Lane for coming on. I really appreciate it.
Again, if you have listened to this and you've got questions, feel free to reach out. Our email is information@Brazos.org.
Or as Rachel said, we have information at Brazos.org/AllensCreek, and that's a l l e n s c r e e k.
Okay. Well, thanks for unpacking the Brazos River with us. Catch you next time.