Posted: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 08:11 AM - 20,982 Readers

By: James Walker

The Burnet County Commissioners Court voted Tuesday to ask the Lower Colorado River Authority to suspend the release of water from the Highland Lakes for use by the Garwood irrigation district for a second rice crop this summer.

The commissioners approved a letter written by Tom Harrison, who owns homes on Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan, to LCRA General Manager Becky Motal that read, "Due to the continuing drought conditions and rapidly deteriorating storage levels of drinking water that over a million people depend on, we would like to ask that second crop water for Garwood be suspended.”

Harrison, a member of the Central Texas Water Coalition group of citizens, business owners and others who advocate for better management of the water in the Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan reservoirs, wrote the letter and asked commissioners to approve it and send it to Motal.

"We understand that this drought has been hard on all users that depend on the Colorado river basin but we feel that these low storage levels this early in the summer are very dangerous as the forecast does not hint at any relief,” the letter continued.