Water watch
Last night's thunderstorms and accompanying downpour did more than just disrupt another Shooting The Bull broadcast.
Streamflows at both Little River and Lake Michie climbed out of the "all-time minimum recorded" levels they were at last week. Little River especially seems to have caught a significant amount of last night's storms, with flows peaking above 40 cfs there earlier this morning. Lake Michie improved somewhat, but at 7.4 cfs is still below the 20 percentile mark fo rthis date. Expect that number to rise however, as the runoff works its way through the system.
The city has not updated its usage tables for the weekend yet. I'll post those numbers as soon as they're available.
Streamflows at both Little River and Lake Michie climbed out of the "all-time minimum recorded" levels they were at last week. Little River especially seems to have caught a significant amount of last night's storms, with flows peaking above 40 cfs there earlier this morning. Lake Michie improved somewhat, but at 7.4 cfs is still below the 20 percentile mark fo rthis date. Expect that number to rise however, as the runoff works its way through the system.
The city has not updated its usage tables for the weekend yet. I'll post those numbers as soon as they're available.
Labels: drought
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3 Comments:
Well, this should make things interesting.
No way, of course, that anything actually changes right away. But in a couple of months, those usage rates could get very interesting.
Meanwhile, I'm starting to think that this drought really isn't going to break until we get a good hurricane remnant or two.
By
Unknown, at 5:18 PM
i ran some numbers a week or two ago.
we've been using 3 units a month for each of the past 6 months. i expect that to remain relatively stable. i'm catching enough water in the rainbarrels to keep the garden healthy without having to use the drip irrigation off the tap.
at that usage, our bill goes up i think $13 per 2 month cycle. For someone using 15 units a month, i think the increase is $28.70 per billing cycle.
i don't see those numbers, ie - less than $15/month increase for fairly high users, being significant enough to force any major changes in behavior, especially for those who are already using lots of water.
That 15 unit a month user sees their bimonthly bill go from $156.78 to $185.48. We've already seen a strong correlation between water use and household income.
I hope i'm wrong and that the new rates do encourage less consumption. inflows at Lake Michie rose to 9.2 cfs following last night's storms, and have already settled back to 7.4 cfs after peaking at around 40 at Little River earlier this morning. I suspect that come November, we'll be counting the days of water supply left again.
By
Barry, at 5:48 PM
Might be interesting to find out how many units/month the people who set the rates use.
By
MK, at 6:12 PM
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