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Ready to unpack the powerful stories of a Texas titan - the Brazos River? Listen as experts explain the Brazos River Basin's immense role in our daily lives. They'll cover everything from the river's fascinating history to all the work that goes into ensuring you have water when you turn on your faucet.
Hear invaluable insights on topics like why lake levels change, the important projects safeguarding our water, the many species that call the Brazos home, and even some tips for enjoying the water from Brazos River Authority experts.
This is your chance to understand the immense work that goes into developing, managing, and protecting the Brazos River Basin, which stretches from the Texas-New Mexico border to the Gulf. (The basin is the size of Tennessee, y’all, it’s big.)
It’s a huge part of our state’s story and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Got questions about the Brazos. No more unknowns. Ever wonder where that water comes from or where it goes? We're Unpacking the Brazos River.
Charlie Shugart:When many of us think about the Brazos River Basin, our minds naturally go straight to the Brazos River itself. And why wouldn't they? It's a huge iconic waterway and its name is literally in the name of the basin. But here's the thing, the basin is actually way more complex, woven together by far more rivers and tributaries than most people realize, and crucially, by some incredibly special lakes you might not have heard of. Today, we're highlighting Lake Limestone located on the Upper Navasota River. That's right. I said Navasota River, not the Brazos. It's a particular body of water that might be a little less known, but trust me, it is entirely special. Lake Limestone is a vital water supply reservoir and a key player in a much larger story. It's one of the essential reservoirs managed by the Brazos River Authority, and today, we're talking about how it silently provides in a big way, its history and all the things that make it special. Welcome to the BRA podcast, Unpacking the Brazos River. I'm Charlie Shugart, and I'm with our public information office. Joining us today is John Dickson regional lake operations manager. Thanks for being here.
John Dickson:Oh, you're welcome. Glad to be here.
Charlie Shugart:John, this is the first time you're joining us, so tell us a little bit about your history with the BRA.
John Dickson:Well, this is my first podcast, so you have to bear with me.
Charlie Shugart:You're fine.
John Dickson:I've been with Brazos River Authority almost twenty three years. In my former role, I was a property administrator, so we bought a lot of right of way, administered a lot of right of way, bought property for the BRA for our operations, and also went through a divestiture up at PK. So in my former role, I got to get familiar with all three reservoirs. And when an opening was available at Lake Limestone, I was fortunate enough to be selected to to have that role.
Charlie Shugart:Oh, great. Thank you for joining us. Also with us today is Jackie Scott, assistant reservoir manager and program coordinator. Thanks for joining us.
Jackie Scott:Thank you for having me.
Charlie Shugart:Tell us a little bit about your history with the BRA.
Jackie Scott:I've been at Lake Limestone for thirty eight years, started as a clerk typist, and worked my way up through the through the lake operations.
Charlie Shugart:Awesome. And so we're also very lucky to have Scott Davis, Lake Ranger Sergeant. Tell us a little bit about your history here with the BRA.
Scott Davis:Hi, Charlie. Thanks for having us in. I'm Scott Davis. I'm a resident Lake Ranger at Lake Limestone and took that position in October 2017, so just at eight years. I've been there and working, keeping the lake safe and try to do our best to keep the project secure, but it's been a wonderful experience.
Charlie Shugart:Well, I appreciate all of y'all being here.
John Dickson:Charlie, let us ask you a question.
Charlie Shugart:Yes, go ahead.
John Dickson:What does Brazos, how did that name Brazos get derived? And what does that mean?
Charlie Shugart:Oh, yeah, okay. So the full name, original name that the early Spanish travelers gave it wasn't just Brazos, it was Los Brazos De Dios, which means the arms of God. And there are several legends that talk about why it might have been named that, but a common one is attributed to the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. He and his men were about perish from lack of water when a group of Native Americans found them and took them to what we now call the Brazos River. Their relief must have been incredible since they were certain that they were saved by divine providence. They named it this, saying that the river was literally God's arms reaching out to rescue and embrace them.
John Dickson:Well, there's a little history like that about the Navasota.
Charlie Shugart:Do tell.
John Dickson:The Native Americans actually called it the Nabasoto which there are different theories on what that means. Some say it means muddy waters and some say it means waterways. But it they're originally their name was a Nabasoto and we transferred it into Navasota.
Charlie Shugart:That is interesting.
John Dickson:So just a little tidbit of history there.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. I love that. So let's rewind a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about Lake Limestone's origin story, and how was this massive project funded?
John Dickson:Well, it's no coincidence that we've got several power plants located around the lake. No tax dollars were used to fund the construction of this reservoir. It was done by selling bonds, I believe, and the electric companies paid for the construction of the reservoir. Also, we have another large employer in the area that is a part of the largest recycler in North America, and that's Nucor. Lake Limestone's been around since 1978. Yes. So we're approaching fifty years.
Charlie Shugart:That's incredible.
