If you've been checking the City of Austin's parks closures page this month, you've seen the list: Walsh Boat Landing, closed. Commons Ford Ranch Metropolitan Park, boat ramp closed. Emma Long Metropolitan Park, the boat ramp shut and swimming prohibited, right through the end of November. What you won't find anywhere on that list is Greenshores.
That's not an oversight. Greenshores on Lake Austin's Lakeside Park was never a public facility, so it was never going to appear on a public closure notice. But the lake dropping outside your gate is the same lake dropping outside Emma Long's, and for six weeks this fall it's going to be about ten feet lower than the water you've gotten used to.
What the City and LCRA Actually Announced
On August 20, the Lower Colorado River Authority and the City of Austin confirmed what shoreline owners had been asking for since last fall: a planned drawdown of Lake Austin between Mansfield Dam and Tom Miller Dam, running from October 12 through November 30, 2026. It's the first time the lake has been lowered since 2017, nearly a decade ago.
The mechanics are specific. LCRA will lower the lake by no more than about a foot a day starting October 12, with the target elevation landing somewhere between 481.8 and 482.8 feet above mean sea level, roughly ten feet below the normal operating range of 491.8 to 492.8 feet. Getting there could take about three weeks depending on rainfall and demand elsewhere in the Highland Lakes system. Refilling starts November 24, at up to two feet a day pulled from Lake Travis, which is why the lake comes back up almost twice as fast as it went down.
The timing itself tells you something about how LCRA operates now. Winter used to be when these drawdowns happened. After Winter Storm Uri in 2021, LCRA decided it would no longer schedule winter drawdowns on the Highland Lakes, because the hydroelectric generators at those dams need to stay available to support the Texas grid during hard freezes. Fall is what's left. Spring is out too, since that's spawning season for the lake's fish.
At an Austin City Council briefing on the plan, council members Marc Duchen and Paige Ellis both pressed staff on timing, specifically whether shoreline owners would have enough runway to pull permits before the window closes, and whether six weeks in October and November would collide with a still-busy season for lake businesses. Those are the right questions for anyone who owns dock frontage on this lake, Greenshores residents included.
The Reason Behind the Request, and Its Limits
Shoreline owners asked for this drawdown mainly because of hydrilla, the invasive aquatic plant that's been fouling docks and slips across the lake. A Texas Parks and Wildlife survey this past June found 575 acres of hydrilla in Lake Austin and 75 acres of Eurasian watermilfoil alongside it. Austin Watershed Protection has also been stocking grass carp, about 5,000 of them since late July, to chew through the vegetation over time.
Here's the part worth sitting with before you assume the drawdown will clear things up around your own dock: a 2025 Austin Watershed Protection memo found that historical data doesn't support drawdowns as an effective way to control hydrilla, and in some cases lowering the lake can actually help the plant spread by knocking back the competing vegetation that normally keeps it in check. The city is doing this anyway, but the honest reason is maintenance access, not a hydrilla fix. Property owners get roughly six weeks of exposed lakebed to repair docks, bulkheads, and boat slips, dredge silt, and clear debris, work that's a lot harder to do with ten extra feet of water sitting on top of it.
The Same Ten Feet, Behind a Different Gate
This is where the closure list and your actual lake experience start to diverge. The public notices exist because the city has an obligation to warn the public away from facilities it operates and controls. Emma Long's ramp and swim area get an official closure because the city owns them and can post signage, sell day passes, and enforce the rule. Greenshores' Lakeside Park, with its own boat ramp, its swimmer-friendly day dock, and its gated, POA-managed access, was never part of that system, so there's no equivalent notice coming.
But the water at the bottom of your community ramp is drawn from the same reservoir LCRA is lowering between the two dams. Whatever happens to Emma Long's exposed lakebed happens to Greenshores' shoreline too. The gate code will still work. The park will technically remain open to members. What changes is what's actually at the end of the ramp when you get there.
What Changes This Fall
A ten-foot drop on a lake this narrow and residentially developed isn't subtle. Expect the community boat ramp to end well short of the waterline for most of October and November, with a stretch of exposed concrete or lakebed between the ramp's edge and actual water. The day dock will sit lower relative to the shoreline than usual, and depending on how it's anchored, may need adjustment to stay usable at the lowered level. If your household uses the private launch regularly, plan around a different-looking approach than the one you're used to, especially in the first two to three weeks while the lake is still dropping.
This same window is also your best chance in nine years to get dock and bulkhead work done that's been waiting on exposed ground. The city is preparing a dedicated Site Plan Exemption permit application specifically for minor dock and bulkhead repairs during this drawdown, meant to be faster than the standard process. It wasn't available as of the August 20 announcement but was expected within weeks. If there's a repair you've been putting off because the water was always in the way, this is the stretch to make the call.
The city is also holding an open house on September 9, from 6 to 8 p.m., at the Permitting and Development Center at 6310 Wilhelmina Delco Drive, Meeting Room 1407, specifically to walk shoreline owners through the drawdown process and what permits apply. For anyone weighing dock work this fall, that meeting is worth the drive.
What Doesn't Change
Ski Shores Cafe, just down Pearce Road and a fixture on this stretch of the lake since 1954, isn't on any closure list and has no reason to be. It's private property with its own access, not a public facility subject to the city's drawdown order. Turkey Creek Trail, the hiking route that runs along Emma Long's cliffs and doesn't require the park's day-use fee, is also unaffected. The trail sits above the waterline entirely, so a lower lake doesn't touch it.
Emma Long itself stays open too. Only the boat ramp and the designated swimming area are closing under the drawdown order, not the park as a whole. Camping, picnic tables, and the trail system all continue on their normal schedule. Worth noting separately: the city has also flagged an unrelated October maintenance window at Emma Long where water utilities, showers, sinks, and fountains, will be shut off for repairs, with portable toilets on site. That's a different project on a different timeline, not part of the drawdown itself, but it lands in the same park in the same general stretch of fall.
If You Bought Since 2017
The last time Lake Austin came down this far was 2017, nearly a decade ago. For anyone who's bought into Greenshores since then, this October is the first time the lake behind the house will look like something other than the normal 492-foot range they signed the closing papers on, and the first real chance to see their own dock and shoreline the way the people who built it once did.
If you're trying to figure out what this means for a specific dock, bulkhead, or repair project on your stretch of shoreline, Megan DiBartolo and the team at Ivy Residential Group know this lake and its permitting process well enough to point you toward the right next step.
