FloodsThese Dams Needed Replacing 15 Years Ago. Now Texas Will Drain Four Lakes Instead — Causing Other Problems.
Texas officials will start draining four lakes next week in Guadalupe County in Central Texas without a plan in place for when the lakes, and the 90-year-old dams that support them, will be rebuilt. Area homeowners, who got barely a month’s notice, said they felt blindsided by the plan, and they say it will slash their property values, kill their beloved century-old cypress trees and render the lakes — which have hosted water skiing tournaments for decades — unusable.
Texas officials will start draining four lakes next week in Guadalupe County in Central Texas without a plan in place for when the lakes, and the 90-year-old dams that support them, will be rebuilt. Area homeowners, who got barely a month’s notice, said they felt blindsided by the plan, and they say it will slash their property values, kill their beloved century-old cypress trees and render the lakes — which have hosted water skiing tournaments for decades — unusable.
ButGuadalupe-Blanco River Authority officials say they don’t have a choice. The dams, two of which have already had catastrophic failures, are creating a safety hazard that could flood entire neighborhoods if theyget any worse, river authorityspokeswoman Patty Gonzales said. River authorities were created by the Texas Legislature to manage and conserve water resources around the state.
“We cannot guarantee the safety of the public with these aging spill gates” and have to lower them, Gonzales said. The dams are set to be lowered starting Monday.
This is a familiar story surrounding water infrastructure all across the state. Flooding in South Texas last year and Hurricane Harvey in 2017 exposed gaps across Texas in the state’s flood protectionsystems, which experts say are often underfunded and allowed to decay for decades past their lifespans.
In the Guadalupe River Valley, 40 miles northeast of San Antonio, six hydroelectric dams built in the late 1920s and early 1930s created Lakes Wood, Dunlap, Placid, McQueeney and Gonzales, as well as Meadow Lake. They were only supposed to last about 75 years — andthat was 15 years ago. Because the dams don’t produce much hydroelectric power, their main function now is to hold up the four lakes that are lined with hundreds of homes and are used daily for recreation, including water skiing tournaments.
Without the dams, the lakes turn into shallow rivers. That’s already happening on Lake Dunlap, where one of the dam floodgate failures occurred. Small islands on some of the lakessoon might disappear as the water around them recedes.
Beyond the loss of lakefrontstatus, the properties that line the reservoirs are also at risk of long-term damage. The docks on Lake Dunlap, without water to support them, are slowly falling down into the riverbed.
Hunter Croan built his home and dock after moving to the area five years ago and is already experiencing foundation problems less than three months after Lake Dunlap’s center floodgate failed. Six-foot-long cracks now line his sinking
