First New Reservoir in Decades Now Serving Wharton County

Arbuckle Reservoir near the Texas coast is complete, full and ready to help meet the region’s growing need for water.
 
The Lower Colorado River Authority announced the reservoir is operational during the LCRA Board of Directors meeting on Wednesday in Caldwell.
 
“This is historic for the lower Colorado River basin and LCRA,” said John Hofmann, LCRA executive vice president of Water. “This is the first large reservoir constructed in our basin since the Highland Lakes were completed in the early 1950s. These large water supply projects can be very challenging, but we kept at it and are very pleased to say the new reservoir is up and running and ready to serve.”
 
With the off-channel reservoir in service, LCRA can capture and store substantial amounts of water downstream of the Highland Lakes for the first time.
 
The new reservoir sits just off the Colorado River in Wharton County, an area that typically receives almost twice as much annual rainfall as the Highland Lakes watershed. Water will be pumped from the Colorado River into the reservoir and later pumped back out to help meet local water needs. 
 
The new reservoir holds about 40,000 acre-feet of water and can be drawn from and refilled multiple times a year. When operated in conjunction with the other two water supply reservoirs in the basin – lakes Buchanan and Travis in the Highland Lakes – Arbuckle Reservoir will add up to 90,000 acre-feet to the region’s water supply. (An acre-foot is just under 326,000 gallons of water.)
 
Beginning immediately, water from the reservoir can be used to meet industrial needs in the lower basin. Water from the reservoir also will be available to help meet flow requirements into Matagorda Bay and agricultural needs in the area.  
 
Until Arbuckle Reservoir came online, much of the water to meet LCRA customer needs in the lower basin had to be sent downstream from the Highland Lakes, more than 150 miles upstream. With Arbuckle now operational, many of those needs can be met with water stored in the new reservoir.
 
“Arbuckle Reservoir benefits everyone in the basin,” Hofmann said. “In addition to reducing the amount of water from the Highland Lakes that will be sent downstream, it also enables us to store water in the lower basin for the first time. This allows us operational flexibility, so we can meet some or all the needs in the area with water stored locally and be more efficient in using downstream runoff.”
 
LCRA will continue to release water from the Highland Lakes to supply water to customers below Lake Travis, including the cities of Austin and Pflugerville, the West Travis County Public Utility Agency, several power plants, industries and agricultural operations, as well as to meet environmental flow requirements for locations in the river above the intake for Arbuckle Reservoir.  
 
With the addition of the new reservoir, LCRA’s “firm” inventory of water – or the amount of water that can be supplied on a yearly basis even during a repeat of conditions seen during the worst drought the region has experienced – is now 590,000 acre-feet.
 
The project has a current lifetime budget of $456 million, partially funded by a Texas Water Development Board bond sale and a grant from the TWDB.
 
The reservoir is named after J. Scott Arbuckle, a lifelong Wharton County resident who served on the LCRA Board of Directors from 2011 to 2015 and was an early and fervent supporter of the new reservoir.
 
The reservoir is strictly for water supply and is not available for recreational use such as boating, fishing or swimming.  
 
The reservoir covers 1,096 acres and is about two miles long and one mile wide.