Lake Austin drawdown canceled after fight over fall timing, marina manager tells council

The city’s planned fall drawdown of Lake Austin was canceled, Tara Carr, who manages Lake Austin Marina, told the City Council at its Oct. 8 meeting. She said it had been announced with 53 days’ notice.

The lake, which sits in District 10, was to be lowered from Oct. 12 through Nov. 30. The meeting records reviewed by Austin Politics do not include the city’s announcement or its reasons for calling it off.

The cancellation followed weeks of testimony from lake businesses. They said they support a drawdown but asked the city to move it from fall, their busy season, to January and February, when past drawdowns took place.

City staff have said they want regular drawdowns. Carr said hydrilla, an invasive water plant, now covers almost 600 acres of the lake, up from 74 acres in June 2025.

“I agree with a lot of the questions that you just raised … and they should have had answers frankly, a long time ago.”

Why lower the lake?

Staff laid out the plan at the Aug. 26 meeting of the council’s Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee, chaired by Council Member Ryan Alter (District 5).

Lake Austin is a pass-through lake and the source for Austin Water’s two largest treatment plants, staff said. To lower it, the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) holds back water from Lake Travis while Lake Austin’s water keeps flowing to the treatment plants and downstream.

The lake would drop no faster than one foot a day, taking up to three weeks, staff said. It would stay down four weeks so property owners could repair docks and bulkheads and remove sediment, then refill in five to six days.

Liz Johnston, the city’s environmental officer in Watershed Protection, said a drawdown will not kill hydrilla, though it could help control another invasive plant, Eurasian milfoil. She said staff will adjust grass carp stocking depending on whether a drawdown happens.

Johnston said the city began getting requests last fall, held town halls, formed a stakeholder group and first emailed stakeholders about a possible drawdown in April. Council Member Marc Duchen (District 10) said some people, including stakeholder group members, felt “surprised if not blindsided by this.”

The director of Development Services said the city would offer a two-page, by-right permit for dock, bulkhead and sediment work, with a turnaround of no more than five days. A full site plan can take six months or longer, he said.

Why not winter?

Austin Water staff said LCRA told the city it has not done winter drawdowns since Winter Storm Uri in 2021. Staff said they warned in an October 2025 memo that October and November were the likely window.

Spring was ruled out because of unpredictable weather, flooding and LCRA releases for downstream rice irrigation, staff said. Johnston said Texas Parks and Wildlife told the city a spring drawdown would not be desirable during fish spawning.

Vice Chair Paige Ellis (District 8) asked whether mid-November to early January could work. Staff said LCRA wants the lake back to full by Nov. 30, and that December through February is off the table.

Asked by Duchen how much the economic hit weighed, staff said they knew it would have an impact but had no time for a full economic study. Staff said future drawdown decisions should come with better economic impact analysis.

Ellis said she had heard from more people who want a drawdown. “I think more of the issue is just the, the timing of it and making sure that folks know,” she said.

What lake businesses said

Carr told the committee Aug. 26 that the city’s memo put the cost of lost LCRA power generation at $7,000 under normal conditions and up to $68,000 under extraordinary ones. “Where is that math for ours?” she said.

A co-owner of Float On Boat Rentals, a family business with 18 boats, said the closure would overlap with University of Texas football and Formula One weekends. A developer building the Four Seasons Lake Austin project said his firm did not ask for the fall timing and believes the drawdown “should be in January and February like it always was.”

He said that, from what he could find online, the dam makes less than 1% of Austin’s power, and asked for a written answer from the state before winter is ruled out.

At the Sept. 10 council meeting, the Float On co-owner asked the council to vote on the plan. “Closing a public lake for seven weeks is a decision the people we elected should make,” he said.

“You cannot simply turn small businesses off and back on like a light switch.”

Smith said his businesses faced more than $300,000 in lost revenue. Shannon Murphy, who said she works with a business at Mozart’s Coffee Roasters, estimated a loss of more than 200 jobs and $2.5 million in that one area of the lake.

After the speakers, a council member asked the city manager’s office for more information on the timing and the concerns raised. A staff member said yes.

At the committee’s Sept. 23 meeting, Carr asked what replacement power would cost. She said the fall window had drawn zero votes from the stakeholder group, and called the city’s plan to study economic effects afterward “an autopsy.” She also asked, “If December to mid-January is now possible, why isn't January to mid-February?”

An assistant city manager told the committee a memo with updates would go to the mayor and council “definitely no later than this week.”

What happens next?

The records reviewed do not show a new drawdown date. Theresa Lutz, acting assistant director of Austin Water, said LCRA does not lower an individual lake more often than every four years, and staff see that as a possible schedule.

Staff said drought, more than anything, explained the years without a drawdown, and that the city had no process for deciding on one until this year. Residents can reach staff through the contact link on Watershed Protection’s Lake Austin web page, staff said.

Carr asked the full council Oct. 8 to press staff on hydrilla targets and on what the city learned from the canceled drawdown. “I'm still asking one very simple question, what is the plan?” she said.