Posted: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 06:58 PM - 6,839 Readers

By: Ashley Sanchez

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a personal visit is priceless.

Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan store and supply drinking water for many Central Texans and are only 39 percent full. A pessimist would say the glass is 61 percent empty.

A visit to Lake Travis conveys that emptiness in a way photographs and numbers can't. Seeing the lake from shore, it's obvious that the water is not just down, it's distant, forming what seems like a tiny river in the middle of a yawning chasm where water once was.

It's difficult to witness that and not reach several conclusions:

I must reduce my water usage.

Mandatory water restrictions should have happened sooner, and the next stage should happen now.

If effluent were to be discharged into the lake, I'd find it particularly gross because there's so little water to dilute it.

Property owners on the shores of the Colorado River (which includes lakes Travis and Buchanan) should pay for the water they pull from it and follow the same conservation measures as everyone else.

The next time there is an overabundance of water in the lake, we should keep it, not release it downstream as soon as possible. It was only two years ago that water was in Lake Travis' flood pool.

Finally, it's nuts for lakes here to supply the water for rice farming near the Texas coast.

Of course, complications often confound common-sense solutions. But if we know what makes the most sense, we can find turn the tables on complications.

For example, the reason rice farmers use the Colorado to nourish their thirsty industry is because they got to it first — a century ago. But now that Central Texas water needs have grown dramatically, perhaps we could work with the rice farmers to tap the unlimited supply in their own neighborhood by building a desalination plant.

Similarly, making whatever changes necessary to allow Lake Travis to keep the water in its flood pool long-term would make sense, as would emancipating ourselves from using the outdated model from the 1950s drought as the basis for instituting conservation measures. Travis County's population in 1950 was 160,980 compared to an estimated 998,543 in 2008.

Another instructive personal visit should be to the Wachusett Reservoir, which along with the Quabbin Reservoir, supplies water to 2.2 million inhabitants of Boston and surrounding areas. That visit would shed light on the City of Leander's request to discharge its effluent (or dump its treated sewage, in common parlance) into tributaries flowing into Lake Travis.

Despite Wachusett's picturesque setting and inviting water, swimming and motor boating are off limits. Canoeing, kayaking and fishing are allowed only in designated areas to keep public water supply as pristine as possible.

Although Texans don't treat our drinking water as off-limits for recreation, Wachusett's example should inspire us to treat Travis kindly. Maybe if signs were posted at boat ramps, marinas and lakeside parks stating that Lake Travis supplies our drinking water, folks would think twice before using it as their restroom or garbage can.

But even if individuals treat the lake as a dumping ground, governments shouldn't. Let's keep Leander's effluent out of our drinking water.