AUSTIN — The LCRA Board of Directors has approved the Highland Lakes Watershed Ordinance, which is designed to protect water quality in the Lake Travis and upper Highland Lakes watersheds.

The new ordinance replaces two 15-year-old ordinances and creates a single set of regulations for controlling pollutants in stormwater runoff from new and existing developments. Stormwater runoff is considered the largest source of pollution of the lakes.

"Through an extensive public process, we have developed a water quality protection ordinance that is fair, flexible, user-friendly and based on the latest scientific information," said LCRA General Manager Joe Beal.

The new ordinance will go into effect Feb. 1, 2006. LCRA will review it after three years and determine whether any additional revisions are needed.

The Highland Lakes Watershed Ordinance is the result of a year-long process that involved two groups of volunteer stakeholders representing residents, developers, businesses and other interested individuals. The stakeholders worked with LCRA staff to update and combine the two existing ordinances — one that applied to development in the Lake Travis watershed in Travis and Burnet counties and the other applied to the upper Highland Lakes (Marble Falls, LBJ, Inks and Buchanan). As part of the stakeholder process, LCRA held open houses in October in Lakeway and Marble Falls and invited public review and written comments.

The new ordinance simplifies the earlier regulations and incorporates current science and technology and regulatory best practices of the past 15 years, according to LCRA staff.

"Given our experience with the two ordinances, we have learned a lot in the past 15 years about which control measures are effective and which ones are not so effective," said Lisa Hatzenbuehler, LCRA manager of Water Resource Protection. "Those measures that have proven effective, such as buffers of natural areas along creeks, have been incorporated into the ordinance as a best practice. Land developers will be able to use these best practices instead of using complicated calculations. As a result, builders, developers, the public and water quality of the lakes all will benefit."

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