John Dickson:Remarkably, Nucor's been there about fifty years.
Jackie Scott:Fifty years.
John Dickson:Water drives a lot of economic engines and Lake Limestone is one of those. The water that is supplied out of that reservoir ultimately leads to a lot of jobs in the area.
Charlie Shugart:We mentioned earlier that Lake Limestone was located on the Navasota River. Can you paint a clearer picture for our listeners? Where exactly is this vital water supply reservoir within the broader Brazos River Basin?
John Dickson:The headwaters are above Lake Limestone originating, I believe, around Mount Calm.
Jackie Scott:Mount Calm Hubbard area.
John Dickson:Yeah. And it runs through, actually two other reservoirs before it gets to Lake Limestone. That being Lake Mexia and
Jackie Scott:And Lake Fort Parker.
John Dickson:Fort Parker. And so after the river flows through those, it comes through Lake Limestone. Actually, our office complex is located in Robertson County. The dam is located in Robertson and Leon County, but the majority of the lake is Limestone County.
Charlie Shugart:Okay.
John Dickson:And so after the river flows through what has been created as Lake Limestone, it travels south and eventually joins in with the Brazos down around a town. What's the name? If you could imagine, it's a town called Navasota.
Jackie Scott:At Washington on the Brazos.
John Dickson:At Washington on the Brazos.
Charlie Shugart:Okay. Okay. Well, for people who aren't familiar with this lake, how would you describe kind of what it looks like, what the activity is like out there?
John Dickson:Beautiful.
Jackie Scott:Call it the best kept secret in Texas.
Charlie Shugart:I love that.
Jackie Scott:It's rural enough that we don't we're not inundated with all the cities, big cities, and a lot of families use the lake for fishing and other boating activities.
Scott Davis:Very much family oriented lake, it's a place where you can kind of get out there and feel like you're by yourself and not surrounded by the hustle and bustle of regular fast paced life that we have nowadays, you know?
Charlie Shugart:Yeah.
Scott Davis:It's a great, big deer population. There are bald eagles that are nesting just downstream of the dam, and people really enjoy. We get birders out. We have otters, a family of otters that go back and forth from the river to the lake. Beavers, they're just comerades. They get out there in droves in the wintertime. We do have parts of white pelicans out there that it's it's just an amazing place to go out and then do wildlife watching for sure.
Jackie Scott:So last Saturday morning, I was out walking in our Park No. 5 along the bulkhead, a friend and I. So one of the river otters was playing on some riprap there on the emergency spillway at the edge of the park. So he followed us along the bulkhead just in the water.
Jackie Scott:Oh my gosh! The whole time we were walking, and you don't get that every day. You know, that's not normal.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. I love that.
John Dickson:Jackie said it's the best kept secret in Texas, but I think I see that changing a little bit. We're so centrally located between the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex and Houston down I 45. Personally, I've seen a lot of people purchase property on the lake because they have grandkids in Dallas, Houston, Austin, and this is a central place to locate where they can come on a weekend and recreate.
Jackie Scott:Since COVID, there's more full time residents around the lake. COVID changed the dynamics of the or people that live around the lake. Everybody was leaving the city, so a lot of people had second homes at the lake. And they came to work during COVID and ended up just making this their permanent home and staying.
Charlie Shugart:What's the most popular activity out there, do you think?
Scott Davis:I think it's fishing as opposed to we have a lot of like we mentioned earlier, a lot of families get out there and you see grandma and grandpa pulling their kids around on the tubes, that's a big draw. We do have a few wake boats that people get out and enjoy, but it seems like the majority of the people are out there taking advantage of the prolific white bass population. It's a great crappie lake and fantastic Blue Cat Lake. It seems like more and more we're seeing more bass tournaments on the weekends, whether it be the high school tournaments or we've got Tough Man coming up pretty quick. We do have quite a bit of submerged structure, quite a bit of timber, so you kind of got to know where you're going.
Scott Davis:And we try not to interfere with that. We don't allow people to just come out and do any stump removals. So we like the structure to stay. We try to manage a habitat in that way and we kind of pay attention to invasive aquatic plants and try to stay on top of those and invading up on the North end. Our partners at Texas Parks and Wildlife, they do a good job in helping keep those exotic subdued up there.
Charlie Shugart:Do y'all have particular invasive species that y'all see out there?
Scott Davis:Water hyacinth is the main one that we have here. Haven't documented any kind of zebra mussels yet.
Charlie Shugart:Which is incredible.
Scott Davis:Right. Yeah, we're trying our best to keep that out, but we ask the public to clean, drain, and dry their boats before launching into our waters, also upon retrieving their boats to clean, drain, and dry before they enter another body of water. That's not just a suggestion, it's actually a law that we need them to to abide by. That way, we don't transfer species from one public water to another.
Charlie Shugart:So the BRA owns and operates some parks on the reservoir. Am I right?
