Overlapping voices saying, “Quit selling our water,” repeatedly.
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: Quit selling all our water. This has been a recent greatest hit. It's thriving in our inbox and sometimes in all caps on our Facebook page.
People see the lake level dropping, and they've got thoughts. Lots of thoughts. A teacher once told me that if one person asked a question, 10 more are thinking it. So this is for the vocal as well as the silent 10.
Yes. The lake level is dropping. Yes. Some folks are stressed. And if you've been following us for a bit, you've probably seen us talk about this before. But you're here, I'm here, the lake is still here, so let's just do the thing.
I'm Charlie Shugart, and this is Unpacking the Brazos River. Joining me today is two men who eat and breathe this information, BRA's Deputy General Manager, Matt Phillips, and Aaron Abel, BRA's Water Services Manager. Welcome back, you guys.
Aaron Abel: Good to be back.
Matt Phillips: Thanks for having us.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. No. I appreciate it. Okay. So let me set the scene. We own three reservoirs, which by now our podcast veterans know as Lakes Possum Kingdom and Granbury on the Brazos River and Lake Limestone, which is on the Upper Navasota River. And for decades, people have lived on them, weekened on them, caught fish from them, and they've made memories on them. These lakes are a part of a lot of people's identity. So, when the water level drops, people notice, and they care, and sometimes they panic. So, we start hearing this sentiment that the lake level is dropping because the BRA is selling more water. So, when you hear that, when you hear people say, “Quit selling more water,” how do you respond? What's the actual idea behind that sentiment?
Matt Phillips: Sometimes that question comes from a little bit of misunderstanding of a couple of things. One is the purpose of the reservoirs and how they function and what they're supposed to do. And very simply, they're supposed to catch and hold water whenever we have good inflows during wet times so that when it stops raining and Mother Nature turns the spigot off, so to speak, we have a storage of water to then use. And so, when folks are seeing lower lake levels, it's not that the BRA is selling more water. What they're seeing is during normal to wet times, water is being used out of the reservoir every day and inflow is replacing it, and so you can barely notice a difference.
But when we get into dry times like we are now, you notice the usage. You notice water being used out of the reservoir, again performing the function that it's supposed to be there for.
Aaron Abel: Yeah. Thanks for asking this question first and foremost, and you know this question has been asked to us for decades. To answer the question, you have to talk about ownership. Who owns the water? Surface water in Texas is owned by the state, and it's held in trust for the citizens of the state.
And the state grants the right to use that water to different entities through water rights. So, you know, such as farmers, ranchers, cities, public entities like the Brazos River Authority, and other folks. So technically, the water that is stored in the reservoirs or the water that is flowing down the river, you know, when you cross a bridge and you see water flowing down the Brazos, that really is owned by the state of Texas for all the citizens. You have to get a water right permit to actually use that water, and that permitting process is associated with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. That's the state agency that issues the water rights and they also have other duties like managing the water rights and allocating the water rights like the Brazos Watermaster.
So, we hold various water rights to store the water in our three reservoirs and eight other U.S. Army Corps of Engineer reservoirs. We contract it out to folks, but that water still belongs to the state. Those contracts are issued to many different types of entities, like agricultural, steam electric power generators, municipalities, mining, and so on and so forth.
Matt Phillips: I think another thing that's commonly misunderstood is how we contract for water. You know, we don't sell water on a spot market basis when it rains, and the lakes are full. We're not holding up a sign saying, “We've got water, come get it.” You know, our water is sold under long-term contracts, you know, most of which go out 30 to 35 years, and most of that water has been under contract for many years.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. It's not something that's being sold on a day-to-day basis.
Matt Phillips: Correct.
Charlie L. Shugart: So basically, the TCEQ acts like a ref, making sure everyone plays by the rules while the state owns the actual water. So, you mentioned a little bit about who is using the water from the reservoirs. Can you talk about how much one person can use from the reservoir? Can they use however they want if they're one of our customers? What does that look like?
Aaron Abel: The contracts that we enter into to the different entities, they have a couple of different stipulations and Matt mentioned the term, but there's also an annual volume amount that can be used in that year. And so that's another constraint. The other thing is obviously they have to report water use to us. We obviously monitor that water use to ensure that the contract holder doesn't go above their contracted amount. But they also report the water use to us and then we have to report it to the Brazos Watermaster. As far as … what else do we need to say about contracts?
