Ragoo said:

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agcivengineer said:

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The USA has not chosen to invest in infrastructure replacement or building resilient infrastructure. These dams are 80 ish years old. There should have been a plan started to replace these dams about 20 years ago. Infrastructure doesnt last forever. Whoever benefitted from these need to pay for them. I gotta laugh when people above in the thread talk about it being "semi-private" and limited boat access and unless your a "member" you wont have access. Well, membership has its benefits....

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look at LCRA, they have dams just as old and in significantly better shape.

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And GBRA dams are puny compared to LCRA's.

Burdizzo said:

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If I remember correctly, the previous GM of GBRA was Bill West, Aggie, who had a pretty long tenure

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there are quite a few Aggies within their management. Sure feels like they are tolerating a lot of theft.

GBRA has been losing money on their hydroelectric for years.

And the lakes are not intended as recreational lakes. That was simply a byproduct of making the lake. GBRA doesn't get any tax money from people have lake front property.

They are constant level, so they aren't use for water storage. The dams are beyond intended life. They aren't flood control structures, They aren't making money on hydroelectric (losing money actually). They simply don't have a vested interest in keeping the lakes. For anyone worried about the financials of this, the only sound decision is to de-water them. The liability is a big deal too.

I don't see where they have an actual duty to any of the lake front property owners since they don't receive public funding from property taxes. It sucks for lake front owners, but that was a risk buying on a lake these. Many people have done their research in the past and not bought simply over this exact concern.

GBRA is really about water rights and supplying water. Their water storage is in Canyon and works with USACE for that.

WhoopN06 said:

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It's mind boggling as a quasi state agency there are not audited financials published.

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https://www.gbra.org/documents/publications/annualreports/2018.pdf

you can find them on their website.

Ragoo said:

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I disagree

If the hydro-electric is a net zero they should have dewatered in '72 and again in '98 and still again in '02.

The fact that GBRA maintained the lakes long after the economics of the electricity generation was financially beneficial creates a public statute of expectations that the GBRA should be financially responsible for maintaining. They should have requested the state to impose a small tax within the counties it serves to maintain their infrastructure.

There are plenty of people along the lakes who have had significant financial loss due to flooding in parts because of the dams, and who have rebuilt in part because of the dams.

This is a two way street and the GBRA is taking the easy way out.

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It hasn't always been a net zero. According to what they posted, they didn't start having economics issues until Texas' energy deregulation began in 1999. Would definitely take a few years after that for it really pan out as permanently bad economics. So no, they wouldn't have dewatered them back then.

They couldn't just ask the state to create a taxing district. That pretty much has to go to a vote. This action is basically going to force that vote. I would think it'd be a very poor bet to think a tax district had much chance of passing when people didn't see an immediate issue. People are often short sighted, even when their own interests are at stake.

I disagree that this is the easy way out for them. Taking the incredibly unpopular route is definitely not easy. One thing to remember is that GBRA isn't a constant, the managament changes, and the currrent management is paying for a lot of the sins of the past right now.

I'll definitely agree they've made some poor choices in the past, but I'm also not convinced that doing other options would have significantly changed the outcome, outside of kicking the can a few more years down the road. The construction of the dams have a lot of limitations in my opinion and there isn't any kind of funding structure within GBRA for replacement dams that don't serve GBRA purposes.

What would you suggest they do if they keep the lakes full and then the special taxing districts fail? The past is done at this point and the lakes aren't critical to the GBRA's main purposes. They don' t have immunity from lawsuits when some is killed due to that past negligence. They are doing what they can to fix that today. I'm thinking they're betting on an injunction to keep the lake full which they can then use in defense of a lawsuit when another gates breaks.

normaleagle05 said:

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MouthBQ98 said:

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I don't see how they could build dams almost a century ago that were adequate all this dime but now everything has to be ridiculously overly complex expensive to replace those relatively simple structures. Why would these things NEED to be so overly engineered and built?

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There wasn't any regulation of engineering when those were designed so no one stood to lose the license that was tied to their livelihood. Also, contractors were mostly workmen that took pride in the things they built. You can tell because of all the old crap still standing. Now contractors are mostly con-men looking for revenue increasing and time delaying change orders so they can shop materials and subs. You can tell because of the armies of lawyers standing between them and the things they build.

Your design has to account for all that and it is expensive.

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Wow.

Aggie_3 said:

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Bottom line GBRA has spent 25 million total on as they say repair and maintenance on all the dams total over the last 55 years according to what they've been saying. That is gross mismanagement

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You do realize that $25MM over a 55 year period on submerged structures isn't all that much, right?

And that there are literally hundreds of factors that go into determining what repairs are necessary, when they are necessary, etc. And that often times you can make an inspection on a structure one day and it is is really great shape, but a month later after a major event things can change significantly.

I am not absolving GBRA of wrongdoing - I'm sure there has been mismanagement to some degree. Hell, it's a government agency after all. But the blanket statements made out of anger and likely a high degree of ignorance doesn't make you look good or smart either.

These lakes were created 80+ years ago with the specific purpose of providing power through hydroelectric dams, a metric crap ton of things has changed in that 80 year time frame - including the fact that those hydroelectric dams are small, obsolete and have far outlived their purpose given that there are a great many more efficient power generation sources in the area. The lakes have, as evidenced by this thread, become defacto private lakes for the landowners on those lakes. They have been relegated to pretty much a recreational capacity for the most part. I would argue that they are a source water for treatment, but evidently there are contingencies available because GBRA is willing to drain the lakes.

This is a Guadalupe County/GBRA/landowner issue as it currently stands.

Ragoo said:

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Burdizzo said:

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If I remember correctly, the previous GM of GBRA was Bill West, Aggie, who had a pretty long tenure

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there are quite a few Aggies within their management. Sure feels like they are tolerating a lot of theft.

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Do you know what the bylaws of the GBRA are? If the answer is no, then this type of statement is garbage.

Hell, in the article linked it even stated that GBRA cannot use funds generated from water sales and wastewater treatment revenue for dam maintenance. Why? I haven't the faintest clue, but surely there is some legislative reason why.

It's more likely a case of hands being tied legislatively than anything, because when these authorities were created and given power, the legislature wasn't thinking about 100 years down the road and what might change between then and now.

there's simply not a cogent argument to be made for keeping and fixing the dams at this point.

Yep, the local taxing authorities are going to take a hickey when the property values drop. They didn't cause the problem, but they get the damage. On the other hand, the GBRA does not exist to provide recreational lakes and high property values. The loss of tax revenue by the local authorities isn't their problem, technically and legally speaking.

This doesn't even factor in the property owners who take a beating on their investments. On the bright side their property taxes are about to drop like a rock in a waterless lake.

This is going to be an interesting legal and financial issue to sort out.


I hear similar issues about Medina Lake. It is a lake that was built and managed to supply irrigation water so the level of the lake can fluctuate wildly, much to the dismay of adjacent recreational landowners. Someone told me a few years ago Bandera County CAD assesses a $1200/LF premium for shoreline property along the lake. And when the property owners complain to BMA, BMA doesn't care. Recreational use of the lake isn't a priority for them.