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What do three out of four Texans not know the answer to?
Three out of four Texans didn’t know where their water came from in a statewide survey. Now you can be one of the smart ones.
More people now know that their water comes from the Colorado River than just a few short months ago and are taking steps to save it. But many people are still unaware of how the water gets into the Colorado River.
How does the water get to the Colorado?
In the lower Colorado River basin rainfall that collects on the land flows into stream and rivers that ultimately feed the Colorado River. How much water flows into the system determines the amount of water available. To date the amount of water flowing into the Colorado River above Austin in 2006 is less than any period since records have been kept.
What’s that mean?
Water agencies measure water in acre-feet (which is about 326,000 gallons), the quantity of an average suburban family would use in 18 months. In the Colorado River basin north of San Angelo, they receive less than 20 inches of rain a year – in a normal year that provides about 65 billion gallons. Around the Highland Lakes that increases to about 316 billion gallons. The flows south of Austin increase as one nears the coast, but it is the rainfall on and above the Highland Lakes that provides the drinking water supply for millions of people in Central Texas. While 316 billion gallons of average flow seems like a huge amount, this volume is can be a misleading indicator of water supply, particularly during drought. For instance, during a flood those flows pass through very quickly unless stored. During the drought this summer, nearly 3 billion gallons of water was used or left Lake Travis, the primary supply reservoir, each day.
What can I do to save water?
If one-third of the families that rely on the river for drinking water saved just 10 percent, we could save well over 11 billion gallon of water each year – more water than fell north of the Highland Lakes in the past 12 months. Since the Highland Lakes system can store some of the waters (650 billion gallons combined capacity of lakes Buchanan and Travis) saving water in wet and dry periods helps extend our water supply.
Website: Water IQ .
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