Posted: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 09:21 AM - 37,969 Readers

By: Nathan Gogo, KVUE

The Lower Colorado River Authority has not opened the floodgates on Mansfield Dam in nearly a decade, but with Lake Travis more than 100 percent full some residents on the lake are concerned about flooding.

“Sometimes it’s low, sometimes it’s high,” said Dewey Cooper about the water level on Lake Travis. “I’d like for it to be a lot lower.

Cooper has lived along Graveyard Point Road since 1988, and he’s seen his fair share of flooding.

“When it starts getting up to the rock wall right here, then I get scared,” Cooper said.

When the area flooded in 1991, Cooper said the water was 13 feet over the top of his house. Heavy rain in 1997 and 2007 also caused flooding. Cooper told KVUE’s Nathan Gogo he has a plan in place if the lake continues to rise.

“Back up the trailer and put everything on it, you start moving out,” he said.

 Cooper has spent as long as two months away with nearby family to rebuild his lakefront property.

“I'm not ok with it, I don't like it but I know it's going to happen,” Cooper said.

In the 1930s, before anyone settled on Graveyard Point, the LCRA increased the elevation of Lake Travis by 33 feet in an effort to prevent major flooding downriver.

"We have to basically balance those two flood impacts, and move water as quickly as we can out of the flood pool, understanding that we can't exacerbate that flooding downstream when we do that,” said John Hoffman with the LCRA.

Newer homes in the area have adapted and are on tall beams.

*  Story Contributed by: Nathan Gogo, KVUE