"The Ivie reservoir rose 18 feet because of it, the Spence reservoir in Coke county rose went up 25 feet," said John Grant, CRMWD general manager.
Grant said, due to the uncommonly high amount of water, he is pushing for the restriction lift.
"We thought even with restrictions we were gonna run out of surface water in May or June of 2013, it's actually added 18 months of surface water for us," said Grant.
West Texas is far away from being out of the drought. Some may ask, "Why doesn't the CRMWD just save that water?" Well, with the heat in west Texas, if the water isn't used, it'll be wasted.
Grant said that's because evaporation is the biggest water user in west Texas.
He went on to say, that with winter approaching, water usage will drop and allow for more water to sit, thus giving it more of a chance to evaporate and collect unwanted minerals.
"A lot of our surface water has salt in it, and it you don't use it, you let it evaporate it concentrates in salt making water more salty," said Grant.
With all the different factors, providing good quality water can become a balancing act of beating evaporation and contamination. The proposed lift on the water restrictions will be voted on Wednesday November14 by the CRMWD board.
If the restriction goes through, the CRMWD will evaluate over time if restrictions need to be put back in place. That will be determined based on the amount of rainfall.
