After last week’s rainfall, Lake Meredith continues to experience issues due to high levels of salt in the lake, leaving the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority unable to pump more drinking water despite recent rainfall.
Lake Meredith provides drinking water for much of the Texas Panhandle. Reports indicate only 20% of the lake’s water can be pumped and still meet state standards. “We have to pump it as much as we possibly can to control the salts as much as we can. It is a losing battle at this point but that’s the basic thing, we can pump about 20 percent lake water and 80 percent ground water and still meet the states drinking water standards,” said Kent Satterwhite, general manager of The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority.
Satterwhite says the rainfall did help the area, but due to the lack of runoff, it did not help the lake significantly enough. “It brought us up about half a foot, and a little over a trillion gallons of water but it’s really just a minor amount when you’re trying to dilute the salt in the total lake. It would be insignificant at this point. We need some really big inflow to bring it up several feet,” said Satterwhite.