Inks Lake drawdown starts Oct. 1
Inks Lake will be lowered by about 8 feet for eight weeks starting in October 2025 to allow for flood damage repair and maintenance. Pictured is Devil’s Waterhole on Inks Lake at Inks Lake State Park. File photo
The Lower Colorado River Authority will lower Inks Lake by about 8 feet this fall so property owners can work on docks, boat slips, and other shoreline structures like retaining walls; dredge up to 2,000 cubic-yards of material; and remove debris from the lake and shoreline.
The drawdown will begin on Oct. 1, with the lake being lowered by about a foot a day. The lake will be at its fully lowered level of 879 to 879.5 feet above mean sea level by Oct. 9. The refill will begin Nov. 24 and conclude on Nov. 28.
Inks Lake was last lowered in 2020.
The LCRA currently does not plan to lower any of the other pass-through lakes, such as Lake Marble Falls, Lake LBJ, and Lake Austin, in 2025. The next opportunity for a routine drawdown will be the fall of 2026, and the river authority will make a determination about which lakes, if any, will be lowered next year based on conditions at that time.
In the past, the LCRA has lowered lakes for shoreline maintenance and dock repair between January and February but now performs drawdowns in the fall to ensure hydroelectric generators at the dams can be fully operational in the winter, when electricity use can rise dramatically.
Floods or power emergencies could change or cancel the drawdown to pass water through the Highland Lakes. Property owners should not leave equipment unattended in the lakebed and should remove tools from the shoreline when not in use.
To lower Inks Lake, the LCRA will release about 5,000 acre-feet of water through the hydroelectric generator at Inks Dam. The water will flow downstream through lakes LBJ and Marble Falls into Lake Travis, causing Lake Travis to rise about 3½ inches.
Without additional rainfall, the water to refill Inks Lake will be released from Lake Buchanan, causing the lake to fall slightly less than 3 inches.
- For dock repairs: No permit or registration is required, but work must meet LCRA’s Safety Standards for Residential Docks on the Highland Lakes.
- For other work: Property owners must register projects at www.lcra.org/lakelowerings before beginning maintenance dredging, up to 2,000 cubic-yards, and repairs on retaining walls, boat slips, and boat ramps under LCRA’s Army Corps of Engineers Lakewide Permit. The permit notice provided at LCRA.org must be displayed in a visible location at the worksite.
- Deadline: All work should be completed by Nov. 28, when the refill concludes.
New construction must meet the requirements of the Highland Lakes Dredge and Fill Ordinance.
The registration form and Lakewide Permit Notice are available:
- online at www.lcra.org/lakelowerings
- by calling LCRA Water Quality Protection at 512-578-2324
Burning debris in the lakebed is not allowed. For more information, visit www.lcra.org/lakelowerings.
7 thoughts on “Inks Lake drawdown starts Oct. 1”
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I quit responding to people who hide behind a screen name unless they post something outrageously inept or right on target.
Steve, I don’t live on LCRA waterfront because it never is waterfront for very long.
I have helped a couple of friends work on their constantly receding shoreline and they never got a permit.
Doak Field, what positive measures are YOU taking for the folks living in or around Buchanan?
Are we to assume responsibility for your choice to live there?
Perhaps you would benefit by taking action and taking responsibility for your choices.
This is a reply to the previous message. Speaking from previous, personal experience, LCRA and the Corps of Engineers required permits for waterfront improvement / repair are “easy-pezey and free” during a lake drawdown.
Steve Koehn
Lake LBJ
The LCRA is a joke!
They need to get off their tails and spend some time on Buchanan. It’s always take, take, take from Lake Buchanan. When was the last time they did anything positive for the folks living on or around Buchanan?
The LCRA marketing machine touts themselves as stewards of the water. Ha. They are essentially a socialist organization playing Monarch or dictator over the serfs of Lake Buchanan. Their arrogance knows no bounds.
For once let’s see them do something constructive for Lake Buchanan.
1. Set that dredge upriver around the Tow area and start removing years upon years of silt and debris clogging up the mouth of Buchanan. There is tons of silt and debris all up and down the lake from Garrett Island North.
2. Give every LCRA employee a bonus for every dangerous stump they remove, tree cut that has grown up over the past few years to endanger boaters and shoreline debris brought in for disposal. For the past few years it has been crickets out of the LCRA. When Buchanan was down about 20 feet there were thousands of stumps begging for an LCRA steward to remove it from the dry shoreline before it potentially killed people.
