I agree with Bill on this to a point. The repairs costs on these dams seem very expensive although I do not believe this is the new normal. I don't think (and hope) the counties and school districts can absorb the property devaluation concerning taxes. If you look at all the lakes with dams that have and will fail, the property values are over $1 billion dollars. If the value of that property drops to $500 million, that is a huge loss of tax revenue. At some point in time, and especially if GBRA lowers all the lakes, all the government agencies will get much more motivated to find a solution. This only takes into consideration property tax revenue and does not include all of the other businesses around the lakes that will suffer decreasing revenue (decreasing tax revenue) also. As painful as it is, the more dams that fail or lakes that are lowered for safety, the quicker the issue will be addressed.

GBRA caused this by not maintaining their assets. This is not a result of a lawsuit or any individual group of land owners. Past GBRA management made a conscious decision not to maintain the dams now unfortunately, the new team has to deal with the problems.

I have a question about the gates. Why would they need to be replaced with other gates at all ?

If these lakes are obsolete for power generation and have no capacity for flood control why not just concrete in the slots left by the lost and degenerated gates ? Each lake has, I believe, 2 or 3 of these gates. Do they really need that functionality in these dams ? Even now when the Guadalupe floods the water just runs over the top of these dams.

GBRA says they lose $1.6M generating electricity so the question is why do it? They say the electrical portion of their business really became unprofitable when electricity was deregulated causing the price to go down. GBRA has stated that the gates are just to maintain flow through the generators that they have at each lake. The majority of electricity is generated from Canyon dam.

The gates do perform one function early on in a flood event. It enables the lake to draw down knowing a surge of water is coming to alleviate the initial flood (or minor flood) impact. Once the flood goes over the dam, there is no reason for the gates. There has been a lot of speculation on the type of gates needed or if they are needed.

So....what do you guys have to say now?

The way it sounds like they aren't going to drain the lakes completely and only drop them by around 13' so there will still be some water there, but maybe not enough to run your wake boats and jet ski's.
Open the river up to the tubers and kayakers, and look for other ways to help businesses in the area.
Instead of private property keeping people out, try opening up some parks with cabins and picnic areas.
They do it up the river along river road with no lake there, so why not downstream?

See, you sir are in the minority of the world. All these other cry babies see is doom & gloom, you see that it’s not all bad.

Turn lemons into lemonade, and sell lemonade to the tubers and kayakers...

They had no choice but to reduce the levels of these lakes below the spill gate level. The "Darwin Winner" members of the population win again.

With these videos existing (below) and if the GBRA did not act there would be HUGE liability.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgr8N8ruDqs


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