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Spillgate failure on Lake Dunlap

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By relapse98
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Guadalupe Emergency Management said downstream flows will be 5k-8k.
And the Corps increased the flow out of Canyon Lake yesterday to 1600CFS to get it back down to conservation pool level. (GBRA controls flow below 909, Corps above 909).

Edit: GBRA just said downstream flows might be in the 11k range.

 

Looks like maybe the center gate on the Dunlap spillway decided it had had enough and flowed on downstream. I'm not sure the level that the water will get to, I guess there will still be some water left in the lake, but man oh man.

 

And this brings up an interesting discussion. GBRA bought these lakes in 1963. They have basically never turned a profit and have actually cost money from other parts of GBRA - the majority of which is the water they sell from Canyon Lake. The dam at Lake Wood had an issue a few years back. GBRA has a plan to fix it, but it would cost, based on the fact that they have only netted 1.6 million in the 54 years (in 2017) that they have owned the lakes, 200+ years worth of profits to fix just Lake Wood. Not to mention this brand new failure on Dunlap.

The property owners on Lake Wood are furious at GBRA. They purchased property on a hydro lake and get to enjoy the lake for free. They don't pay any fees to GBRA for owning land on the lake, AFAIK. And now they want GBRA to fix their dam, so they can fully enjoy the lake again, but GBRA can't afford to fix it. Talk about a rock and a hard place. And I really don't know the fix. I guess maybe the legislature could come up with some sort of tax on the property owners to pay for maintenance of the lake they get to enjoy and I see where the property owners are coming from, seeing as there was a perfectly good lake when they bought property there. But I also see GBRA's side - those property owners just assumed the lake would always be there, when it was never set up for them to actually use it, they were only set up for electricity generation and GBRA's only focus is that generation.

 

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4 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Maybe they can start a go fund me page for a new floodgate.

Maybe they can tax the adjacent landowners who enjoy the lake for free and bear none of the repair and maintenance costs, except under their completely voluntary 'Friend of Lake X' groups that do stump cleanup etc. ;)

Farkin shame it's too late to get anything like that created for this legislative session, unless someone can get the governor to throw it into his special session(s).

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Judge Roybeanbag

Judge Roybeanbag 11810

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8 minutes ago, relapse98 said:

Maybe they can tax the adjacent landowners who enjoy the lake for free and bear none of the repair and maintenance costs, except under their completely voluntary 'Friend of Lake X' groups that do stump cleanup etc. ;)

Farkin shame it's too late to get anything like that created for this legislative session, unless someone can get the governor to throw it into his special session(s).

I wasn't disagreeing with you about the landowners.  You get what you pay for.

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TexArcher

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8 hours ago, futureman said:

it’s still town lake.  if someone calls it ladybird it just lets you know they showed up yesterday.

Exactly.  I like to test new acquaintances with, "Hey, want to go kayaking on Town Lake sometime?"  If they respond with a head tilt and "Where's that?" then I know to not be friends with them.

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21 minutes ago, woohorn said:

Is the utility gone and doesn't need the lake anymore?

In the 56 years GBRA has owned the hydrolakes, combined for all years have netted 1.5 million in profit, plus the hydro side owes the water supply side 4.5 million... so actually it's lost money.

And of course the people on the lake don't want to hear it, but what is GBRA's responsibility? They weren't created to provide recreation and the water supply customers, which are 98% of their revenue, might not like supporting what is a string of recreation lakes. 

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3 minutes ago, Rusty Shackelford said:

It is actually a water source for a group of municipal/WSCs that for the CRWA
https://www.crwa.com/members/
I wonder how much this will affect them?

I was in their parking lot yesterday, looking at the dam.

Their inlets are on the upstream side of the dam, right by it. Sounded like they were running last night, although I would think the turbidity (thank you Austin for teaching me that word) is high right now, so they probably have to settle that water a bit.

Their website says they can process 16.4 million gallons per day. There's 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot of water, so that would be 2,192,513 cubic feet of water a day.  River is currently flowing something like 1600 CFS out of Canyon and 400 CFS out of the Comal Springs, so 2000CFS coming through what's left of Dunlap - it would take 1096 seconds or 18 minutes for them to get their entire water needs for the day. Even in the summer when it goes down to like 300 CFS going through Dunlap when they turn off Canyon at 909 and the springs slow, there's still a lot of water left for CRWA.

 

I am suprised that they haven't said something either way, though, just to let people know what's going on. I'm sure they have been in contact with the various member companies.  And they May have to modify where there inlets are as the lake goes back to the natural channel (it was pretty much there last night).

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ImissWallyPryor

ImissWallyPryor 9045

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23 hours ago, relapse98 said:

60271194_10157503771836414_5410494719383

Well that doesn't look great.