Charlie L Shugart: What does that reporting process look like? Like is it, you know, once a month do they reach out and tell us how much water they're using?
Aaron Abel: It depends if the customer is a lakeside customer. So, I guess first off, you know, how water is used under the BRA contracts, you can have lakeside customers, they have their own infrastructure. You can think of it as a straw and they divert the water directly out of the reservoirs and treat it and use it. Those lakeside customers have to report daily water use every month, and so they have to get that water use data to us by the tenth of the following month, and that's obviously incorporated within our reporting to the Watermaster and our accounting plans, etc. Now the downstream users, so that's the other, I guess you will, if you will, the contract holders that are downstream. So, there's entities that have their intakes that are along the river primarily in the Lower Basin but they're kind of everywhere. They have the ability to divert water directly out of the river or the tributaries, and we release that water to them. Those customers have to report to us, essentially almost daily. They have to report essentially an estimated water use for the next week and then they have to produce the actual water use on daily basis for the previous week.
Charlie L Shugart: Why do they have to report more often than lakeside users?
Aaron Abel: There are other water rights that are diverting directly out of the river, and that's one of the things that the Watermaster has to evaluate. All the water rights, there's about 2,000 water rights from Possum Kingdom all the way down to Freeport to the coast. Nancy Ragland is the Watermaster and there's deputies that she has that essentially check the diversions. They have to know how much is coming out of the reservoirs as far as released water, because they protect the water that's released that our customers need to use. But they also protect other water right holders that are maybe senior and I know I think we had another podcast, maybe it's coming up or maybe it's already happened that we talked about priority dates and so on and so forth. It's a more day-to-day management for those downstream users and customers of ours along with other water rights that are throughout the basin.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah, so out of the roughly 2,000 water rights in the Brazos River Basin, how many do we have?
Aaron Abel: We have 16 water rights.
Charlie L Shugart: Why does water use suddenly feel like way more obvious during the summer, like when the lake starts getting low?
Matt Phillips: I think it goes back to the fact that during normal to wet times, you have good inflows. The river's flowing into the reservoir, and that water usage is being replaced by inflow. And when that slows down, you start to see the effects of water usage and also evaporation because it's hotter. And evaporation is probably the largest water user that we have in our reservoirs. So, I just think it's a matter of the conditions that you're in whenever water is being used, and you're seeing an impact on the lake level.
Charlie L Shugart: Right. Yeah. Evaporation, being our biggest water user, always feels like a personal attack from the sun. Heat makes everything dramatic. Your hair, your mood, definitely evaporation.
Aaron Abel: It's really the amount of water that is flowing into the reservoir versus how much is coming out either direct water use or evaporation releases. You know, when it could be a wet winter, wet spring, we have abundant rainfall, and there's a lot of water. Sometimes we have hundreds of thousands of acre-feet that flow through our reservoirs, that come into our reservoirs, and we have to release some of that because we can't capture it all. And so, the water use is really, really low.
Charlie L Shugart: And for those who haven't heard us say this before, an acre-foot, just picture like a football field covered in a foot of water, that's roughly an acre-foot.
Aaron Abel: But we can have, in some years, we can have millions of acre-feet that flow through these reservoirs and end up in the Gulf.
Charlie L Shugart: Right. Yeah. And for those listeners who aren't as familiar, the reason we can have millions of acre-feet flow through these reservoirs and end up in the Gulf is because our water supply reservoirs are not flood control reservoirs. They are purely for water supply, and what that means is that once the lakes get full, any additional inflows have to be passed downstream to protect the structural integrity of the dam. Basically, what comes in must go out when the lakes are full. The BRA is, however, working to remedy some of that as we work to build a new reservoir called Allens Creek.
