 Celebrate a unique collaboration between Save Our Springs, Hold Out Brewing, and GoodGood Beer Company on Saturday, July 20th, from 3-6 PM at the indoor mezzanine of Hold Out Brewing (1208 W 4th St, Austin, TX 78703). We're excited to present the refreshing peach gose Hold Out and GoodGood crafted with Fredericksburg peaches and lots of love, raising a glass to water quality and the protection of Barton Springs.
Enjoy the refreshing flavors and support a great cause! Take a dip at the springs beforehand, and show your Barton Springs stamp for a 10% discount on your tab. This event is not just about great beer—it’s about coming together to learn more about and protect the Edwards Aquifer, a vital water source for over 2 million people in Central Texas. Save Our Springs Alliance has been dedicated to protecting the aquifer since 1992, advocating through education, legal action, and community engagement. By partnering with GoodGood Beer and Hold Out Brewing, we aim to amplify the importance of water conservation and highlight the unique challenges facing our precious aquifer. Don’t miss this chance to mingle with fellow supporters, and enjoy educational talks with SOS staff and Executive Director Bill Bunch. Let’s make a toast to clean water and a sustainable future for Austin!  As we gear up for the crucial City Council meeting this Thursday, July 18th, we need your collective voices to protect Austin's future. While we understand the items related to South Central Waterfront and residential site plans (drainage review) are likely to be postponed (Items 99, 120, and 100), the stakes are high for Item 96, which proposes anti-democratic amendments to our City Charter that will push us backward. The Charter amendments propose raising the signature thresholds for voter-initiated ordinances and City Council recalls, making it nearly impossible for citizens to initiate change or hold council members accountable. The increase from 20,000 to 3.5% of total voters for ordinances, and from 10% to 15% of district voters for recalls, is a blatant attempt to stifle our voices and dismantle the very mechanisms that have driven transformative change in our city. This move aligns with the current administration's efforts to limit public participation and transparency, allowing more decisions behind closed doors. Voter-led petition efforts have been catalysts for change in Austin policy for decades, bringing together voices and encouraging more citizens to participate in the democratic process. The impacts of these efforts have brought about generational and transformative change, such as the SOS Initiative Ordinance leading to the prioritization of environmental protection throughout the City of Austin and the 10-1 Geographic Representation Charter amendments that led to the prioritization of equity and geographic fairness in the City policy. SOS urges the City Council to reject these amendments. The Council will consider placing a raft of proposed amendments to the Austin City Charter on the November ballot, and now is the time to tell them no. These proposed actions against our local democratic processes are in line with our current Mayor and Council's blatant hostility towards public participation at City Council meetings. We urge you to join us on July 18th to speak out on these critical issues. Please sign up to speak today and make your voice heard.  SOS Beer Launch This Saturday, Let's Gose Swimming! Saturday, July 20th, 3-6 pm @ Hold Out Brewery. Local brew heroes, Hold Out Brewing & GoodGood have teamed up with SOS to create a delightful Gose beer made with local hill country peaches and a lot of love. A percentage of all proceeds goes to SOS efforts. Come raise a glass with us to celebrate this unique collaboration! ***Barton Springs stamp gets you 10% off your entire tab*** Upstairs mezzanine @ Hold Out Brewing 1208 West 4th St. Austin TX, 3-6 pm  SOS Snorkel Tour This Saturday!
Saturday, July 20th, 8 am, Barton Springs. Join us for an exclusive behind-the-scenes Snorkel Tour this weekend and experience the springs like never before. Dive down into the wonders of Edwards Aquifer, marvel at diverse plant and wildlife, explore underwater hydro-geologic features, and discover how we can all help keep our springs clean and flowing for future generations. Perfect for confident swimmers aged 7 and up. Don't miss this underwater adventure! South Gate of Barton Springs, 906 Azie Morton, 8 am  The Austin City Council is returning from its summer break, and it’s back to business. Here’s a quick sneak peek at what’s coming up in July.
