Central Texas Water Coalition Inc

Programs: Public water policy and lobbying: worked with texas legislators to draft, support, and successfully pass a transparency bill in the 2017 session of the texas legislature (senate bill 347) to assure that regional water planning groups follow open government laws. Successfully worked with texas legislators to maintain the legislative requirement for the local river authority to go through the state's sunset review process in 2017-2018, assuring an independent review of that entity and its water management operations. Developed and actively supported a bill that would allow consideration of economic impacts in the state's water planning and permitting process, where it was referred to the house natural resources committee for consideration. Utilized legal support for continued work with local river authority, state environmental agency for water use permitting, state agency for water planning, and the regional water planning group for this river basin on water policy issues related to the need for safe yield vs firm yield in determining surface water availability and volumes of water eligible for sale from reservoir storage, the need for more aggressive use of water pricing to promote conservation and funding of needed water supply projects, the need for the local river authority to implement legally mandated aspects of its state issued water rights, including the 5. 25 acre-feet per acre waste standard for rice farming, and the need for the use of a metrics based approach in determining water demands for rice farming.

utilized public relations consultants to promote education on water issues, including the complexities of this river basin and its water management plan. Published water update package for legislature. Provided support for update of the organization website centraltexaswatercoalition. Org.

scientific and water system engineering research and conservation: ctwc utilized a multi-disciplinary approach of climatology, hydrology and water system engineering research to better understand the implications of water management strategies on the highland lakes and the lower colorado river basin. Worked on refinement of an upper basin and highland lakes water balance model that utilizes actual usgs flow data to extend the model to the lower colorado river basin. The extended water balance model will be used to: evaluate the local river authority's projected impacts of the new downstream off-channel reservoir under construction and beginning operations in 2018; evaluate the environmental flow requirements for the river; and better understand and provide independent estimates of key aspects of water availability and risks during periods of extreme drought. Ctwc's water modeling results will also be compared to the state's water availability modeling results. Preliminary results show need to update/lower the firm yield to reflect the new drought of record that began in 2008, and the need to account for all contracted commitments in the upcoming update of the current 2015 water management plan. Ctwc's new "system-wide' model also allows evaluation of lcra's approach to utilize a "system yield" analysis to justify additional firm water sales from run-of- river water downstream of the highland lakes and the impact of the new downstream reservoir.