SAN ANTONIO — For the third time in five years, one of the lakes on the Guadalupe River is draining due to the failure of its dam. Now, some of the residents along Lake Gonzales are reckoning with what losing the lake could mean to them.
“There’s a lot of spiritual food that I get from this river, it’s not just the fish and the wildlife. The people are fed by this river, just the soul.”
Life along the Guadalupe River inspired retired teacher Jackie Sue Lanford to write the River Song. The only issue is that her particular stretch of the river, up until a few days ago, was Lake Gonzales.
“Sitting down here, like we are right now, is so peaceful,” said John Cores. “And it still is. But the lake is gone. Somebody stole my lake.”
Cores owns one of the properties close to the Gonzales Lake dam. He says the lake disappeared practically overnight.
“It keeps going lower,” Cores said, pointing to a piece of land that became exposed as the water level went down. “That island is even more visible.”
The trouble began Tuesday morning, the dam’s spill gates had been lowered to keep the lake from flooding. When the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority tried to raise them back up, one of gates didn’t respond. The GBRA opened the other gate up to try to get the water level low enough to see what needs to be repaired. It’s a decision some of the residents are questioning.
“It’s just heartbreaking when you see this most beautiful of Texas’ gifts to man and you see how the GBRA has managed it,” Cores said. “This is their track record.”
This is the third time a dam has failed on a Guadalupe Valley Lake in the past five years, starting with lake wood in 2016 and the collapse of the lake Dunlop dam in 2019.
In a statement—the GBRA blames the dam failure on the aging spill gates that are over 90 years old and they’re still trying to figure out if they can even fix it.
But in the meantime—CEO and general manager Kevin Patteson told us they would continue to work with the community to try to find funding options to make repairs or replace it all together.
“We are grateful that the spill gate failure at Lake Gonzales did not result in any injuries,” said Patteson. “This is a challenging situation for everyone involved. We have worked to keep the more than 90-year old spill gates in operation for as long as we could safely do so, but we cannot prevent them from failing.
In May—on the two-year anniversary of the Dunlop dam failure—construction started on the new Dunlop dam — the funding coming from taxpayers and help from the GBRA.
However—the GBRA says this might be a challenge for property owners on lake Gonzales because they don’t’ have the tax base and development for such a project.
Updates on the Guadalupe Valley Lakes is available at GVLakes.com.