The largest of the Lower Colorado River Authority’s (LCRA) new water supply projects is an off-channel reservoir that is being constructed near the Texas Gulf Coast. The project will be the first significant new water supply reservoir developed in the lower Colorado River basin in decades. The Lane City Reservoir will be constructed off the main channel of the Colorado River, near Lane City in Wharton County. The reservoir will add up to 90,000 acre-feet of firm water to the region’s supply. Firm water is water that can be counted on without shortage even during a repeat of the worst drought conditions in the region’s history. The Highland Lakes were created to manage floods on the Colorado River and to provide a sustainable source of water for the basin as a whole. The Lane City Reservoir is the first project that will allow LCRA to capture and store significant amounts of water downstream of the Highland Lakes. The new reservoir will benefit the entire basin by helping reduce the amount of water otherwise required to be released from the Highland Lakes.
Stiver Engineering was retained by the contractor to provide construction engineering through excavation plans for the reservoir inlet/outlet structure, a permanent sheet pile shoring system in the Colorado River around the vertical intake pumps, miscellaneous structural design, excavation consulting and dewatering consulting.
