CANYON LAKE, Texas – The images from the Fourth of July floods in the Hill Country are unforgettable. The Guadalupe River’s raging waters bowled over anything and everything in its path.
But Canyon Lake Dam intercepted the water, and even more destruction was adverted.
“On July 5th at 4:30 a.m., around 35,000 cubic feet per second (of water entered Canyon Lake),” Marcus Schimank said.
Schimank is the operations project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Fort Worth district. He said it can take a day and half for water upstream to travel down to Canyon Lake.
Cranes Mill Park is where the Guadalupe enters into the reservoir.
Schimank said the lake’s water management team was on their post during the July flood, monitoring the speed of the flood as well as the weather and river conditions downstream.
He said they were keeping a close eye on the situation and ready to activate emergency plans if needed.
Prior to the Fourth of July flood, he said Canyon Lake was at a historic low level due to Texas’ years-long drought.
“We were more than 31 feet below the top of our conservation pool, so we had a lot of storage in our conservation pools,” Schimank said.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, conservation pool level at Canyon Lake is 909 feet above mean sea level. Above that is the flood control pool, which the Corps measured at 943 feet mean sea level.
The agency affirmed there was more than enough space in the lake to take in the July floodwaters even if the reservoir was at its conservation pool level.
“From July 5 through July 6 is when we noticed a nearly 10-foot elevation increase out here at Canyon Lake,” Schimank said.
He said there was around 84,000 to 85,000 acre-feet of water.
“From July 5 through August 8, the lake did come up from that at 14.8 feet,” Schimank said.
Lake levels readings following the July Fourth flood, recorded Canyon Lake going from 46% full to 68%.
Schimank said Canyon Lake did its job in protecting communities along the Guadalupe River, from New Braunfels on down to Victoria, from seeing devastating floods.
“The dam did its job just like it has in the past, Schimank said. “You know, (it) prevented those floodwaters from going downstream and doing further damage down there.”
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