Jackie Scott:We own and operate two parks. Park Number 1, which is located on the West side of the lake by our our administration office complex. And then we own Park Number 5, which is on the east side, straight across. It's both are located by the dam. We donated Parks 2 And 3 to Limestone County years ago.
Jackie Scott:I'm not sure what year. And then Park Number 4 was never developed. There's barbecue pits, picnic tables, some small docks, and restrooms. We don't have electrical or water in our parks.
Scott Davis:We have some piers that people can go out and access and do some fishing off of and then some courtesy docks for the boaters.
Charlie Shugart:Do you have to pay to use the parks?
Jackie Scott:No. There's no overnight camping at the park on the West side by our office, Park Number 1, but there is overnight camping in Park Number 5.
Scott Davis:Park 5 is on the east end of the dam, and we're constantly receiving compliments on the upkeep of that park because there's a lot of trees, there's a lot of picnic tables, pavilions, and grills. And like I say, the short piers where they can go fishing or jump off the bulkhead and go swimming. We see people from all over. They have these websites to where they'll announce free boondocking for camping. Boondocking is where you don't have the electric and the water amenities, but we've had people in there from out of country.
Charlie Shugart:Wow.
Scott Davis:Yeah. Met them in there from England. I met them in there from Germany. This is part of a loop where they're touring the country, they'll come in here and just enjoy it.
John Dickson:Jackie and her crew do a great job maintaining these parks. After moving over there and living on-site, one of my favorite activities to drive through the park and visit with the people that are using it. As we mentioned, we don't charge. We've got a traveling preacher that comes through on an occasional basis.
Scott Davis:Andy. Yes, sir.
John Dickson:Andy. It's to visit with Scott. But one thing that I have noticed, sometimes you'll drive through and somebody will be sitting on a bench just probably trying to gather their day. No telling what's going on in their life and they sit on a bench, look out at the lake and you wonder, you know, I hope this is some way helping them. I know Scott's talked to quite a few people that do that.
Scott Davis:Oh, yeah.
John Dickson:These parks serve a valuable purpose even if it's for one person to get right with their self or or the Lord or what whatever they need to do. Yeah. We've met some interesting characters too.
Charlie Shugart:I bet it's a wide variety.
Scott Davis:That one guy with some punching gloves on is getting after a tree down there one time when I approached him and he said he was just kinda blowing off some steam. I said, well, stay with the tree and we're gonna be fine.
John Dickson:But we do have a limit that they can stay which is
Scott Davis:Ten days.
Jackie Scott:Ten days.
John Dickson:And then they have to be gone thirty days, so we don't we don't really have any permanent residents. And we don't really have an issue with that at all.
Scott Davis:No, sir. I did get a text yesterday. Hey, sarge. This is Larry. I'm that guy you met the other day. I'm back. Stop by and say hi when you get a chance. They know what the rules are. And at each park, we have our rules posted because we do have this real minor differences between the two, but they're posted at the entrances. And it's really interesting to get out and start talking to folks and kinda hear about their lifestyle and where they're from and why they're here. And it's kinda very interesting to get to know some folks.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. I imagine that's an incredible array of conversations and people.
Scott Davis:Oh, yeah. It's a really neat aspect of the job. Yeah.
Jackie Scott:Yeah. And I have to hats off to the maintenance crew at Lake Limestone. They take a lot of pride on the parks and the maintenance, the administration complex on keeping everything maintained, where people feel like they can go and the grass is mowed and no litter on the ground.
Scott Davis:Bathrooms are clean.
Jackie Scott:Bathrooms are clean, so they feel like they can use them and not have any issues there in the parks.
John Dickson:And so that, Jackie, the talent of the crew that we have over there, which BRA has throughout the organization, Very little do we hire outside sources to come in and do work.
Jackie Scott:Everything from A to Z. Anything we ask them to do, whether it's building awnings or painting anything or pouring concrete.
Scott Davis:Electrical, plumbing.
Jackie Scott:Electrical, plumbing, whatever we ask them, they can we have the reservoir manager's house and then we have the resident of the lake ranger's house.
John Dickson:Personally, I think it's a huge benefit to the lake and the community, not just to the people living in that house, but you've got eyes out there because we have to remember while we recreate on this lake that the dam is critical infrastructure for the state of Texas. Being out there on-site, you can see a lot going on. And we have a restricted area around the dam that we keep people out for obvious reasons. And so having somebody on-site, I can think of a lot of instances where we've had to call in the troops, our maintenance and operation because maybe there's a boat floating towards a dam. Too close to the dam or so having somebody on-site I feel is a is a big benefit.
Scott Davis:And it also allows us a very quick response time. There have been incidences in the past just in my short tenure there where minutes would make the difference in trying to get to, say, a capsized boat in inclement weather, you know, and being able to go out there and drop that boat and respond pretty pretty fast can can make the difference. You know?
