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All water used in the Brazos River Authority’s Water Supply System is accounted for, and a newly-released report shows where that liquid lifeline is going.

Each year, the BRA compiles data from the previous calendar year and releases how much water is used, by whom, and where, among other details, in its Customer Water Use and Reservoir Accounting Summary. 

This user-friendly graphic illustrates water data for 11 reservoirs in the BRA Water Supply System, which are scattered across the 42,000-square-mile river basin. Three of the reservoirs were built and are owned and operated by the BRA: lakes Possum Kingdom, Granbury, and Limestone. The other eight are owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: lakes Proctor, Whitney, Aquilla, Belton, Stillhouse Hollow, Georgetown, Granger, and Somerville, with the BRA contracting with the federal government for storage of water in these reservoirs. The BRA holds water rights to beneficially use the water stored within the BRA water supply system. All 11 reservoirs were built by people for either water supply or as multi-use reservoirs.

The Customer Water Use and Reservoir Accounting Summary details information for each lake, including the amount of inflows into the reservoir, how much water was released for water supply, how much water was used by lakeside users, and how much water was lost to evaporation, among other factors. Totals are measured in acre-feet, which is the amount of water needed to cover one acre (43,560 square feet) with one foot of water. One acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons of water.

In 2024, 300,973 acre-feet of water was used across the basin. The breakdown of that total includes roughly 55% of the water going toward municipal purposes, while 40% went to industrial uses such as electric generation, 4% for irrigation, and 1% for mining. 

Meanwhile, evaporation consumed 525,028 acre-feet of water during the calendar year.

The report also details how much flood water was released per reservoir. The three BRA reservoirs have no flood storage; therefore, when the lake is full, water must be passed downstream to protect the integrity of the dam. In 2024, Possum Kingdom Lake released 239,872 acre-feet, Lake Granbury released 448,748 acre-feet and Lake Limestone released 712,939 acre-feet of flood water.

Lake Limestone’s Sterling C. Robertson Dam set a record in 2024, attributing to that total. During the first week in May 2024, record amounts of water flowed down the Navasota River into Lake Limestone, located in Limestone, Robertson, and Leon counties. The reservoir’s Sterling C. Robertson Dam released about 227,000 acre-feet of water from May 1 – 6. The amount of rain that hit that general area was so heavy that on May 2, 2024, the Sterling C. Robertson Dam surpassed its record release rate (previously set in April 2009) of about 58,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), releasing about 77,650 cfs. To put this in perspective, 1 cubic foot is equivalent to the volume of a small beach ball.

The BRA is responsible for providing water to municipalities, industry, agriculture, and mining within the Brazos basin. Those who use the water include cities, water districts, water supply corporations, agricultural users, irrigators, manufacturing entities, steam electric generating facilities, and mining operations.  

The BRA was the first state agency in the United States created specifically to develop and manage the water resources of an entire river basin and is now the largest provider of wholesale surface water within the basin holding 17 water rights, but not the only provider.

To improve future water supply, the Brazos River Authority is working toward building a new reservoir that would bring the total in the system to 12. Allens Creek Reservoir is a proposed pumped storage reservoir for the lower Brazos River Basin. This proposed reservoir is a strategically located site and would capture and store water from the Brazos River during high flows for water supply in a location close to some of the organization’s largest users.

With only three reservoirs in the BRA’s Water Supply System being located on the Brazos River itself (lakes Possum Kingdom, Granbury, and Whitney), millions of gallons of water travel the length of the river in excess of environmental needs that are uncaptured, flowing into the Gulf of America unused. The proposed Allens Creek Reservoir will help capture some of the water that would have been lost, further enhancing the water supply options for the entire basin. (Get the latest update on Allens Creek here) 

For more information on the BRA’s Customer Water Use and Reservoir Accounting Summary or to see past year’s reservoir accounting summaries, go here.