Last night’s storms brought much-needed rain to Central Texas but did little to ease an ongoing drought or to raise lake levels.

The rains overnight helped replenish streams and helped ease fire concerns, but a long-term period of showers and storms will be needed to break the drought.

“If we go through another three weeks of no rain, it’ll all go away,” said Pat McDonald, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Central Texas needs as much as 13 inches of rain to reach normal rainfall levels, McDonald said.

The article also noted:

Lake Buchanan is currently about 23 feet below normal January levels and about 30 feet below its full level …[we need] 10 to 20 inches of rain … to return the lakes to normal levels.

From the Statesman:

Preliminary findings from the [Texas] Energy Institute’s study released Wednesday suggest there is no link between the extraction operations and groundwater contamination, said the study’s leader, Charles “Chip” Groat, a UT geology professor.

He noted that the dangers associated with shale gas drilling — which is accomplished by hydraulic fracturing, a process commonly known as fracking — are largely the same as other oil-drilling operations.

“Hydraulic fracturing doesn’t seem to be of concern to groundwater,” Groat said. “If there has been water contaminated related to shale gas development let’s not look at fracturing, let’s look at surface processes.”

As in other types of drilling operations, poor casing or shoddy cement jobs have often been to blame for regulatory violations or contamination in shale gas drilling, Groat said…

Surface spills of the hazardous chemicals across the country have killed livestock and contaminated waterways, the Houston Chronicle has reported.

Texas is home to one of the nation’s largest shale gas deposits, the Barnett Shale. The Fort Worth area is a hotbed for fracking that shale, and there have been many questions surrounding the process.

Democratic state Rep. Lon Burnam of Fort Worth told The Associated Press in September that in the past five years, air pollution in North Texas has steadily increased, which he said is related to the drilling in the Barnett Shale.

Groat downplayed the problems associated with fracking.

“The violations that we’ve seen are of no, minor or small impact,” Groat said. “The impact on groundwater, the impact on the surface is not of anything substantial, certainly not compared to coal mines or metal mines.”

However, spills have come under closer scrutiny as shale gas drilling occurs in urban and suburban areas, Groat said.

“Fort Worth is the poster child for this,” Groat said. “They are drilling under subdivisions, and those people are asking questions.”

Shale deposits are spread out over broad areas, and drilling operations could easily move out of densely populated areas and stay in the fracking game, Groat said.

Groat briefed government officials, regulators, energy company executives, community group representatives and reporters in Fort Worth about the Energy Institute’s preliminary findings.

Researchers expect to present their final report early next year, looking not only at the environmental effects of fracking but also at policy and regulatory issues as well as media coverage of the controversial technique of capturing natural gas.

The yearlong $330,000 study was paid for entirely by the University of Texas, Groat said.

The study’s early stages have looked at regulatory violations and frameworks in states with major shale drilling operations, including Texas, Louisiana, New York and Pennsylvania, Groat said.

And from NPR

In a draft report (pdf) released today, the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what many residents of Pavilion, Wyoming have been complaining about for some time now: Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is responsible for polluting the area’s drinking water.

Fracking is a controversial method used to make it easier to extract natural gas, petroleum and other substances. As the AP explains, this is the first time the EPA has linked the practice to the contamination of drinking water. The gas industry has denied any responsibility.

The wire service adds:

“The EPA’s found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath a Wyoming community where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals.

Health officials advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found hydrocarbons in their wells.

The EPA announcement has major implications for the vast increase in gas drilling in the U.S. in recent years. Fracking has played a large role in opening up many reserves.

The industry has long contended that fracking is safe, but environmentalists and some residents who live near drilling sites say it has poisoned groundwater.”

Before issuing this report, the EPA had advised residents not to drink their water, because, as MSNBC says, the EPA “said it had found benzene and other hydrocarbons in wells it tested.”

MSNBC adds that Pavillion residents welcomed the report.

Once it opens in April 2012, the new Palms Car Wash will have the ability to recycle 100 percent of the water it uses.

Austin’s second full-service Palms Car Wash is under construction at 13695 US 183, next door to the former Hooters of Austin, which is being transformed into Cover 2 restaurant and bar. The car wash will feature an exterior drive-thru express wash and interior and detail services. Customers may also use 12 vacuum stations free of charge.