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. Absolutely. What does the staff look like out there at the Lake Limestone office?
John Dickson:Well, we vary between thirteen and fifteen.
Jackie Scott:Yes.
John Dickson:I'm there. Jackie's there in the office. Sharon Davenport, who started two days with the BRA before I did. She's a senior administrative assistant, and I don't know how to say this other than she's really, really good at her job. Keeps everything running, keeps it in line, and just a pleasant person to greet the public when they come in. You know, a smile says a lot, and she's got a great one. Brandon Truett is our maintenance chief, and he reports to Jackie. And Jackie's also in charge of the permitting for our docks and retaining walls.
Jackie Scott:And the septic systems that fall within our area of jurisdiction.
Charlie Shugart:Okay. So if someone were to build a dock or a retaining wall, they come to y'all's office and go through a permanent process?
Jackie Scott:Yes.
Charlie Shugart:Okay. What's the importance of a permanent process?
John Dickson:It's not the Wild West. It's a structured environment that has some consistency to it. Because if you if you don't have rules and regulations, it's not good for your reservoir.
Jackie Scott:This way everybody follows the same regulations whether it's a bulkhead, a boathouse, or a septic system, then you keep them within those regulations, and it keeps good neighbors.
Charlie Shugart:Right. That makes sense.
John Dickson:And nobody knows those rules and regulations better than Jackie.
Jackie Scott:And I have an inspector, Coker Holloway. He works with me. And then, of course, Brandon's got his maintenance crew and very talented group of men. And then we have the lake rangers.
Scott Davis:Me, Wayne, and Cody.
Charlie Shugart:Well, speaking of lake rangers, what are kind of some of the common questions you get from visitors, and what's a question you wish more people asked?
Scott Davis:Questions we get the most and and here recently is how can we replace those gates without draining the lake? We have a set of five stop logs that requires a crane to set them into place, they go inside a channel in front of the gates that we'll block off. We stack the five on top of each other in front of the gate so that then when we crack the gate open, it'll eliminate the water between the stop log and the gate. The only water we're losing is in between
Charlie Shugart:That's cool.
Scott Davis:Gate and stoplogs. It's a good good way to hang on to what we got.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Scott Davis:Since we're in the water business, we need to hang on to the water.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. Okay. If you back up a little bit, you mentioned gate replacement.
John Dickson:We've got five Tainter gates that we operate. And a Tainter gate is simply, it's from the name of the who invented it. I don't know if it's John or Jerry Tainter.
Charlie Shugart:Interesting.
Jackie Scott:I think it's John Tainter.
John Dickson:John Tainter, but that's how the Tainter gate name got established. We've got five of them.
John Dickson:The five that were on our fifth replacement right now, it's installed, so we've got four new ones in place. They're in what we term trial operation. The previous gates, they've been in service almost fifty years. And so this replacement project, which you have to do to this infrastructure, will hopefully get us another fifty years. We've been working with a company to replace them. We've got an engineering firm hired that's on-site with a RPR. He oversees the daily operations. BRA's project delivery department has a construction representative that comes on-site. We're in contact with them on a daily basis. The staff at Lake Limestone, we're not in charge of that project. That's the project delivery department where we get involved when it affects our operations. Because we'll talk about the difference between a water supply reservoir and a flood control in a little bit. But when we get into flood operations, we need to make sure that we can operate. And so we've kind of been there working alongside them and have not had any issues with passing flows through. We'll get into that in a minute. But, it's been quite a project. What they've this company decided to do was do all of their work and heavy lifting from a crane barge that they moored to the structure on the upstream side of the dam. So you got this big barge sitting there, and on there, they've got a huge crane.
Charlie Shugart:Okay.
John Dickson:These gates weigh between forty and fifty tons. The bulkheads are self weigh about 23 to 25,000 pounds. So there's a lot of steel flying through there.
Charlie Shugart:Right.
John Dickson:And they do that from a barge mounted crane that they take back and forth to a lay down area on our emergency spillway. I never knew one all went into coating a gate, but I believe the upstream side has five different coats, all a different color, so that if you get some wear on that gate, you can tell, you know, each each coating serves a function.
Charlie Shugart:Are we talking about like paint or is it just?
John Dickson:We call it paint, but it's a coating. And there are special coatings experts. I believe they're NACE certified. BRA has one in Dirk Bland. Dirk has been down to the site where they were working on the coating. And if you know Dirk, he is a 100% on everything. Right. So it was good to have his eyes on there. We've also got different companies that specialize in it that have been inspecting these all along the way.
Charlie Shugart:That's a really neat process to have them be different colors, so you can see
John Dickson:Yeah I don't understand. The first color that we actually chose for the gates
Jackie Scott:Was supposed to be a light blue, and it ended up looking like periwinkle. So we changed the color to a grey.
