Water proposal gets negative greeting

February 26, 2013, 9:00 pm by James Walker

Burnet County's Commissioners Court normally is in lock-step agreement with the Central Texas Water Coalition in their efforts to promote better management and conservation of the water in the Highland Lakes, but a majority of the court made it plain Tuesday that they don't agree with the coalition's latest suggestion to the Lower Colorado River Authority.

The LCRA should consider buying irrigation-intensive land from down-river rice farmers as a means of helping solve current and future water supply shortages in the river basin, the CTWC said in a news release Monday.

Buying the farm land from the rice growers would be an affordable, sensible and water-saving action to meet the needs of LCRA’s firm water customers and free up billions of gallons of water a year, CTWC said in a news release.

"Before the LCRA buys land for a downstream reservoir to improve its capacity to manage and conserve water near the downstream irrigators, it is time to do the cost benefit analysis on other transactions that could improve the management of our precious water supply,” said CTWC President Jo Karr Tedder, an East Lake Buchanan resident.

For the full story, see Wednesday's Burnet Bulletin or Friday's Highlander.