This proposed pump storage water supply reservoir is near the city of Wallace. It'll be constructed just off the Brazos River near Allens Creek, and it will then be filled and refilled by pumps and an intake structure near the river. This is a huge benefit because there are only three reservoirs in the BRA's Water Supply System on the Brazos River itself. If you're working your way south, it's Possum Kingdom Lake, Lake Granbury, and then Whitney Lake, which is owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers. This reservoir will capture water that would otherwise be lost and, in doing so, will enhance the water supply options for the entire basin. We spent all of Episode 12 on this project, but we've all slept since then. So, thank you for letting me recap. Okay. So, keep going.
Aaron Abel: That percentage of how much is coming into the reservoir, obviously, in July and August when we hit these multiple 100-degree days, we get to a point where the water that's coming in the reservoirs is not much.
Charlie L. Shugart: Right.
Aaron Abel: Right. And sometimes it's zero.
Charlie L Shugart: Which I think can be a crazy scary thing.
Aaron Abel: And so, all the water use and evaporation, that water has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the storage.
Charlie L Shugart: And so, you have lake level declines.
Matt Phillips: Yeah. I mean, imagine if we didn't have the reservoirs and we were dependent on river flow alone. If we weren't able to store the water. There are times where rivers go completely dry, you know, during really bad droughts. And if that's what you're dependent on for your supply, in that scenario, you're in trouble.
Charlie L Shugart: Right.
Aaron Abel: It's kind of like, I don't know, a good analogy, I don't know if it's a good analogy or not but …
Charlie L Shugart: I have complete confidence it's going to be great.
Aaron Abel: You can think of a system of reservoirs almost like a system of batteries.
Matt Phillips: Mhmm.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay. Explain that to me.
Aaron Abel: As Matt mentioned, we store water during wet times so we can have it available during dry times. Think of a rechargeable battery. You know, it's recharged by wind or whatever. If the energy is there, you want to store it and you store that energy for use during a time where you may not have it.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah, that's a good analogy.
Aaron Abel: Yeah, there are probably other analogies out there.
Matt Phillips: No, but that's a good one. Yeah, I think another thing that's always important to point out in terms of where we are today, you know, you mentioned the question going almost back to the original question, selling more water. You know, the BRA hasn't really been in a position to contract for more water for a number of years.
Charlie L Shugart: Why is that?
Matt Phillips: We're fully contracted out for the most part, so we don't have a supply right now to contract for a large-scale, long-term usage. Now that scares people when you say that.
Charlie L Shugart: Sure.
Matt Phillips: Not all of that water is being used. So, of the roughly 750,000-acre feet of water we have under contract, last year I think it was about 328,000 actually got used, so less than half. So, there's room for growth within our current supply. That gap's going to close, and that's why we've got to develop new supplies, and that's one of the main things we're focused on now. But that really is kind of our answer to folks, to users, if they were to come in today, and probably really for the last four or five years. “Hey. I would like a 10,000-acre-foot contract.” We have to tell them, “Yeah, well, we don't have that right now. You're going to have to wait until we develop our next supply.”
Charlie L Shugart: Right. For context, one acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.
Matt Phillips: And this is typically with municipalities, but industries do it as well. You know, they'll contract for water in excess of what they need now, understanding that they're going to grow into it. Cities are probably the best example of that. So having that water under contract allows them to do things like build treatment infrastructure and things like that. They have to be able to show, especially if they're going to issue bonds or anything like that to build that type of infrastructure, they have to be able to show that they have the supply of water under contract to be able to access it to then put through all of those treatment plants and things like that that they're going to build.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay, yeah. So, anyone that approached us right now wanting to buy long term water, just the answer is no until we have more water supply added.
Matt Phillips: Correct. That’s correct. Which we're working on. We've got a number of things going on to try to do that, but developing water is not a fast process. Developing water takes time.
Charlie L Shugart: So, specifics about our lakes, what are they looking like? I mean, how much are they dropping right now?
Aaron Abel: It varies from reservoir to reservoir. Typically, in the heat of summer or early summer, we got a lot of rain this spring and early summer, we had a decent amount of rain.
Charlie L. Shugart: Yeah.
Aaron Abel: The lakes were pretty full, minus PK and Proctor, those were the two that weren't full at the end of all the rainy period, essentially. But obviously summer's here; it's Texas, and Texas did not disappoint.
Charlie L Shugart: Gross hot.