Austin City Budget The Save Our Springs Alliance is proud to be a supporter of the Community Investment Budget (CIB), a project of over 45 local nonprofit attempting to reprioritize City of Austin investments to meet urgent needs for Austin residents and promote climate resilience. Mark your calendars for July 12th, at 10am—that’s when City Manager Broadnax will unveil the proposed FY 2025 budget. With the draft budget, we’ll see how the City of Austin intends to focus investments for the next fiscal year. SOS will be watchdogging for water-smart policies. That means making sure Austin’s water rates encourage conservation and don’t hit our low-use residential customers with hefty increases. Here are some key dates and opportunities to engage with the Austin City Council:
Austin City Council Meeting, July 18, 2024 On July 18, 2024, the Austin City Council will convene to discuss several items, and here’s a sneak peek at what’s on the agenda. Registration to speak starts Monday, July 15th at 10am. For full instructions on participation in person or by telephone, please visit the Council Meeting Information Center: http://austintexas.gov/department/city-council/council/council_meeting_info_center.htm. Here Are the Key Items We’re Watching
 Photograph by Chase A. Fountain, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Researched & written by Paul Robbins, May 7, 2024 Part 1 – Six Steps to Year Zero
This is the first of a two-part series on potential, and likely, water shortages that will afflict Austin in the coming decades, and how it will impact the city’s future. Part 1 looks at where are we were in April 2024 with the current drought, and what our future looks like with climate heating and a worst-case scenario. This future worst case is projected in six layers or steps to show the approximate year Austin reaches “Year Zero” with empty lakes if everything goes wrong at the same time, and gives a few examples of other places where it has gone wrong. Obviously, the Lakes have not gone dry yet. But when plausible and likely climate and consumption patterns collide with population growth, the prospect of dry lakes is no longer science fiction. Note to readers: The year 2023 is used as the baseline, but data in this analysis was sourced from the most current years available. These included 2022, 2023, and 2024. The Texas Weather: Where Erratic is “Normal” Texans are privileged to reside in one of the most temperamental regions of the U.S. The state is blessed with hurricanes, tornadoes, numerous lightning bursts, hail, debilitating heat, and even fierce blizzards in the northern part. These extremes have contributed to the character of the people, and by extension, the state’s history, in several major ways, including the massive infrastructure needed for its water systems. There is only one (partially) natural lake in the entire state. The other 196 major stationary “lakes” over 5,000 acre-feet in size are actually man-made reservoirs largely built to slake the state’s thirst. (An acre-foot would have supplied 5 Austin homes a year in 2023.) The collective area of these lakes is about 150% larger than Travis County. There is no other state in the country that has this much land covered with inland water bodies. The Central Texas Highland Lakes are a chain of six reservoirs along the Colorado River created for reliable water supplies in dry times, flood control in wet times, hydroelectricity, and irrigation for agriculture in counties near the Gulf Coast. When the two lakes used for reliable municipal water supplies were commissioned, Lake Buchanan (1937) and Lake Travis (1942), they were viewed by most Central Texas residents as virtually inexhaustible. But a lot can happen in 90 years: an almost 12-fold increase in the population of Central Texas; the growth of major industry; way more water-cooled power plants; sediment deposits that diminish the Lakes’ storage capacity, severe droughts, and increasing severity of drought caused by global warming. On April 17, 2024, the Highland Lakes that store Austin’s water supply were only 42% full. There have only been 4 periods since 1941 when they have been lower. In an attempt to look at the worst case, this analysis attempts to layer on the challenges facing Central Texas water supplies caused by drought, global warming, increasing population, and sedimentation. The Real Drought of Record Of all the extreme weather conditions that afflict Texas, droughts are the most common. According to the NOAA Storm Events database, in 2023, 23% of all drought incidents in the U.S. occurred in Texas. When water supply planners and utilities in Austin and Texas plan for emergency supplies, they generally refer to the state’s “drought of record,” which occurred between 1951 to 1956. In this time period, Central Texas experienced a 25% decrease in precipitation compared to recent history.  Water Shortage Step 1: The Historical Drought of Record However, Texas weather data only goes back to 1895. When scientists used observations from tree rings to reconstruct climate history going back to 1500, they discovered droughts in Central Texas were much worse using a similar metric that measures precipitation and temperature together, the “Palmer Drought Severity Index.” The worst, from 1712 to 1717, scored an Index rating 35% worse than the 1950s drought of record.  Water Shortage Step 2: Using calculations derived from tree rings, scientists have identified 3 extended droughts in Central Texas worse than the one in the 1950s. Things Can Always Get Worse: Drought with Global Warming As global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions intensifies, it poses an ironic challenge for Texas. How do you define the new normal in a state where being normal is being erratic, and where the landscape is already scarred by weather hazards? Austin’s water utility, Austin Water, currently has contracts with the University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences to assess how climate change will impact the temperature and rainfall in the not-too-distant future. Though no final conclusions have been made yet, the draft report’s predictions are staggering. The study explored three different internationally-recognized carbon emission scenarios. These have various emission levels depending on the year as described in this chart.
