The Statesman ran a story on Friday about potential upcoming LCRA water restrictions due to drought.

The basics are these:

• Even after recent rainfall, our current drought surpasses the severity required to kick us over into emergency water management.
• That emergency plan could require 35% reduction of water use from all LCRA customers, including us (the mandatory outdoor water restrictions we faced in August aimed at cutting 25% of use).
• Low volume in the river/lake comes from record low influx from tributaries as well as record low rainfall.

That last point is important–even if we get rain, as temperatures increase due to climate change we’re going to be getting less water in the river.  That’s because the Colorado river is fed by snowmelt–and when it’s hotter there’s less snow, and what snow there is tends to evaporate more rapidly.  (Check out more about climate change in the west & how it affects your water supply here.)

All of which is to say, re: WTP4:  to reiterate:  if there isn’t enough water for the plants we have now, why spend $400 million on an extra one?

And more to the point:  if there isn’t enough water for what we have now, how are we going to supply the predicted population influx at all if we’re not making serious investments in conservation?