Looks like a great opportunity to take an excavator to that siltation and regain some of that lost water depth.   They might even get down to sand or gravel or whatever. We did that when we lived on the water, and it improved the navigation, swimming, fishing, etc. 

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ButtFumble

ButtFumble 5158

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2 minutes ago, relapse98 said:

Video of the failure

Thing just up and left town. Looks like some of it stayed behind but appears a big chunk headed towards the coast.

the crazy thing is some meth heads have probably already pulled that shit from the river and scrapped it out

this is a pretty "out there" plan and would probably cost a shit tonne to implement, but I think they need to work in a pump back setup into some of these chains of lakes and they definitely need to do so on the highland lakes chain

perhaps LCRA can come in with their big swinging dick and money bags and buy up all of this river authority and then do the pump back system and do one on the highland lakes as well

it has been several years, but a Tech professor wrote a paper detailing how west Texas wind farms were actually paying people to take their power at night because the wind blows mostly at night when demand is low and with the subsidy for "green energy" they could pay users to take their power and still make some money as well

with a pump back they could get paid to take the power at night (or get the power for free) and pump the water back up hill and then in the day when you let the water go at the high demand point you get top dollar and that is again "green energy" and you double dip on the subsidy

plus hydro power is one of if not the fastest source of power that can come online and go offline

here is the article

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/texas-wind-farms-paying-people-to-take-power-5347

the transmission lines that article talks about possibly being built have for the most part been built now, but a lot more wind farms have been built since then too

if they can move that power at night across the grid down to central Texas and stage is as stored water behind hydroelectric dams that helps the transmission issue in the high demand periods as well

this is a pretty big plan that would take a lot of cash, but I think it could work long term

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6 minutes ago, ButtFumble said:

this is a pretty big plan that would take a lot of cash, but I think it could work long term

You would need a much taller dam, which would then mean the lake spreads out. It's normally fairly close to the top of those gates. And then there's the actual channel that goes down to the powerhouse. And then the houses that aren't built all that much higher than the (previous) lake level. It sounds like a neat idea but would not work on that lake, there's just no vertical space left. And I know the same thing with McQueeney, a few feed would have it in homes.

Maybe at Canyon, but then you run into the issue where the Guadalupe below the dam is used for recreation and the amount of water it would take to generate any usable additional electricity would mean a pretty good flow. I still think you'll hit vertical issues there because it was at 912 (conservation pool level is at 909) and there are some of the ramps closed.

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Brisketexan

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And watching what happens here....pay attention to the hydraulics.  There are lots of complaints in Texas about dams contributing to flooding because they "purposefully opened their floodgates" during massive flood events.  The alternative to that is to just let the dam overtop (which dams with actual gates really aren't designed for), and overtopping of dams can result in things like....this.  Imagine that with a dam holding back 50X that amount of water.  

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ButtFumble

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22 minutes ago, relapse98 said:

You would need a much taller dam, which would then mean the lake spreads out. It's normally fairly close to the top of those gates. And then there's the actual channel that goes down to the powerhouse. And then the houses that aren't built all that much higher than the (previous) lake level. It sounds like a neat idea but would not work on that lake, there's just no vertical space left. And I know the same thing with McQueeney, a few feed would have it in homes.

Maybe at Canyon, but then you run into the issue where the Guadalupe below the dam is used for recreation and the amount of water it would take to generate any usable additional electricity would mean a pretty good flow. I still think you'll hit vertical issues there because it was at 912 (conservation pool level is at 909) and there are some of the ramps closed.

with what I am saying on the Guadalupe chain of lakes they would probably have to build an off channel closed/non recreational collection lake at the bottom of the whole system

then the idea would be to use a volume of water pretty much daily out of Canyon and through each hydro plant until an equal amount is diverted into the catch lake and held to be pumped back up

I 100% agree that vertical height is the best thing to have to work with, but if you can have a decent volume flow through several plants and you double dip on the green energy credits while selling at the highest demand times it might work economically

the one issue is you can't drop canyon more than a couple of inches and raise it back a couple of inches each day because it is used for recreation and the infrastructure on it

as you said it would be best if Canyon was a higher lake above the outlet to get more pressure to start off, but if you were able to reliably produce a known amount of power every day....day in and day out that becomes meaningful

as for the recreation I think they could benefit from it

the two Canyon Dam hydro plants can take up to 300 cubic feet per second

https://www.gbra.org/operations/canyonhydro.aspx

and that is just at the level where there is caution to swimmers

https://www.nbtexas.org/1106/River-Status

so basically you could have near optimum tubing conditions every day if you were letting out 600 CFS and then pumping that back at night

that would be pretty big for New Braunfels if people knew pretty much every day they would have great tubing (barring major rain events like now)....there would never be a drought issue for tubing because the water goes down the river in the day and is pumped back at night and repeat

 

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