John Dickson:Yeah. All I can say is they're beautiful. Before we replaced the gates, we'd get a north wind and you'd get a little uneasy because that's right against the gates. And they'd been in there fifty years, and I'll tell you, we got a lot of good use out of those gates. They served a great purpose for a lot of years, but our management always looking towards the future.
Charlie Shugart:Right.
John Dickson:It's time to replace them, and so we've got five that'll get us by for a long time to come.
Charlie Shugart:You mentioned how heavy they are. What are their dimensions? Like, how big are they?
John Dickson:I think they're 27 by 42.
Scott Davis:I believe that's right.
John Dickson:The design that we went with with this one, course, when we built it forty five, fifty years ago, a lot's changed since then.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. Sure.
John Dickson:And so these gates have a series of, I'll call them catwalks on the back, where used to, we would have to get a crane out and lower a man basket down with somebody in it.
Jackie Scott:To do maintenance on the back of the Tainter gate.
Charlie Shugart:Oh my gosh.
John Dickson:Or inspect it or
Jackie Scott:Inspect it.
John Dickson:Yeah. And so now we've got catwalks that you can go down, put a harness system on, and Jackie's maintenance and operation people can go down and do their inspections, which are continuously doing.
Charlie Shugart:How do the Tainter gates operate?
John Dickson:Scott can explain this. We can operate them remotely or locally. Locally would be you're standing there on top of the the dam. And Scott's always he likes to go down and do it personally.
Scott Davis:Well, I was taught that by your predecessor, Davy. He's the gates were getting old, and he said we can operate these remotely, but you can't hear what's going on if you're in the office pushing a button. So he wanted somebody down there to operate the gates so that they can hear it maybe getting in a bind or some kind of water dynamics that didn't seem right. Like when you're trying to shut the gate and you've got an obvious obstruction at the bottom, you know to lift it back up to let it clear. In a lightning storm, it's always handy to have that remote button. You don't have to be down there under those power poles where the lights are. You know, that that's a comforting option there.
John Dickson:In this business, you have to plan for everything. And so if we're operating that gate in the local mode and something happens, we can go to a manual. We have a manual dial indicator, say the electronics go out, that tells us how high the gates open. Because we open in six inch increments and then to a we can go to a foot. But that manual dial indicator will tell us how high that gate is open. Should something happen and the gate wouldn't lower, we've got a manual way to lower the gate.
Charlie Shugart:Oh, wow.
John Dickson:You'll be there a while.
Jackie Scott:But there are safety features too.
John Dickson:Yeah. Because it's you know, this is a critical structure and a critical business. The Brazos River Authority off the subject a little bit. Our communication is vital between the home office here and Lake Limestone. We got to be able to communicate. We've always had a sat phone since they've been available. But BRA and its management installed a fiber cable all the way from Marquez to our office, which improved our communications tremendously, speeded up the Internet. Communication is paramount.
Charlie Shugart:Absolutely. And when, John references the home office, we're talking about the Central Office here in Waco.
John Dickson:When Scott or any of our lake rangers or somebody's gonna operate that gate, that's not Lake Limestone deciding, oh, we got rain coming. We're gonna go let's go open a gate. This is a very strict everything's been modeled out.
Jackie Scott:We have an operation and maintenance procedures that we have to go by, that's directed by our water services department.
Charlie Shugart:And our water services department is made up of hydrologists.
John Dickson:And they're very, very good at what they do, And they will tell us raise Gate 1 six inches, Gate 2 six inches, you know, to keep up with the inflows that are coming into the reservoir.
Charlie Shugart:You had made a comment that a lot of the questions you were getting were concerns that the lake level was gonna drop because of this project.
John Dickson:And I can see where people think this is that we need to lower the level of the lake to replace these gates. And, actually, the opposite is what's there. The contractor floating his barge with his crane on it, the closer the water the water level is to full, which is three sixty three feet above mean sea level, the better it is for him.
Charlie Shugart:Scott, if you don't mind, what is the most rewarding part about being a lake ranger, and maybe what's the most difficult or frustrating part?
Scott Davis:The most rewarding part is being in a public servant role. It comes with its up and down as any law enforcement job would, but being out there, it may be, Hey, I broke down out here. I got a call this last Easter that a lady was very frantic that they were out in the middle of a lake and they were taking on water and the boat was sinking. Whenever you can respond to those and get somebody that is totally out of sorts and scared to death and you get them in and able to get the boat in, those are very rewarding. The scary times are when you have inclement weather involved and you've got high winds, you've got low water temps, and capsized boats, and elderly.
Scott Davis:I've come across that before and those are the scary times. I remember having a couple of wardens in a boat with me on New Year's Eve night that were all three hanging on pretty hard, just trying to locate a drifting boat out in a cove. It's interesting, but the rewarding aspect of it is the public service aspect of it. But we do, at times, have to get into the law enforcement mode and you're not always the most popular person on the lake at that point, but part of it.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah, absolutely. What do you wish more boaters or watercraft operators knew or did on the lake?
