Lake Granbury Water Quality
Lake Granbury is a critical water supply in North Texas, providing water for more than 250,000 people in more than 15 cities. It provides water for industrial use, including cooling water for a natural gas-fired steam electric power plant and the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant. It is also a recreation haven for local water enthusiasts.
In recent years water quality issues have surfaced. Golden algae blooms have caused a number of fish kills in Lake Granbury, with substantial economic and biological losses. In addition, recent studies by the Brazos River Authority (BRA) have detected contamination of fecal coliform bacteria in several areas of the lake, primarily in coves with poor water circulation.
As a result, BRA will work with Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and a consortium of local entities and federal and state agencies to develop and implement an integrated watershed protection plan designed to reduce bacterial contamination.
Objectives
Work with BRA, TCEQ and local stakeholders as they develop a watershed protection plan for Lake Granbury.
- Develop a water quality education program to help landowners, homeowners, businesses and municipalities reduce nonpoint sources of pollution
- Develop integrated GIS models of Lake Granbury and its watershed to help understand water quality problems and potentially identify sources of contamination
- Conduct Bacterial Source Tracking (BST) to identify sources of bacterial contamination entering Lake Granbury
- Establish a detailed landuse analysis to aid in determining potential sources of bacterial contamination
- Continue to conduct water quality monitoring to evaluate the state of water in Lake Granbury and its watershed
- Develop and draft a watershed protection plan that addresses water quality issues in Lake Granbury and its watershed
Work with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Baylor University and the University of Texas at Arlington to investigate linkages between water conditions, nutrients, dissolved organic matter and blooms of golden algae. Develop and verify effectiveness of management options to prevent or disrupt blooms of toxic golden algae.
- Conduct extensive water quality monitoring in Lake Granbury
- Develop high-resolution spatial maps of Lake Granbury
- Continue model development which will produce a 1-D spatially explicit, time-dependent numerical model focused on P. parvum demographics in Texas reservoirs
Accomplishments
- Developed a Web site highlighting activities/research being undertaken by Extension and Texas Agricultural Experiment Station as well as other researchbased activities in the watershed
- Assisted BRA and TCEQ in organizing a stakeholder group for development of a watershed protection plan for the Lake Granbury Watershed
- Produced a series of water quality fact sheets about specific water quality issues in the region, namely, nutrient and sediment loadings, bacteria, urban and agricultural non-point sources and landscape chemicals
Collaborators
- Texas Water Resources Institute
- Texas Agricultural Experiment Station
- Texas Cooperative Extension
- Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
- Brazos River Authority
- Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
- Baylor University
- University of Texas at Arlington
- Hood County, Texas
Funding Agencies
- U.S. Department of Energy
- U.S. Department of Agricultural Natural Resources Conservation Service