How You Can Help to End the Seasonal Lake Lowering Program (SLLP)
DONATE – We want to first thank all the individuals that have donated in the last year. Those funds have allowed us to mount a significant effort to eliminate the SLLP. If you are not a Lake Conroe Association voting member, please join for $100 and donate an additional amount if you can. If you are a current member, please donate any amount you can to replenish our fully depleted reserve fund, so we can continue our legal efforts to eliminate the SLLP. To donate send a check to P.O. Box 376 Willis, TX 77378 or use our website at https://lcatx.org/join.
In the past year the LCA has spent over $80,000 for legal representation to file complaints with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Montgomery County Courts. Unlike the San Jacinto River Authority (SJRA) and City of Houston (CoH), which can fund their legal costs by increasing water rates or passing service fees onto their water customers, the LCA gets 100% of all needed funds from donations. The CoH and SJRA are not subject to an election within Montgomery County, so the Lake Conroe area residents impacted by the SLLP have no electoral means to hold them accountable for wasting billions of gallons annually. The LCA, a 100% volunteer organization, is the only entity that can efficiently fight the SLLP on behalf of the Lake Conroe area residents.
Past donations have been evenly split between several large donations of $5,000 or more and many others in the $100-$500 range. Any amount you can donate will help keep us in the fight if we get broad participation from members and the many residents of the almost 100 Home Owner Associations.
As the LCA is an IRS recognized nonprofit 501(c)( 3) entity, your full donation is a charitable deduction from your 2021 federal tax return. For those that take the “Standard Deduction,” for the tax year 2021, the IRS is allowing cash contribution deductions of up to $300 per individual ($600 per couple) above the Standard Deduction, for which the LCA qualifies as a 501(c)(3). Additionally, remember if you must make Minimum Required Distributions (MRD) from your retirement accounts, consider making a portion of those as Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCD) to a qualified 501(c)(3) such as the LCA. A QCD distribution is counted toward satisfying your RMD but is not counted as income when calculating other tax issues such as Medicare fees.
GET THE WORD OUT – Help us get the facts out to your neighbors impacted by the waste of billions of gallons of Lake Conroe water. The SLLP provides no material flood reduction impact and was “authorized” by the TCEQ to only last to June 2021.Share our facts, information updates, and links to the LCA website..
VERY SOON – CONTACT THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR ALLOWING THE SLLP TO CONTINUE – The LCA, as before, will be organizing efforts in September to communicate the facts about the billions of gallons of water wasted to all parties that can and should put an end to the SLLP. We have set the goal of thousands of letters to be sent to the Chairman of the TCEQ, the SJRA Board President, the Mayor of Houston, and the Governor of Texas, whose office stated in 2020 that the “SLLP was temporary.” Stay tuned for more information about this effort in early September.