Scott Davis:You know, we have a a boater education requirement now for people born after a certain date, and they're required to have the the boaters' ed.
Charlie Shugart:And that's a state requirement.
Scott Davis:That's a state requirement. That's exactly right. But, as with anything, even seasoned boat operators could benefit from taking that. You're never too old to learn.
Scott Davis:Learn new things. So, think that not only just abiding by the rules, but being courteous in your operation of your vessels. We've got a campaign going on right now, watch your wake. What you are doing may be within legal limits, but it's not very courteous to either shore side residents or other vessels or swimmers or whatever. So it's always just think of the other person, you know, it's what I wish people would do more of.
Charlie Shugart:Right. No, absolutely.
John Dickson:You know, Scott in his role as, and he's mentioned this to me before, but it's an educational role that before people go on the water, it's not about writing fines or tickets. It's about educating them on how to do something properly. BRA, here a couple months ago, I forgot we've got some water bags. Not everybody should get a ticket. If you're doing something right, maybe you should get a reward.
John Dickson:And so we hand out they're waterproof bags that you can take on your boat.
Charlie Shugart:Oh, that's nice.
John Dickson:Just to let somebody know, have a pat on the back that you know what? Everything's just perfect here, and we appreciate that.
Scott Davis:I'll tell you a funny story. This happened just a couple of weeks ago. I had our new guy, Cody, who's with me. I checked this boat and they had everything 100%. I said, Cody, hand me one of these bags.
Scott Davis:We appreciate you being a safe boater. The operator said, This makes up for that ticket you gave me last week.
John Dickson:So some get both, huh? Did he put the ticket in the bag?
Scott Davis:That was learning experience. He got the ticket week before and I didn't recognize him this second week, but he said, I appreciate and he get complimented on this is a guy you just wrote the week before and he's thanking you for being out there. We see a lot of people out there. It's hard to remember everybody, but there's some that you can pull up to and call by name and still gotta count life jackets.
Scott Davis:But we have a good reputation, I hope we do, and and a good relationship with with the people that come out and enjoy the lake.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah, absolutely.
Scott Davis:And the parks.
John Dickson:Do you know a family that's out, they have small children with them and they see their parents get rewarded for doing something right? What kind of effect does that have? How does that trickle down? Just a lot of good comes from it.
Jackie Scott:That's what you want, is good relationships with the people around the lake. Even though you have to get a permit and stuff, all you're doing is seeking compliance. You're not really there to make their life hard or anything. You just want, here's the regulations, let's just do it right, and then-
Scott Davis:Yeah. Set them up for success.
Jackie Scott:Set them up for success.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. An important distinction about Lake Limestone is that it was built for and is a water supply reservoir. When we say that, what are we permitted to use for that?
John Dickson:We've got 204,000 acre feet. Football field, one foot deep of water.
Charlie Shugart:As an acre foot?
John Dickson:That's an acre foot. So we got 204,000. I think we're permitted by the state to use 65,000 acre feet of that. So we are a water supply reservoir. There's no flood storage in Lake Limestone.
Charlie Shugart:What does that mean for there not to be flood storage?
John Dickson:Well, the Corps of Engineers, the lakes that they operate, Whitney, Aquilla, Waco, Belton, Temple, Granger, Somerville, Proctor, those are all flood control lakes. And their flood pool may be, let's just say, a thousand feet above mean sea level. Have you ever seen a bullfrog croaking?
Charlie Shugart:Yes.
John Dickson:Well those core lakes can blow up like a bullfrog and hold water. They don't have to they're they're designed to catch those floodwaters so that everything below them is not inundated and you can manage the the flow. And so they'll they'll blow up like a bullfrog, and they'll let that water sit. And when the river is conducive to the right conditions, they'll let it start trickling out so that you don't have damage to properties downstream.
Charlie Shugart:That is my favorite description I have ever heard of that.
John Dickson:It's the only way that I can think about it. And, you know, Lake Whitney above Waco here, you know, it can get it's it's a huge lake already, but it can hold a lot of flood water. My ancestors used to farm up around Gholson before Lake Whitney, and they get crops wiped out. You know? They just couldn't control it, but Lake Whitney helps to control that, and so but we're water supply. What comes in, we gotta go out. At all times, what do we have, Jackie, for our environmental flood?
Jackie Scott:Six CFS.
John Dickson:Six cfs , and that's cubic feet per second. We generally run about six cfs to provide enough water in the river downstream of Lake Limestone. It would emulate the natural flow. And so that environmental flow was determined, and that's what we are generally letting out six cfs.
Charlie Shugart:So when you're saying what comes in must go out, we're talking about when the lake is already
John Dickson:If our lake is designed to operate at three sixty three feet above sea level, and then at three sixty six, we have
Jackie Scott:A building restriction easement.
John Dickson:We don't want anybody building in that.
