Water wars - southeast style

Maybe not a big deal right now with rainfall totals near or even above normal for the year. But long term, this gets interesting very quickly:

A federal judge on Friday ruled against Georgia in the state's water dispute with Alabama and Florida, deciding that Atlanta-area municipalities must stop withdrawing water from a massive federal reservoir within three years unless they can get approval from Congress.

. . .

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said the ruling would have a tremendous impact on his state's economic future.

"Atlanta has based its growth on the idea that it could take whatever water it wanted whenever it wanted it, and that the downstream states would simply have to make do with less," Riley said. "Following the Court's ruling today, this massive illegal water grab will be coming to an end."

Even better? Georgia claimed it wouldn;t be using any Lake Lanier water back in the 50s, when the dam was first built, to avoid having to chip in for the construction costs.

Damn guvamint projects.

Continue reading Water wars - southeast style

Irony

Durham residents can now water their lawns and gardens only three times a week.

Continue reading Irony

Stage II

According to an email blast from the city, new manager Tom Bonfield has backed the city's water usage retrictions down to Stage II:

Stage II measures request that customers:

· Limit the use of clothes washers and dishwashers, and when used, to operate fully loaded.

· Reduce the flushing of toilets to the minimum whenever practical.

· Limit car washing to the minimum.

· Limit wash downs of outside areas such as sidewalks, patios, driveways, or other similar purposes.

· Limit hours of operation of water-cooled air conditioners if possible.

· Use biodegradable disposable dishes and utensils, both for residential and commercial purposes, where feasible.

We're still on the twice a week watering schedule (Wednesdays and Saturdays, either from 5-8 am or 5-8 pm), and Bonfield also notes that "stream flows throughout the state continue to flow at levels well below average for this time of year" and restriction protocols could change again depending on what happens the rest of the year.

Reservoirs are currently full from the remnants of TS Faye 10 days or so ago, so the rainfall we're going to be picking up from Hannah is for the most part going to go downstream. Hopefully we'll see some water table replenishment, which will subsequently have a positive effect on streamflows down the line.

Continue reading Stage II

In case you hadn't noticed

Inflows at Lake Michie have now dropped below where they were this time last year. There's some rain in the forecast. Maybe it'll hit the watershed.

Continue reading In case you hadn't noticed

No rain for you

Meanwhile, at the Little River Reservoir:


UPDATE: Well, ummm, that was a bit unexpected, wasn't it?

Continue reading No rain for you

Rain

All that rain we've been getting recently?

Not having much effect on inflows at our reservoirs.

They've barely ticked above 2 cfs at Lake Michie over the past 3 weeks, and are currently at .8 (which is well below the 20th percentile for the date, and not that far above the minimum of .24 cfs recorded last year.)

Same story over at the Little River, where inflows have dropped to .14 cfs.

That's a combined inflow of about 600,000 gallons/day, or about 2.5% of our usage.

Little River levels are very closely tracking last year's; Lake Michie is a bit higher than that, but is tracking between 1999 and 2006 levels.

The good news is that demand remains low - about 23% below 2007 levels. An interesting tidbit can be seen in the daily demand graph. Wednesdays and Saturdays jump right out at you. They're the days in which lawn watering is allowed, and with very few exceptions the only days in which usage tops 30 mgd over the past month. Usage over the past 2 Sundays, though, is curiously below that of the previous 3. It's rained on Sunday the past two weeks. I'm guessing the drop in usage on those days corresponds to fewer people cheating and watering their lawns and gardens on account of the rain.

Let's see what Tropical Storm Fay brings our way later this week.

Continue reading Rain

Good news

The storms over the holiday weekend did some damage around town, and (mercifully) cut short the Kevin Costner concert Friday night. They didn't do much for stream flows, though, at least at Lake Michie, where they never rose above the 20th percentile for the date. Things were a little better at the Little River, where inflows are dropping down to median levels after spiking at 90+cfs over the weekend.

The good news comes from the water usage tables where, for only the second time in 5 or so weeks, a watering day passed by without seeing usage spike above 30 million gallons.

Lake levels at Little River are still slightly below where they were this time last year; at Lake Michie they're significantly above, and holding steady. Our usage is still running about 18% below last year. I feel a little better about things right now.