 Water Shortage Step 3: Computer simulations for two 20-year periods show dramatic decreases in average monthly Colorado River flows at Austin. Water availability adjusted for the droughts of the 1950s and the 1700s and global warming could be cut yet again by another 13% to 25%. Sedimentation If drought and excessive demand are not enough to threaten water supplies, there is the phenomenon of erosion or sedimentation. All water bodies, natural and man-made, are subject to loss of capacity from erosion as soil is swept into them by rainfall and wind. This is often compounded by runoff from human development. Lakes Buchanan and Travis have lost 11% and 1.5% of their original capacity, respectively, since they were built. And there are those who have it worse. Lake Steinhagen in East Texas has lost 35% of its volume since it was completed in 1951. Reservoirs can theoretically have the silt dredged and removed to restore their original capacity. However, industrial dredging on this scale is humongously expensive. To give an example of the high cost of dredging, a study for restoring Lake Buchanan in 1990, updated to 2024 dollars, was approximately 13 times the cost per acre-foot that LCRA charged for water. While continued sedimentation of the Highland Lakes will be minor from one year to the next, it will also be cumulative and unrelenting. By 2050, it will represent an additional 20,400 acre-feet of water storage loss, equivalent to almost 93,000 Austin homes at 2023 levels of consumption.  Water Shortage Step 4: Sedimentation in the Highland Lakes is expected to lose enough water supply to provide for almost 93,000 Austin homes by 2050. Increasing Demand: Too Many People Using Too Much Water In 1956, the Austin business community began an aggressive campaign to recruit businesses to the city, and has not stopped to this day. The campaign’s achievements have been so successful that, according to the U.S. Census in 2023, Austin was the 10th largest city in the country. In 2023, Austin’s water utility served 1,146,000 people in a service territory of more than 548 square miles. By 2030, it is predicted to rise to 1.3 million; by 2050, almost 1.7 million, and by 2100, 2.8 million. Based on this growth rate, municipal use of the Highland Lakes for Central Texas cities (not just Austin) will almost triple between 2023 and 2080. Even if all other uses, such as industrial and recreational, remain static, total consumption will more than double. And this estimation is conservative. If water consumption increases at the rate of population growth in Central Texas, total consumption will more than quadruple.  Water Shortage Step 5: Predicted rising water demand of the Highland Lakes Stagnating Water Conservation Effects At the same time, use per person is not falling. Austin Water began an intense water conservation effort in 2007, and saw its per-person water use plummet from 190 gallons per capita per day to as low as 120 gallons per capita per day in 2019. But the progress has flattened and consumption has even buoyed up slightly from this low-water mark.  Water Shortage Step 6: Water consumption fell dramatically after more water conservation programs were implemented in 2007, but this progress has stalled in recent years. In fact, this stubborn per capita usage, combined with low rainfall in 2022, sent Austin’s total water consumption to a record high of 174,000 acre-feet. And if Everything Goes Wrong… When all these water supply stressors are layered over each other, it shows just how fragile the future of Central Texas could be. 