Jackie Scott:That's in accordance with the deed of records. Whenever the land was bought to build Lake Limestone, we put BRA in the deed of records to flowage easement, our building restriction easement up to three sixty six.
John Dickson:And then we have a flood easement, an inundation easement, so to three seventy. I don't think we've ever approached that. Our water services department does such a good job that we've never activated our emergency spillway.
Charlie Shugart:That's incredible for fifty years.
John Dickson:Oh, it's the the guys are great. You know? They model. They model for droughts. They model for floods.
John Dickson:I can't say enough about them.
Charlie Shugart:Well, with six cfs being the environmental flow, do we know what the largest release has ever been from limestone?
John Dickson:I'm gonna let Scott talk about that because he just did that last year.
Scott Davis:Last year in May 2024, we were releasing at the max. What was it?
Jackie Scott:78,000 CFS.
Scott Davis:78,000 CFS, and and the water was just incredible that was coming. We had a a river on both sides of the dam, and it was, I guess, the historic release of any lake that BRA owns. It's the most we've ever released from one of our reservoirs.
Charlie Shugart:From any of the three? Oh, wow.
Scott Davis:And that was one of those deals where water services was very much on top of everything, and we were making adjustments to that, if not on an hourly basis, but it was on a fifty minute deal. Those guys were staying on top of it and kind of having to shoot from the hip a little bit and adjust protocols because this was kind of never it was a brand new thing. We got through it, but it was just
Jackie Scott:All hands on deck.
Scott Davis:Everybody was on board and it went pretty smooth.
John Dickson:It actually went really smooth. And early into the event, I was not at the lake. Scott was running it. We do downstream call notifications once we get above 2,000 CFS, and CFS is cubic feet per second. So you imagine a water one foot wide, one foot high, and we had 78,000 of those per second going out of those gates. But early on, our general manager, David Collinsworth, he stood up what we call our emergency communications protocol, and we were having meetings every hour keeping everybody that's why we have talked about how important communications are, keeping everybody abreast of exactly where we were. Because at the height of that flood, we had one gate closed off because of our Tainter gate project. So we did this with four gates. And at one time, Scott had those all four gates at 20 foot raised 20 foot apiece.
Charlie Shugart:Wow.
John Dickson:And that's the highest that they had ever been.
Jackie Scott:You put into perspective what water service says, 78,000 CFS. This flow rate would fill 44 Olympic size pools per minute.
Charlie Shugart:Oh my gosh.
John Dickson:Per minute. I've forgotten, Jackie may remember, they told us that we had released enough water to fill that lake.
Jackie Scott:Total volume of water released during that flood event was about 200,000 acre feet, which is roughly the total capacity of Lake Limestone.
Charlie Shugart:It was just that much rain locally and upstream?
John Dickson:I think it went up and sat up above Mexia and and, of course, Lake Mexia and Fort Parker, they all filled up.
Scott Davis:But Then we had 10 to 15 inches of rain up there in in that watershed is what and it was already saturated. So
John Dickson:But we have a what's called a downstream call notification system.
Charlie Shugart:Okay.
John Dickson:So anytime we made adjustments to gate, you can sign up and get it by text, email, voice mail, however you wanna get it.
Charlie Shugart:And this is anyone in the public?
John Dickson:Yes. You're going to get when we have operations on that gate. And so the communications with local officials BRA has an emergency management coordinator, Don Naylor, and I keep telling you everybody's good at what they do, but that's because they are. And so Donnie has a relationship with all the county officials up and downstream in the basin that he'll let them know there's a lot of water coming your way. You know, once water receded and roads weren't underwater anymore, everybody was safe. And so we have an emergency action plan that we utilize. It's not something that we take lightly at all, and communication is the key.
Charlie Shugart:What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about how a reservoir like this is operated?
John Dickson:We talked about this the other day, so one of the questions that you get most is how low is the reservoir? How low are y'all gonna and and when are you gonna fill it up? Well, that's a little out of our hands on the fill up part.
Charlie Shugart:You don't have a faucet to pull?
John Dickson:No.
Jackie Scott:It's up to Mother Nature.
John Dickson:But, you know, it's just people that aren't in the reservoir business. It's a logical question. And so they wanna know how low it'll go. What's the lowest we've been, Jackie?
Jackie Scott:I believe we went almost to 12 foot.
John Dickson:That's probably back in 2011, 2015?
Jackie Scott:2011, 2012. But every drought ends with a flood, and every flood ends with a drought most of the time.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. Outside of droughts and there not being enough rain, why else would the lake level drop?
Scott Davis:Evaporation. It's our number one customer.
Charlie Shugart:Evaporation?
Scott Davis:Mhmm.
Jackie Scott:Yes.
Charlie Shugart:It takes that much?
Scott Davis:Absolutely. We can lose a half an inch a day in the summertime or sometimes just slightly over.
Charlie Shugart:Oh, that's wow.
