Opinion: Austin’s water woes call for leadership
Austin’s vulnerability to the double whammy of climate change and explosive growth is written on our city’s landscape in the form of shrinking lake levels and booming construction sites. Whoever wrote the job description for Austin Water’s next director seems not to have gotten that memo.
Over the past few years, Austin residents have dealt with repeated disruptions to their drinking water caused by a nearly comical diversity of causes. First there were water shortages caused by the historically low lake levels of 2011-2014. Then in 2018, residents were put on a boil water notice prompted by historic flooding and elevated sediment. Winter Storm Uri shut down the city’s main water treatment plant in February 2021 after Austin Water employees did not know how to activate a power switch. Just this past February, we enjoyed another multi-day boil water notice thanks to employees failing to report a minor operational incident.
The next crisis lies just around the corner. Already, lake levels are shrinking thanks to our current drought, which is mimicking in every way the historic drought of 2011. Only now our population is more than 30% higher than it was in 2011—more demand on a system that has demonstrated time and again over the past decade its extraordinary fragility.
Almost a decade ago, our primary water supply, the Highland Lakes, stood at just 30% capacity. The lakes had never been lower since their construction. The looming prospect of a day without water catalyzed the development of Austin’s 100-year water supply plan, known as Water Forward. It has been four years since City Council adopted that plan, which called for efforts to reduce water consumption, promote and mandate water reuse and commence planning and development for our city’s next big water supply project, an Aquifer Storage and Recovery facility to bank water underground.
Over the past four years, that plan has been slow-walked forward. Virtually none of the sparkling new high rises on our skyline reuse water, despite most of them being close to an existing or easy-to-extend reclaimed water pipeline. Same with the new Capitol Complex. Nearly every old home that is demolished is replaced with new residences outfitted with automatic irrigation systems. As a result, Austin’s per capita water consumption is 10% higher today than was projected in our multimillion dollar water plan. A water director who is truly committed to creating a more resilient and reliable water utility would have made sure these things never came to pass.
Our next water director faces numerous formidable tasks. The director will need to grow our current water supplies to serve a future population of 4 million people—four times the number who live here today. All the while, climate change will continue to test the resilience of our water supplies. It will also prompt greater vulnerability to other extremes, from floods to wildfires to electric grid blackouts, all of which can knock out water services from hours to weeks.
Our next water director also will hold responsibility for restoring the public's confidence in the reliability and safety of our water system and protecting affordability of this most essential service for all Austinites.
We urge the city manager to recall and republish the job description for Austin Water’s next leader. The current job search does not recognize the complex and frail position our city is in with respect to our future water supplies and everyday water service operations. This is not a job for an ordinary water director, and Austin Water users deserve better than an ordinary search.
Moriarty is the former Chair and a current member of the Water and Wastewater Commission and the Water Forward Task Force.
Leurig is a former Chair of the Water Forward Task Force
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: Austin’s water woes call for leadership
