City staff provided projections for San Angelo's surface water supplies in response to a public information request. The high evaporation toll can be seen in how much (little) of Lake Nasworthy is left, a mere eight days. This does not seem realistic as Twin Buttes water will be pumped from its two pools into Lake Nasworthy, keeping its level up.
City Council held a substantive discussion on entering Drought Level 1 on Tuesday. Most comments and questions were intended to help the public understand the need to cut water use while raising prices even more.
One City Council member derided citizens researching the water volume in area lakes by suggesting a significant amount of water is not accessible due to lakes reaching dead pool status. The City proved its ability to get nearly all of Twin Buttes water via rented pumps at both the South and North Pools in 2012, 2013 and 2014. City staff have no dead pool assumptions visible in their analysis.
During the 2012 drought Water Chief Will Wilde did not deduct evaporation in his calculations. Roughly 23,000 acre feet will be lost to evaporation in the above projections. That's 1.75 years of water gone into the atmosphere.
The projection shown above was not included in the City Council background packet or the slide presentation to Council on 7-17-18. That's why I posted it for the public to view.
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