NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – Four-and-a-half lengthy years after a partial dam failure in large part tired Lake Dunlap, the Guadalupe County lake is full as soon as once more in the back of a newly restored dam.
But now downstream assets house owners say they’re those being left top and dry.
READ MORE: Lake Dunlap neighbors excited to see lake water returning after dam cave in
The lake has been filling again up for months, but because it used to be filled and hydroelectric operations were put back in service on Oct. 31, folks right away downstream from the dam say the water degree in their segment of the river has temporarily began drying up.
They examine the piddling glide to contemporary years when there used to be no dam to cling the river again and the many years ahead of the dam failure. The outdated dam design, they say, let one of the vital water glide over the the highest whilst the brand new gates don’t.
An Oct. 31 announcement at the Lake Dunlap Water Control and Improvement District (WCID) site even warned the herbal channel can be drying up.
“Sometime in the next few hours, all the gates will have been raised to their fully upright positions. No water will be passing over or through them at that point, so the downstream side of the dam will be dry. This is what normal will look like going forward,” the announcement learn partially.
Property house owners round Lake Dunlap shaped the WCID taxing district to lend a hand pay for the dam reconstruction challenge, but the real construction is owned and operated by means of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority (GBRA).
Water from the lake does make its approach downstream, simply no longer down the herbal channel. Instead, the water flows down a canal from the lake to a hydroelectric powerhouse kind of two miles downstream, at which level it’s dumped again into the Guadalupe River.
The GBRA says the gross earnings of hydroelectric energy gross sales is going again to the WCID to lend a hand pay for the dam.
The earlier bear-trap taste dam had been in position for greater than 90 years when one in all its 3 spill gates failed in May 2019, leaving the artifical lake to sink unexpectedly to the extent of its concrete base. That left the river to glide in large part unimpeded till a couple of months in the past.
Tim White, a co-owner of a assets slightly below the lake and dam, mentioned when the dam used to be being reconstructed, he had anticipated the water glide would go back to pre-2019 ranges as soon as it used to be completed. However, he mentioned a GBRA consultant advised them they’d have minimum glide.
Standing 100 yards clear of the dam on Nov. 6, alongside a dry stretch of rocks, White advised he’d like to see some efforts to make sure the former river glide from ahead of the 2019 dam cave in is maintained.
“It used to be a very beautiful place where I would take my friends and family to go fishing, and now that’s just not here anymore,” he mentioned.
Farther downstream, Melanie Schulze mentioned she had lived at the river for “40, 50 years” and spotted a large distinction between the present water ranges and what they used to be ahead of the dam cave in.
made more than one requests to the GBRA between Nov. 6 and Nov. 17 to make somebody to be had for an interview.
Spokeswoman Lindsey Campbell replied to the primary request, announcing that the company may no longer accommodate an interview and as a substitute pointed to the GBRA’s site, in particular a Nov. 2 replace.
“The stream section below the dam has been experiencing higher flows since 2019 because the damage to the spillgates and the subsequent construction activities created a temporary condition where all of the river flows passed through the dam. Current flows in and around Lake Dunlap are consistent with operations authorized for nearly a century,” the Nov. 2 replace states.
Campbell did reply to 3 further makes an attempt to organize an interview.
Photos bought from a assets proprietor at the canal bypassed segment of the river display a big distinction between the present water ranges and the ones ahead of the 2019 cave in.
However, used to be not able to to find any empirical knowledge to display what is taking place to the water ranges under the dam. Though the U.S. Geological Survey screens the glide price at quite a lot of sections of the Guadalupe River, the closest tracking stations are miles upstream in New Braunfels.
The county is additionally cut up between “extreme” and “severe” drought prerequisites, in accordance to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
But folks downstream are adamant their scenario has modified.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Kirk McDonnell mentioned the state company is acutely aware of the location with Lake Dunlap dam and is tracking the downstream space for results on fish and flora and fauna.
Clay Church, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Forth Worth District, advised the federal company used to be speaking to the GBRA to make sure the river authority is in compliance with authorized motion similar to water glide.
Note: The broadcast model of this tale mistakenly said Tim White’s final identify as “Smith.” The error stays within the air-check video hooked up to this tale but has been another way corrected.
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