A little channel cleanup

2011 is proving to be a drought year.  It's been long, hot and DRY.  Very little precipitation.  My trees are starting show signs of distress with several dropping their leaves.   The lake, a Ft. Worth/Tarrant County water source, is way down, sucked dry by the folks to the west.

The creek/channel behind the house which was full last year, is now dry as a bone, the water line now 300' away in the main channel.  Since I've been focused on the house and working weekends, it's not been an issue for me.  The boat is still sitting on it's trailer at the Dallas house.

Last year, the neighbor across the water way had a seawall installed and eventually will have a boat house with a the standard lift.  The channel was dredged slightly and then the seawall added.  With water present you can't see the bottom of the channel to see how smooth (or not) the sea wall installers left the bottom of the channel however, with no water, it was pretty obvious where the mounds and craters were so he rented a BobCat and set about leveling the bottom.  He was gracious to scrape the channel by my place to remove the high weeds.  It looks a lot better!

The view standing at the edge of the channel by the house looking towards the lake:

See that club of bushes/trees on the right?  That's the empty lot next to me that I want to purchase.  When I do I can have the channel dredged up to the point just beyond that clump making the channel deeper.  It's still useable but would be safer and more practical for a deeper hulled boat.

Zoomed in view down the channel.

There's no water under that jet ski and only a couple of inches if that under the pontoon boat hanging in the boat house.  The grassy patch to the right is in front of my neighbor’s house immediately to the right of my place on the other side of the empty lot.

In the channel looking up.

The end of the the "creek" or what could be a continuation of the channel if someone chose to dredge it further.  It peters out to just a run off creek bed around the curve back there.

Now is the time for me to get moving on installing my own PVC irrigation pipe and a pump to provide a free source of water for the property.  Over the last several months at work there has been an almost daily run on various sizes of PVC pipe as many people around the lake are doing the same thing, extending their irrigation lines further into the lake.  For some, the water is so low, there's no way they can extend it far enough.  Next time we have a fresh supply of pipe and the required couplings, I'll lay down 200' of 2" pipe and hook it to a 2hp irrigation pump.  Even so, it will still be about 100' short of the water's edge.

Eventually the water will return, it always does.  That's the nature of things.