“We want to be as eco-friendly we can,” said David Beseda, co-owner of Palms Car Wash with Russel Moore. “We use non-toxic, biodegradable cleaners. It is a complicated, expensive process [to recycle water].”Beseda and Moore own the Palms Car Wash at 6811 Brodie Lane. Alone, Moore owns several car wash locations in Austin, but this is the second location the pair will have opened.

And with a shortage of local food, the concern is that prices for consumers will go up and drive some consumers away. Says Peg McCoy, owner of Farm to Market Grocery on South Congress, “When calories are so cheap, people aren’t willing or able to spend more for local food.”

Hopefully Austin has enough of a base dedicated to locally grown food that these farmers will still be able to make something off what they are able to grow in these conditions.

Slightly cooler fall temperatures are putting less strain on power plants to generate energy, but the persistent drought isn’t. Most of Texas’ energy comes from plants that are coal, natural gas, or nuclear. All three types depend on large amounts of water to generate electricity and cool down. If weather experts are correct in predicting a prolonged drought, power plants will need to figure out how to operate with less water.

The water that power plants use is often drawn from rivers that have been drying up since the beginning of the drought last fall. Unless Texas gets at least half of its normal rainfall between now and spring, which isn’t in the forecast, Kent Saathoff said the situation could get worse.

There’s some hope though in new technology:

Michael Webber, an energy policy expert at the University of Texas at Austin, recently published a report on the potential benefits of power plants installing more efficient technology. According to his data, the water that would be saved could equal the amount consumed yearly by 1.3 million people.

“You could switch to dry-cooling power plants or hybrid wet-cooling systems that build in some resiliency against drought, so that’s another approach. You can also look at advanced nanotechnologies to improve the heat capacity of water, so you need less water for cooling. So, there are a lot of options but we have to try them and see what works best,” said Webber.

In serious drought conditions, Texas does not and will not have enough water to meet the needs of its people, and its businesses, and its agricultural enterprises….

In Texas, temperatures are likely to rise; however, future precipitation trends are difficult to project. If temperatures rise and precipitation decreases, as projected by climate models, Texas would begin seeing droughts in the middle of the 21st century that are as bad or worse as those in the beginning or middle of the 20th century.

You can also read about it more in this KUT article, which states that the report “offered a number of recommendations to the Legislature. Texas lawmakers, it said, should get moving on three reservoir sites (Turkey Peak Reservoir, Millers Creek Reservoir Augmentation and Coryell County Reservoir). Lawmakers should also make it easier to site other reservoirs, and to transfer surface water between different areas. They should require public water utilities to audit their water losses annually rather than every five years.”

So far the business primarily focuses on making rain barrels out of food-grade barrels (see above) and garden planters out of old fencing. But they’ve also started designing some furniture, like this sturdy bench, also made out of old fencing, which would be perfect in a backyard garden. (Check them out on facebook and “like” their page and you’ll also be able to see an Adirondack chair Rick recently built out of old fencing, which I’m really coveting.)

The fencing they use would otherwise be burned or hauled to a dump (like now when we’re in a severe drought), so  it’s great they’ve found a new use for it.  Visiting their stand made me really want to get gutters on our house so we can have a rain barrel! The rain barrels Rick and Katie make sell for $45 each, which compared to what you see at garden stores and Whole Foods, is a much better price.  Check them out at the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market, or contact them if there’s a special project you have in mind!

“We are working at changing a culture of water users, more so than this feeling like it’s a punitive measure,” Austin Water Utility spokesperson Jason Hill said. First-time violators will receive a warning and an explanation of why it’s important to conserve. If they keep breaking the rules, they could be fined $475.

Anyone who sees someone violating watering restrictions can report them by calling 3-1-1. In the first week of Stage II restrictions, that city phone line received 675 water waste complaints. Last week, the phone service reported 913 calls…

Texas is experiencing the most intense single-year drought in recorded history, but the worst drought on record was a 10-year stretch through the 1940s and 50s.  Currently, Lakes Travis and Buchanan, our region’s water supply reservoirs, are 39 percent full. The Lower Colorado River Authority says as soon as this spring, lake levels could drop to below where they were in that disastrous drought of the mid-20th Century.