Aaron Abel: Yeah, 106, 107, whatever. But right now, I mean, the lakes can drop anywhere from a half an inch to almost two-thirds of an inch per day.
Charlie L Shugart: And so, is that water use and evaporation?
Aaron Abel: It's water use and evaporation and releases. We do have some releases that are ongoing at our three reservoirs, and we have downstream water supply. We talk a little bit about our customers downstream. We have environmental flows that we really, we have special conditions within our water rights that require us to release water. You know, a combination of those. You have water use, you have evaporation …
Charlie L Shugart: Downstream releases.
Aaron Abel: … downstream releases.
Charlie L. Shugart: For either customers or the environment.
Aaron Abel: So that equation of there's not much coming in, but there's more coming out now.
Charlie L Shugart: So, it's going to drop?
Aaron Abel: It's going to drop.
Charlie L Shugart: Right. Okay. So, I have a lot of people who are concerned seeing it. With the lake levels where they are now, I mean, is that anywhere near the lowest they've ever been?
Aaron Abel: No.
Matt Phillips: No.
Aaron Abel: Not anywhere near.
Charlie L Shugart: Talk to me about that.
Aaron Abel: We've had a significant drought period, a couple of drought periods in the last 15 years. 2011 through 2015, that was the most significant one-year drought over the whole state of Texas in recorded history dating back to the late 1800s. So many of our historic low lake level records, if you will, occurred in 2011 through 2015. But the more recent drought that started in the latter part of 2021 and ended essentially in 2024, we had some other low lake levels.
Charlie L Shugart: Right.
Aaron Abel: Primarily in the Little River system. But for instance, I guess Granbury, I think it was in the 2012- 2013 time period, you know, the lake level got around 13 to 14 feet low.
Charlie L. Shugart: Wow.
Aaron Abel: Around there. And I think right now we're about 1.6, 1.5 feet low, so …
Charlie L Shugart: We're pretty far off.
Aaron Abel: We’re pretty far off.
Matt Phillips: We've seen worse.
Aaron Abel: We've seen worse, we've seen worse, that's the short answer.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah, and by worse, I mean we're talking about when people look at the reservoirs and they don't look great because they're low, but they're just doing what they're supposed to be doing, it's just providing the water that everybody needs it.
Matt Phillips: And worse also by, in terms of time, you know, extended droughts that last multiple years as opposed to kind of flash one or two years where it's not for a long period of time. But, I mean, I think the other important thing to remember is we plan, and we contract based on droughts. We're only going to contract for an amount of water that we could reliably supply through repeats of the worst droughts that we've seen. So, I think our total storage is, what, somewhere around …
Aaron Abel: At 1,900,000 acre-feet.
Matt Phillips: Right. And we contract for 750,000 of that. So, yeah. I mean, we plan for that.
Charlie L Shugart: Yeah. So, is there any way, you know, when the lake starts getting low that we can just hit pause until it refills?
Matt Phillips: In terms of water usage?
Charlie L. Shugart: Yeah.
Matt Phillips: No. Because folks still need water coming out of their taps, electricity still has to be generated. You know, water will still need to be used, but we have processes in place where when we get to certain levels of drought, and I'll let Aaron explain our Drought Contingency Plan and how that functions, but where we go into reductions in water use to extend the supply until the drought breaks, which that's the thing about droughts, you can see when they start, you never know when they're going to end.
Charlie L. Shugart: Right.
Aaron Abel: Yeah, so as a wholesale water provider and a water right holder, BRA is required to maintain what's called a Drought Contingency Plan, and that is through the TCEQ rules and Texas Administrative Code. As Matt alluded to, a Drought Contingency Plan is a combination of strategies that a water supplier or a city or whoever develops to implement in a period of temporary shortage or temporary lack of supply. We don't really lack the supply, or the ultimate goal is to extend what we have in storage for as long as possible, waiting for it to rain again.
Charlie L Shugart: Right.
Aaron Abel: You know, we implemented in 2011 through 2015, and you know, 2021 through 2024 we implemented our Drought Contingency Plan, and were requiring our customers to reduce their water use, and every bit of water that is conserved can stay in the reservoirs, and that extends that time before we get to even more critical periods. So, the ultimate goal is to not have any water, obviously. I mean, and we're going to make sure that that doesn't happen, and the Drought Contingency Plan is one tool.
