Lake Meredith still stressed despite recent rainfall increasing water levels

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - After last weeks rainfall, Lake Meredith is still experiencing trouble due to high levels of salt in the lake, leaving them unable to pump more drinking water.

Recent rainfall increased lake levels around six inches, but the rain didn’t drop salt levels.

The high salt levels in the lake prevent it from pumping the water for drinking for the Panhandle.

Even after the recent rainfall, the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority can only pump about 20 percent of the lakes water.

If the lake were to pump more than the 20 percent it is currently, they would not meet state standards.

“We have to pump it as much as we possibly can to control the salts as much as we can. Its a loosing 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 its 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 and hopefully we’ll get hose at some point in the near future,” said Satterwhite.

The rainfall helped the lake reset roughly a month, but officials hope more rainfall comes soon.

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