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Lake Dunlap is full again; but now downstream neighbors say they’ve been hung out to dry

Property owners downstream from Lake Dunlap dam says the new gates don’t let water through like the old ones, resulting in lower water levels

NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas – Four-and-a-half long years after a partial dam failure largely drained Lake Dunlap, the Guadalupe County lake is full once again behind a newly restored dam.

But now downstream property owners say they’re the ones being left high and dry.

READ MORE: Lake Dunlap neighbors excited to see lake water returning after dam collapse

The lake has been filling back up for months, but since it was filled and hydroelectric operations were put back in service on Oct. 31, people immediately downstream from the dam say the water level of their section of the river has quickly started drying up.

They compare the piddling flow to recent years when there was no dam to hold the river back and the decades before the dam failure. The old dam design, they say, let some of the water flow over the the top while the new gates do not.

An Oct. 31 announcement on the Lake Dunlap Water Control and Improvement District (WCID) website even warned the natural channel would be drying up.

“Sometime in the next few hours, all the gates will have been raised to their fully upright positions. No water will be passing over or through them at that point, so the downstream side of the dam will be dry. This is what normal will look like going forward,” the announcement read in part.

Property owners around Lake Dunlap formed the WCID taxing district to help pay for the dam reconstruction project, but the actual structure is owned and operated by the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority (GBRA).

Water from the lake does make its way downstream, just not down the natural channel. Instead, the water flows down a canal from the lake to a hydroelectric powerhouse roughly two miles downstream, at which point it’s dumped back into the Guadalupe River.

The GBRA says the gross revenue of hydroelectric power sales goes back to the WCID to help pay for the dam.

Water from Lake Dunlap is diverted away from the natural river channel and down a roughly two-mile canal to be used for hydro-electric power. Property owners between the dam and power house say water levels are much lower with the new dam than the old design. (KSAT)

The previous bear-trap style dam had been in place for more than 90 years when one of its three spill gates failed in May 2019, leaving the manmade lake to sink rapidly to the level of its concrete base. That left the river to flow largely unimpeded until a few months ago.

Tim White, a co-owner of a property just below the lake and dam, said when the dam was being reconstructed, he had expected the water flow would return to pre-2019 levels once it was finished. However, he said a GBRA representative told them they would have minimal flow.

Standing 100 yards away from the dam on Nov. 6, along a dry stretch of rocks, White told KSAT he’d like to see some efforts to ensure the previous river flow from before the 2019 dam collapse is maintained.

“It used to be a very beautiful place where I would take my friends and family to go fishing, and now that’s just not here anymore,” he said.

Farther downstream, Melanie Schulze said she had lived on the river for “40, 50 years” and noticed a big difference between the current water levels and what they used to be before the dam collapse.

KSAT made multiple requests to the GBRA between Nov. 6 and Nov. 17 to make someone available for an interview.

Spokeswoman Lindsey Campbell responded to the first request, saying that the agency could not accommodate an interview and instead pointed to the GBRA’s website, specifically a Nov. 2 update.

“The stream section below the dam has been experiencing higher flows since 2019 because the damage to the spillgates and the subsequent construction activities created a temporary condition where all of the river flows passed through the dam. Current flows in and around Lake Dunlap are consistent with operations authorized for nearly a century,” the Nov. 2 update states.

Campbell did respond to three additional attempts to arrange an interview.

Photos KSAT obtained from a property owner on the canal bypassed section of the river show a large difference between the current water levels and those before the 2019 collapse.

However, KSAT was unable to find any empirical data to show what is happening to the water levels below the dam. Though the U.S. Geological Survey monitors the flow rate at various sections of the Guadalupe River, the nearest monitoring stations are miles upstream in New Braunfels.

The county is also split between “extreme” and “severe” drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

But people downstream are adamant their situation has changed.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Kirk McDonnell said the state agency is aware of the situation with Lake Dunlap dam and is monitoring the downstream area for effects on fish and wildlife.

Clay Church, a public affairs specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Forth Worth District, told KSAT the federal agency was talking to the GBRA to ensure the river authority is in compliance with permitted action related to water flow.

Note: The broadcast version of this story mistakenly stated Tim White’s last name as “Smith.” The error remains in the air-check video attached to this story but has been otherwise corrected.


About the Authors
Garrett Brnger headshot

Garrett Brnger is a reporter with KSAT 12.

Luis Cienfuegos headshot

Luis Cienfuegos is a photographer at KSAT 12.

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