Charlie L Shugart: Drop contingency is like the water world version of switching to low power mode on your phone to make the battery last. And our Drought Contingency Plan is on our website if anyone out there enjoys a little light reading.
Matt Phillips: Yeah. And I think on that note, in terms of, you know, we're going to reach out to our customers when we hit certain stages of our Drought Contingency Plan, and there's four stages, and we can go into what all that means if we have to. But, you know, the ultimate goal is to extend the supply. We're going to ask our customers to reduce their usage. How each individual customer, each individual city, does that really is up to them. We don't tell them how they have to do that. Every city's got their own ways of doing it, whether it's one day a week watering or no watering, or if they, you know, cut back on car wash usage and things like that, golf course watering, all that kind of stuff. They all have their own individual programs in terms of how they reduce their usage. We, in those instances, are really just looking for the result, which is the reduction in usage. How they do it is up to them.
Charlie L Shugart: I know we get frustrated comments from people sometimes who feel like the little conservation efforts that they make around their house or their property doesn't make a big difference. But when we are talking about all of our customers and the people who they're serving, just that added together is what makes that big impact.
Matt Phillips: Yes. If enough people do it and enough businesses do it and enough industries do it, then it absolutely makes a difference.
Charlie L Shugart: You talked about evaporation being big. Do you have any numbers of what that impact looks like?
Aaron Abel: Yeah, obviously in the winter we don't see much evaporation at all. There's very little sunlight, cold temperatures, not much at all. As we creep up to that summer solstice, late June, and then we get into July and August, we have long days. In Texas, it's typically hot, low relative humidity, wind, all that increases evaporation. So, like right now, we can have evaporative rates anywhere from 1/3 to a half an inch per day on the reservoirs. And that can, from a water quantity standpoint, just think about Possum Kingdom. The surface area of Possum Kingdom is around, you know, 12,000 to 14,000 acres at full. When you have a half an inch of evaporation off of 12,000 to 14,000 acres, that's hundreds of cubic feet per second just going straight into the atmosphere.
Charlie L. Shugart: Yeah.
Aaron Abel: We really can't do anything about that. But that's something that we have to quantify and we do quantify that and part of the mass balance and all the data that we look at which is all fine and dandy but you know we need to understand where the water is going and that's part of it.
Charlie L Shugart: How do you measure evaporation?
Aaron Abel: That's a very good question. That's another podcast out there.
Charlie L. Shugart: Okay. I mean sure…
Matt Phillips: It could be its own subject.
Aaron Abel: It could be, and there's a lot of research into evaporation right now as well.
Charlie L Shugart: How about high level?
Aaron Abel: Yeah, so high level right now we have what's called a pan, it's essentially a container that's at each of our reservoirs, and we measure how much evaporation comes out of that pan every day, and then there's a correction that is applied because obviously a pan isn’t a reservoir, right? So, we correct that pan evaporation, and then it's an estimated quantity. Evaporation is an estimation, so that's essentially how we do it, more or less.
Charlie L Shugart: No, think it's super interesting. Another concern, we started to talk about this, is that we're draining the whole lake because we're letting water out and people are using it. So how we're ensuring everybody has that water has a lot to do with the Drought Contingency Plan, and then the … I'm trying to think of a way to phrase it … that we have contracted out what we feel we can guarantee will always be available. Did I say that right?
Matt Phillips: Mhmm. What we can reliably supply.
Aaron Abel: Reliably Supply.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay. So, how far does, like, our authority come into place for how someone uses their contracted water? Like, what is that? When we're providing people water, what's that look like?
Matt Phillips: We supply water under contract for multiple different purposes. You've got municipal, you've got industrial, you've got irrigation. Those are probably the main three, but obviously there are a few others. In terms of how our contracts work, as long as those customers are using that water within what I'll call the four corners of that contract, meaning they're using it for the purpose that's allowed under their contract- municipal, industrial, irrigation- they're using only the amount that they have under contract, meaning they're not overusing. And then as long as they're accurately reporting their usage to us, that's really kind of where our oversight of the matter ends. They just have to use that water within their contract. In terms of, let's say you've got a city that has a multiuse contract with us, so municipal, industrial, and irrigation, and they decide to provide water to an industry, whatever type of industry. BRA doesn't have the ability to pick winners and losers and come in and tell that city, "No, you can't do that. We want you to provide that water to this industry.” Well, it is an industrial use, and that's allowed under their contract.