John Dickson:And you spread that over a reservoir that's roughly 12,000 acres. That's a lot of water that mother nature's soaking up. Y'all measure that every day, don't you, Jack?
Jackie Scott:Yes. We have a weather station and we take those readings every day.
Charlie Shugart:Oh, that's cool. How do you measure for evaporation?
Jackie Scott:We have a
Scott Davis:Evap tank that They we have up on top of the hill. They did kind of a test deal at one time where they had a floating one in the lake and they decided that that wasn't the wave action, it just wouldn't allow for it. But we have a weather station up on top of the hill that monitors and mimics what the lake would be doing.
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. That's so cool.
Jackie Scott:Tied into our SCADA system. So we can look at it, like for rainfall, for evap, stuff like that. We can look at it all day long .
Jackie Scott:See what's going on with it.
John Dickson:The history that we have on that lake and how it operates with mother nature is pretty extensive.
Charlie Shugart:Okay. So speaking of the dam, Lake Limestone was formed by the construction of the Sterling C Robinson Dam. Do you know much about the name of the dam? Is there a lot of history with that?
John Dickson:Well, it's Sterling C. Robertson. And Jackie, what's the c stand for?
Scott Davis:Clack.
Jackie Scott:Clack.
John Dickson:Clack. And Sterling C. Robertson was a early Texas pioneer that was given a huge amount of land by the Mexican government. And then they came back and subsequently take it took it away, gave it to somebody else. And so he was instrumental in the Texas early Texas history. The area was so big in my former role with BRA. We operate a system or a pipeline that moves water from one one area to another, and we went across a ranch. They called it the Robertson Ranch. And this is over near Salado, and they were descendants of Sterling c Robertson.
Charlie Shugart:Oh, wow.
John Dickson:And I believe that property is has a couple structures that are on the national, register of historic places. So he had a vast amount of land. Then Lake Limestone, I was trying to figure out how they got that name. Then Jackie reminded me that we're in Limestone County.
Jackie Scott:Parts of it.
John Dickson:If we can, if we could get Jackie to explain the lake effect.
Jackie Scott:So my husband worked at NRG, the power plant, and he would always say, Oh, here comes a rainstorm. The lake's going to kill the storms. I always used to think, Oh, he's just saying that. So I asked Brad Burnett one time, said, Is there such things as the lake effect? He said, Oh, yeah.
Jackie Scott:So then I had to tell him he was right. Sometimes the thunderstorms would be coming at you and split and go around the lake.
Scott Davis:You know, we were referring to the families enjoying lake and it being kind of a low key, easygoing type atmosphere, and that's what I've enjoyed about it. But watching my grandsons enjoy it, it is a pretty serene lifestyle to be sitting there drinking your coffee early in the morning and watching the sun come up over the lake air or watching the moon rise on a real bright moonlit night. That's kind of what gets me going, just enjoying serenity of it and watching my kids enjoy being out there and enjoying that, what I consider country living. My grandsons are city boys, and so they they really flourish when they come to the lake.
Charlie Shugart:If you could give the public one piece of advice, what do you think is the most important actions we can take to help preserve the lake's health for generations to come?
John Dickson:Follow the rules.
Scott Davis:You know, taking taking pride in kinda taking care of the place you like to go visit so that it can be used in the future for people to come. You know?
Charlie Shugart:Yeah. Absolutely. Well, we've touched on a lot. Is there anything else you guys would like to share that we missed you guys wanna add on?
John Dickson:I think one of the main reasons that we haven't experienced any zebra mussels is that they've heard Jackie Scott is at this lake, and they're scared to death to come over there.
Charlie Shugart:Amazing.
Jackie Scott:Or it could be Scott that they're scared of.
John Dickson:Oh, could be Scott.
Scott Davis:Yeah. Come and join your enjoy yourself, enjoy the lake, but but be safe and be smart about it. If you make plans to come to the lake and then the weather throws a curve at you, kind of adjust to your plans because some people were go were gonna go do it no matter what is thrown at them. So come enjoy it, but be safe about it.
John Dickson:And come by and have a cup of coffee. We always have coffee on or a conference room where you can sit and visit, and we welcome the interaction.
Charlie Shugart:I love that. And if anybody would like a map of Lake Limestone and its parks, reach out. You can email information@Brazos.org, and we are happy to mail you a map for free. John, Jackie, Scott, thank you very much for joining us today.
Scott Davis:Enjoyed the visit.
Jackie Scott:Thank you, Charlie.
Charlie Shugart:If while listening to this podcast, you have a follow-up question or something you would like to learn more about, please reach out. You can email us at information@brazos.org. We're happy to fill in any gaps that we might have missed. And if you have a podcast episode topic you would like to hear about regarding the Brazos River, the basin, water supply, all that is in between, we are happy to hear from you. Again, our email is information@Brazos.org. And with that, we're out. Thanks for joining us on Unpacking the Brazos River.