Marble Falls to invest in water lines after LCRA reduces its rates

CONNIE SWINNEY • STAFF WRITER

AUSTIN — The Lower Colorado River Authority has approved reducing its water rates by 17 percent for wholesale customers including municipalities and other so-called firm water customers, saving tens of thousands of dollars annually for some of those entities, officials say.

The LCRA will reduce the firm, or uninterruptible, water customer rate of $175 per acre-foot — in effect for about a year —  to $145 per acre-foot, which will go into effect in 2016. An acre-foot represents about 325,000 gallons.

The city of Marble Falls is one customer affected by the reduced rate.

“The reduction down from the drought rates probably will save the city about $30,000 to $35,000,” City Manager Mike Hodge said.

LCRA officials say the reduction coincides with improvements in drought conditions.

“This year’s rainy weather has made a significant difference in storage in our water supply reservoirs, and the drought rate is no longer necessary,” LCRA General Manager Phil Wilson said in a statement.

“The one-year drought rate was intended to help cover certain water costs during the drought, when revenues from interruptible water customers were dramatically reduced,” the LCRA statement continued.

LCRA had withheld water releases to a majority of downstream agricultural irrigators — including rice farmers — from 2012-2015.

Water officials advocating for Highland Lakes customers welcomed the price reduction but believe more needs to be done.

“This is good for firm water customers. They have been subsidizing or covering the cost of the canal system during the period of time that the farmers weren’t getting water,” said Kevin Kline, vice president of communications for the Central Texas Water Coalition. “The trick is the rates the interruptible customers are paying are still lower than the cost of providing them the water.”

Irrigators downstream pay $6.50 per acre-foot, a fraction of the firm water customer rate, due to the fact the LCRA can interrupt the water supply to them at any time.

“The rice farmers enjoy a canal system that LCRA operates for them, and they get their water delivered to their farms. … Arguably, they’re paying zero or negative for the water itself because it’s not even covering the cost of delivery,” Kline said. “That’s something we need the LCRA to work on to get the rates that the rice farmers are paying up to at least cover the cost of delivering the water to the canal system.”

For communities such as Marble Falls, the reduction represents a culmination of talks with LCRA officials as well as a step toward enhancing city services.

“I’ve been working with their leadership there (at LCRA) and then also with the firm water cooperative to lobby to get the drought rates reduced … back to at least what we were paying before, if not better,” Hodge said.

The difference represents more funding for capital improvement projects such as replacing aging lines, which in some areas of town, are 50- to 70-year-old cast iron pipes, he said.

“We’ll couple (funds accumulated due to the reduced rate) with another $45,000 to $50,000 that we save with refinancing bonds for some 2007 projects we did,” Hodge said. “What we’re talking about doing is taking that money along with some funds that we’re going to be receiving through some refinancing of bonds that we recently did and putting that towards improving aging infrastructure in the city.”

connie@thepicayune.com