Business

Lake Nasworthy Dam Opened, Letting Excess Water Down the Concho River

By Joe Hyde, May 25, 2014
 

Excitment was in the air as phone calls and text messages flooded into the San Angelo LIVE! cell phones, email and texts. Something was up at the Lake Nasworthy dam. Down Beaty Road, at Beaty Road Park, onlookers saw the San Angelo Park Police inspecting the area. "Police are down here looking in the water," one tipster said. Our crime and crash reporter was on his way. Enroute, a Nixle alert arrived. "Avoid Ben Ficklin low water crossing near South Bryant due to the opening of the flood gates to relieve overflow from Lake Nasworthy."

Ah! Good news. The lake that was so dry that the San Angelo Boat Races were scraped earlier this year due to lack of water now was plentiful enough that its was about to have water released downstream the Concho River to farmers east of here, and eventually to O.H. Ivie Lake, San Angelo's primary water supply. The rivers here flow west to east.

Plenty of onlookers were onhand for the seemingly historic occassion, since all we've heard for the past 1.5 years is how little water we have in San Angelo. The record-setting 2.39 inches Saturday, combined with today's 2.07 inches of rainfall, brings the year's total area rainfall to 6.11 inches.

From visual inspection late this morning, it appeared that the water was within 5 to 6 inches from running over the top of the dam. This relieves the pressure.

Video: Lake Nasworthy dam gates open:

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Comments

Slate, Sun, 05/25/2014 - 19:41
Next council meeting our leaders are going to thank everyone for praying so hard and let us water twice a week and fill pools. Nasworthy being full isn't nothing it's a tiny lake. You won't see me impressed till Buttes, Fisher, and Ivie are over 70 percent. Nasworthy will be back to where it was by the end of September or October unless there is another freak rain. No worries I guess, our leaders are so smart when we get close to running out again we can all just pray some more rain back.
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J. Cardon, my family and me choose to be thankful for the rain, and as for your words of discouragement, we hope you can get past your bitter perspective,it's not healthy for you.
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tgar3, Sun, 05/25/2014 - 20:02
We are blessed to have received so much rain that caused a lot of area runoff the help fill Lake Nasworthy. Why are they releasing so much water after our lake filled up. You would think they would hold on to it and release it slowly. It will make it way to Lake Ivie and sold to the City. I bet our leaders go back to letting everyone water their lawns everyday.
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Slate, Sun, 05/25/2014 - 20:17
I'm not acting bitter or discouraging anything. I'm being realistic. Lake Nasworthy doesn't hold much water. If you scroll up to the top right of the page you can see how many acre feet are currently in Nasworthy. Now lets do some math. 5127 divided by yesterdays usage, 33, equals 155 days of water from Nasworthy. Now if it came down to that the usage would be throttled down, but you have to account for these 100+ degree days that can evaporate as fast as municipal usage. This rain was very nice, but lets not be silly, we still need to conserve even more than we already are.
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First, I am so Thankful to God for this blessing, as many are. But what an opportunity for our new Council to show leadership and stewardship in planning for the long range future of San Angelo's water needs. The Hickory Project is headed to completion, great! The Council will hopefully see the investment in the Red Arroyo Project as prudent planning for the next "Drought Contingency", if not, let them remember the huge amount of water that rushed through town on Friday night that would have certainly filled any planned basin, supplying a precious stopgap of water if none else had fallen this weekend. Do explore the feasibility of "Potty to Pot", but build that basin NOW so perhaps we don't have to go down that road. And by all means - continue the focus of Public Awareness for Water Conservation and Gray Water Reuse - at least until Twin Buttes is once again full and O.C. Fisher is at least headed that way.
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I guess I've just got to wonder, we were pumping the last few drops out of Twin Buttes last week into Nasworthy...... Fast forward to now, Nasworthy is full to the point of over-flowing, so we are getting rid of the excess by letting it go downstream.... The pipes are already in place, all that would need to be moved is the pumps, so why not pump this excess back over the dam and into Twin Buttes now ? ? ?
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I agree with you that we should continue to conserve water and always continue to be responsible about our water usage even when times are abundant with water.
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