(Seguin) — The Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority Board of Directors on Wednesday got an update on the catastrophic failure of a spillgate on Lake Dunlap.
GBRA Executive Manager of Operations Darel Ball provided details about the loss of the spillgate, which led to a draining of Lake Dunlap and increased flows downstream of the dam.
“(Tuesday) morning at approximately 8:00 or 7:49, we had a failure of the second gate, the middle gate at the (Lake) Dunlap hydro system. These are old gates, bear trap gates that have been in service approximately 90 years. We are in the process of doing some remedial repairs to most of the gates in our system, as we work through the schedule. We were able to capture some of the video, or took a snippet out of the security camera video and I’m going to show that now,” said Ball.
What the video showed was the total collapse of that gate. It didn’t just stop working, it was completely washed away. Ball didn’t address the conditions for property owners along the lake, but he did provide the board with details about GBRA’s water supply operation. A large number of users along I-35 depend on water from that area. The failure did temporarily impact their operation, but he says they were able to get water back into the canal, so that those demands could continue to be met.
“Our temporary solution to supplying water to the pump station that is located on the canal, is that we have installed a pump with discharge piping that bypasses the canal intake system and releases water into the canal just immediately at or upstream of the pump station itself. We are able to deliver water to our San Marcos Water Treatment Plant, the Hays Energy Power Plant and the CRWA Hays/Caldwell Plant. As of (Wednesday) morning, we have the San Marcos Water Treatment Plant running again. We’re treating about eight to nine million gallons a day, and that’s being delivered to the city of San Marcos and customers in the I-35 system,” said Ball.
The board asked a few questions about the water supply, and also asked when crews might be able to get a better idea of exactly what happened and what they are dealing with going forward. Ball pointed out that the additional flows being released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from Canyon Dam is going to prevent them for gathering any further details for a few weeks.
Joe Solansky, president of the Friends of Lake Wood Association, was the only person who signed up to address the issue. Solansky says he feels sorry for the people on Lake Dunlap. He says Lake Wood in Gonzales suffered a failure of its spillgate three years ago, and the damage still has not been repaired. Solansky says these types of situations will continue to occur if something is not done to improve the aging infrastructure along the Guadalupe River and its hydroelectric lakes. While the GBRA starts to look at this latest failure, Solansky says he’s still waiting for GBRA to fix the problem at Lake Wood.
“I know you have a huge dilemma here. It was in the making — just waiting for it to happen. It wasn’t an if, it was a when. Because you’ve got a 90 year old train with a 90 year old set of tracks — something is going to derail, and it’s happening. Of course, you all are living it, and we are seeing it and we’re feeling it at Lake Wood. This March, it was three years that our situation happened, and about the only thing I’ve seen actually done there is the old gate was pulled out and put on the bank there, and there was some red ribbon laid out there. We’ve got, of course, the whole thing working with the legislature (now), and hopefully we’ll get something resolved here soon,” said Solansky.
Solansky says he understands that this infrastructure problem was inherited by the current GBRA administration, but he says something needs to be done, or more of these types of situations will occur.
“I understand the infrastructure (issue), the (lack) of contingency funds and no contingency plans — all this was laid out before this new administration had taken over. I’m hoping and I support them in whatever they can do to get this thing resolved. I know how the people feel on Lake Dunlap. I feel sorry for them big time, but it was going to happen,” said Solansky.
The GBRA Board of Directors took no action on the issue. It was not an agenda item, but the update was provided as part of an administrative report.