Zebra mussel migration threatens local water supply

Local News

April 12, 2011

By DAVID WILFONG Herald-Banner The Zope Gazette Tue Apr 12, 2011, 11:28 AM CDT

ROCKWALL — On the surface of it they seem rather harmless. They don’t bite. They’re not poisonous. In fact, they can’t even move. But zebra mussels are causing quite a problem for the North Texas Municipal Water District.

Introduced into the Great Lakes approximately 12 years ago, the native Russian mollusks have spread quickly. Local and federal agencies are doing everything they can to stop it. The zebra mussel feeds by filtering the phytoplankton from water, and as they have grown into large groups, they threaten to starve out native species by competing with the smallest fish for food.

They also cluster in large numbers, and their hard shells can wreak havoc on boat engines or other marine machinery that they often seem to attach to. Large numbers of them can clog up pipes as well.

And they’ve moved farther south than they were ever expected to.

“They didn’t think they would be able to survive in warmer waters,” said Mike Rickmon of the NTMWD in a presentation given to the Rockwall City Council on April 4. “Well, they’ve survived.”

The mussels have made it all the way down to Lake Texoma, which effectively shut the lake off for use by the NTMWD since July 2009. Since the discovery of the zebra mussels, Texoma has been shut off from the water supply, as federal agencies want to keep the larvae, known as veligers, from being pumped through the local pipeline into other area lakes.

But the mussels make their way downstream by other means as well, as most recently mussels have been found in Sister Grove Creek, only 3.5 miles from Lake Lavon.

The shutting down of the Texoma pipleline denies NTMWD access to roughly 22.5 percent of its water supply, and what is left is not enough to get the service area through its anticipated water supply, creating a shortfall of at least 12.4 million gallons per day, possibly up to 52.9 million gallons per day.

Add to that the fact that this is an El Nino year, and the area is expected to be affected by drought.

“If it’s only 12.4 million we can make that up through conservation,” Rickmon said. If the total goes much higher other measures may have to be taken.

In an emergency, Rickmon said the agency can get permission to overdraft Lake Lavon, or remove more water than they would normally be allowed to. Another solution is to purchase water from neighboring entities.

The end result is that NTMWD customer cities are being asked to implement Stage 1 drought plans by April 19. The goal for water use reduction under that plan is 2 percent. NTMWD also plans to increase public education efforts on ways to reduce water use as well as intensifying efforts to detect and repair leaks in the system.

According to slides presented by the NTMWD to the city, the entire state of Texas is either in a persistent or intensifying drought, or is an area where drought development is likely. In looking at the current levels of NTMWD reservoirs, Lake Chapman is the lowest at only 53 percent of capacity. Lake Tawakoni stands at 87 percent, the highest in the NTMWD system.

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