This worst-case drought and global warming scenario (with moderate consumption) shows the Highland Lakes at only 4% of their full (2 million acre-feet) capacity in 2023 and running dry between 2030 and 2040. Some of this residual water would require pumps to remove because the lake levels would be too low for water to flow with gravity. It Can’t Happen Here (But It Happened There) Skeptics of these dire warnings will say it is highly improbable that all these plagues will occur at once – that the odds are so low as to be minuscule. But a relatively short distance northwest of Lake Buchanan, four Texas reservoirs in the Upper Colorado River Basin have crashed several times, and for lengthy periods of time, because of drought and overuse.  The E.V Spence reservoir, 145 miles from Buchanan, was completed in 1969. It has never held close to its designed volume, and crashed during a lengthy period in the last decade.  Lake J.B. Thomas, 210 miles from Buchanan, was commissioned in 1952. It has not been full since about 1965, and has crashed at least twice.  Lake O.C. Fisher near San Angelo, 130 miles from Buchanan, has only filled to capacity once since it was completed in 1952, and has been empty or near empty during many years of its existence.  Twin Butte Reservoir, also near San Angelo, was completed in 1963. It has not been at capacity since the late 1970s, and has been empty or near empty for a considerable time period since 2000. Skeptics of an Austin water shortage will point out that these reservoirs are in a more arid climate. But that is the whole point of this article: calculating how much water in Central Texas will be available during the plagues of drought, global warming, and over consumption. In fact, the Austin Water utility recently conducted its own simulations with advanced global warming scenarios, indicating a 6% chance of dry lakes under extreme conditions in 2030, rising to a 63% chance by 2080. This did not include using the extreme drought history from the 1700s.  Recent simulations by Austin Water showing chance of empty Highland Lakes with advanced global warming. Of course, long before the Highland Lakes dipped anywhere close to these dangerous levels, massive and rigid water conservation measures would be enforced. However, as the region’s population increases rapidly and rabidly, even these drastic measures will become less effective at providing a secure supply.
Calculating how much water Central Texas will need during the worst-case plagues of drought, global warming, and over consumption is no longer science fiction. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This is the first of a two-part feature on potential, and likely, water shortages that will afflict Central Texas in the coming decades. Next: Part 2 – The Malpractice of Ignoring Aggressive Water Conservation. Research for this story was funded with a grant from the Save Our Springs Alliance. Stay tuned.  On July 1, 2024, Judge Daniella Deseta Lyttle issued a ruling that once again found the Austin City Council’s meeting procedures violate the Texas Open Meetings Act. This marks the third time that Travis County Judge has ruled that the City Council’s restrictions on public speaking testimony fail to guarantee the public’s “right to speak.” Before these recent rulings, the Austin City Council limited public comments to 1 minute per speaker during regular council meetings, regardless of the number of items on the agenda (often exceeding 100 items per meeting). For instance, if an Austinite signed up to speak on four items, they would have an average of only 15 seconds per item to address the council. As a result of a lawsuit filed by SOS (Save Our Springs Alliance), the City Council was compelled to revise its meeting procedures and eliminate these collective time limits. Now, members of the public are granted a minimum of 2 minutes to speak on each item during the City Council’s Thursday meetings. You can find more information in the Austin Free Press (and sign up for AFP news alerts). The July 1st ruling also removed language that the City Council had inserted into their new procedures, which would have nullified the legal impact of these time limits. A separate claim was dismissed by the court challenging the City Council's Tuesday work session procedures that prohibit public speakers. Often, the council discusses and begins to take positions on items scheduled for the regular Thursday council meetings. Unfortunately, this means that having the right to speak at the Thursday meetings comes too late for meaningful input. SOS will be evaluating its legal options concerning this claim. Thank you for your support on this lawsuit. With your help, we have amplified the public's voice at Austin City Hall. City of Austin Proposes to Delete Drainage Requirements
Code changes are headed to the Planning Commission Tuesday night that would remove requirements for multi-unit developments (up to 16 residential units) to install onsite detention (holding ponds for stormwater). These developments would merely need to submit a drainage plan to demonstrate that stormwater runoff is discharged into the street. There would be no requirement for an assessment that existing stormwater drain systems could handle increased flows, nor would there be a drainage review from the City of Austin to ensure that the new developments don’t increase risks of lot-to-lot flooding or harm our creeks.
To assess flooding risks in Austin’s neighborhoods, SOS commissioned a study that looked at flood-related incidents reported to Austin’s 311 call center between January 1, 2020, and November 21, 2023. Over the past 4 years, nearly 600 flood incidents occurred outside known floodplains, indicating local and lot-to-lot flooding. Additionally, approx. 190 reported incidents could be linked to clogged or overstressed drainage infrastructure, posing challenges for the city’s flood management efforts. The Austin City Council recently approved city code amendments under the “HOME” initiative that reduced lot sizes for single-family residential lots across the city and increased the number of units that can be built on each lot. Lots that were previously used for one lot can now be subdivided and used for multiple units. Depending on the size of the original lot or lots, this could increase the number of units and associated pavement substantially. These code changes will undeniably lead to more impervious cover, which means increased flows and volumes of stormwater leaving these properties. All of this leads to the question—why would Austin delete its drainage requirements? Climate resiliency requires proactive planning, and Austin must address its flooding issues--now and into the future. |
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