Aaron Abel: And this may be another podcast too.
Charlie L Shugart: I mean, I'm all for you giving me more ideas.
Aaron Abel: So, you know we kind of mentioned the longer days, hotter temperatures during the summer and obviously that drives from a municipal standpoint that drives outdoor water use. Right. While we're a wholesale provider of raw water, we do provide wholesale treated water at East Williamson County, and sometimes in the summer we can see outdoor water use that equates to about 60% to 70% of the total water use under municipal use. And that is common across all of Texas. If you ask other river authorities and wholesale water providers, that's a common number.
That's something just to be cognizant of, and as Matt said, our municipal contracts, they're with cities, and the cities are the ones that manage how the end user actually uses the water. All we can say is, “Hey, we're at Stage 2, we need to reduce water use by 10%.” And then they, in turn, implement whatever strategies they need to get that 10%. And so that's one thing that a lot of cities will do is obviously turn that dial of when you can and can't water outside, and that can help a whole lot.
Charlie L Shugart: Some cities choose one day a week watering, others go full, no car washes ever. Everyone's got their own vibe.
Aaron Abel: The other thing that compounds water use in the summer is steam electric power plants.
Charlie L Shugart: Okay, why is that?
Aaron Abel: So, about half of our contracts and half of our water use is for steam electric power generation. And if you think about it, it's kind of a compounding issue, if you will. It's dry, farmers need water, municipalities need water, we like our air conditioning.
Charlie L Shugart: So much.
Aaron Abel: Especially when it's 107 outside. We kind of need it, kind of have to have it. That air conditioning requires power, and the grid needs power. And what a lot of folks don't realize is when you use power and when the grid is needing power and you know requires power plants to come online or generate more, that requires water use. You know as it relates to steam electric power generation, our customers divert water that are steam electric power generators from reservoirs, from the river, and they use that water to cool their turbines and to actually consume the water to create steam and then turn the turbines and generate electricity.
So, water use under steam electric power and industry peaks in the summer too. So, it's all kind of types of use compound itself and pile on in really in July, August, September. And then, you know, thankfully, we're going to lose over an hour, depending on where you are in the basin, we're going to lose over an hour and ten minutes of sunlight between now and the end of September, and it will get cooler. I promise. I promise. It'll get cooler, and it'll rain again.
Charlie L Shugart: Your air conditioner is indirectly drinking water so you can stay cool. Summer is chaotic.
Aaron Abel: That's something that, and what I'm talking about is the power-water nexus. And there's all kinds of nexuses with water. So, there's a lot more podcasts to come out.
Charlie L Shugart: I appreciate your willingness to sit here and talk to me.
Matt Phillips: And I think one thing to add about that is, as it relates to spikes in water usage specific to our particular system raw water contracts, is that increased water usage under our contracts does not result in increased revenue to the BRA. I think that's always a common misconception. More water is being used, so BRA you're making more money. And our contracts are very, very typical of wholesale raw water contracts in that they are take or pay. Meaning they are set at our System Rate, that System Rate is charged to the entire amount under the contract, whether some of it's used or all of it's used. So additional water usage under our contracts does not result in additional revenue to the BRA. Those contracts go to fund our operations, our maintenance of our dams, and then hopefully our development of new water supplies into the future. But spikes in water usage don't somehow mean the BRA is generating more money. It's just not how our contracts work.
Charlie L Shugart: Right. Basically, it's like a gym membership. You pay a set monthly fee whether you go zero times or seven times a week. The rate doesn't change based on how much you actually step on the treadmill. Yeah. Okay. Anything else? Alright, y'all. Thanks for hanging out with us today on this very hydrated episode. Water supply reservoirs go up, go down, people get worried, and honestly, it's all totally normal.
Our job is to keep the system running smoothly, keep you informed, and together, we can all hope for rain.
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