The LCRA requirement for permits, registrations, ordinances and then for you to get on your knees and beg is a joke. Why should anyone on Lake Buchanan bow down to King Wilson or Court Jester Hofmann after the Buchanan damage and turning a blind eye?
Now the Burnet County Judge, Commissioners and others are voting themselves yet another raise? What is our county and state devolving to? How long are those paying the salaries of these people going to be fleeced? What does it say about county employees that keep giving themselves a raise time and time again?
We need to rise up and hold the LCRA accountable for YEARS of mismanagement and while we are at it Burnet County for the same types of embarrassments (if not worse) caused upon our beloved county by previous “leaders”. Rubber stamping what is now $35,000,000+ of spending for years by commissioners and other employees needs to stop now! Learn to live within your means!
We all need to share in cleaning these messes up. Inks, LBJ, Marble Falls, Travis & Austin should be made to share in the pain when our droughts hit. Imagine the gnashing of teeth if ALL of the Highland Lakes had to mirror the percentage to full of Lake Buchanan!
Correction. I said $35 million in spending when it should have been $35 million in debt.
LCRA maintains reservoirs, not lake recreational activities. The lake was down for years, how many stumps did residents go out and remove? Lake Buchanan has a conservation group, did they do anything? Are you part of it to help or do you just complain? I live on a lake, we dredge our own channel and dock areas, why should Buchanan be different? And please do tell what Burnet County has to do with the LCRA? You just like ranting? Could you do better? If you have something constructive to add please do so…
Who said anything about recreational activities even though that is what takes place on all of the LCRA lakes? The LCRA website, created by marketing specialists, touts their water stewardship. Why not tell the truth? Tell the people that you are selling water to rice farmers (I just love that Texas rice!), shrimp farmers, sod salesmen, pecan and coffee peddlers, fertilizer spreaders, duck hunters, brine manufacturers for fracking, electricity and flood control for downstream cities like Austin. The LCRA does not maintain anything. They sell it all!
Residents, by and large, are prohibited from removing stumps below 1013′. The LCRA, if they were true stewards intent on enhancing the quality of life of Texans would be working on Lake Buchanan, the largest and most critical of the lakes, doing everything to maximize water storage and cleanliness and safety. Stumps and trees were begging to be removed when the lake was down about 20-25 feet. Not a single LCRA employee could be found. Stewards? I don’t think so.
I can’t speak for the Lake Buchanan Conservation Corp but I believe their primary goal is to maintain and improve the effectiveness of Lake Buchanan as a recreational area. They restock the lake with fish, improve access and educate the public about water sports, fishing, hiking, boating, wildlife conservation and public access. All of these goals are hindered by sloppy, bloated management by the LCRA. The LBCC works to bring people to the lake. The LCRA doesn’t care if anybody enjoys or uses the Buchanan or Travis unless they make some $$$$.
I don’t complain. I ask questions so as to learn why these self-proclaimed stewards of the lakes pay so little attention to Lake Buchanan and do next to nothiing to make it better. They make the rules and regulations, they ought to be the primary organization constantly addressing problems. Have you ever read the bios on the LCRA Board of Directors? Go read the carefully crafted write-ups of that crew. It’s almost as if they are all brothers & sisters. Looks like Abbott could have at least steered a bit clearer of the possible “inbred” label.
People need to wake up and stop the mismanagement by a bloated bureaucratic lumbering elephant that operates much like the federal government. Maybe DOGE needs to camp out in Austin and do some investigating.
You live on a lake and do your own dredging? Well, that eliminates Buchanan and Travis as your “lake”. Are you sure you don’t live on a stock pond? Try doing your dredging on Buchanan or Inks or LBJ.
My mention of Burnet County and the mismanagement of it popped into my head as I thought about the local bloated copy cats of Washington DC entities. Burnet County Judge & Commissioners giving themselves salary raises over and over is embarrassing. I suppose based upon Burnet County leadership for the past 10 years minimum nothing embarrasses them. Commissioners have been rubber stamping everything that comes up.
I took the liberty of using this medium to bring up Burnet County, yet another travesty being allowed to fester and infect. It saves space and time and is similar in some respects of another runaway government group fleecing the taxpayers. So few people get involved and know of the depth of despair that unsupervised amateurs and appointed minions can bring down on the public.
Yes. I feel certain I could do better.