Continue reading Good news

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.

Continue reading Water watch

Water watch

Streamflows at both Little River (.83 cfs) and Lake Michie (3.7 cfs) this morning dropped below the previously recorded lows for this date.

Just sayin'.

Continue reading Water watch

Water watch

Another Wednesday, another 30+ MGD usage day. The good news is that the spikes on allowed watering days (Wednesday and Saturday) seem to have stabilized at around 31 - 32 MGD, and that the 32MGD usage on Thursday the 12th was an aberration. We even had two days this week where usage dropped below 25 MGD, probably the result of late afternoon thunderstorms keeping some folks from sneaking in a lawn watering session.

The bad news is that stream flows continue to drop. The 4.3 cfs recorded at Lake Michie is barely above the previous minimum for this date (3 cfs in 1994). Over at Little River, the .89 cfs is similarly not far above the .43 recorded in 2002. Both numbers are well below the 20th percentile, meaning that in 8 out of every 10 years, streamflows have been higher on this date. The combined 5.2 cfs translates into a 3.3 mgd inflow, or about 12% of what our average daily use has been this month.

Let's see what the next few days brings - highs in the mid-upper 90s, and only slight chances of thunderstorms. I'm predicting a spike in usage above 35 MGD on Saturday barring any significant thunderstorms tonight or tomorrow.

Continue reading Water watch

Tiered water rates

The city's new tiered water rates are going to take effect pretty soon, and there was some discussion on my neighborhood listserv this morning over how they work.

From the city website:

Service charges for both water and sewer will also rise. These "base" charges cover the cost of meter reading and billing and other fixed costs of the water and sewer operations. For customers with 5/8 and 1 inch meters (primarily residential customers), service charges will increase from $2.58 per month to $5.11 per month for water and from $3.19 a month to $5.71 for sewer services. Customers living outside of the city limits will continue to pay twice as much as customers living inside city limits.

The new rate tiers reflect what the City charges for a "unit" of water as shown on bills, which is 100 cubic feet, or 748 gallons. Most residential customers fall in the Tier 3 range, using about eight units over a two-month billing period. A customer using four units over the two-month period will be charged at the Tier 1 rate and see about an $11 increase in their total bill. A customer using 12 units over the bi-monthly period would be charged at the Tier 1 rate for the first two units of each month, at the Tier 2 rate for the next three units of each month and at the Tier 3 rate for the remaining unit used each month. This customer's bi-monthly bill would increase about $13.

Doing our own math, we find that for a customer who is using exactly 15 units per month, the base rate rises exactly the same (from $11.54 per billing cycle to $21.64 per billing cycle) and the sewer use charge also remains the same at $98.40 per 2 month billing cycle. The water use charge will rise from $46.80 per billing cycle to $65.44 per billing cycle for a new total of $185.48. That's up a grand total of $28.70 per billing cycle, from $156.78, or $14.35 per month. Compared with a $11 per cycle increase (or $5.50/month) for the most conservation minded customers*. So water wasters are going to be nicked just under 9 bucks a month more than water misers.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine whether this is sufficient to change behavior.

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* To be fair, the tiered rates do not take into consideration the number of people living in a household. So, per person use could be the same for a 1 person household and a 6 person household, but the larger one will end up paying the surcharge. Maybe the difficulty of accounting for the difference in household size factored into the decision to keep the tiers relatively close to each other in price.

Continue reading Tiered water rates

The lost art of copy-editing

From Monica Chen's mostly good Herald-Sun piece* today on the recent heat wave and its implications for our water supply in the months to come:

Experts haven't put out any warnings about another possible drought this year, but the Seewaldt-Dietze family isn't taking any chances. They'll continue as they always have and try to save every drop.

. . .

Although Lake Michie and the Little River Reservoir look full and the county projects 303 days of supply, the streams feeding them are still running about 50-60 percent of normal for this time of year, according to Deputy Water Management Director Vicki Westbrook.

"The groundwater is still in a recovery mode," she said. "That's why no one at any level has pronounced the drought over."

Gov. Mike Easley again last week asked the General Assembly to approve his proposed drought legislation to modernize this state's public water systems and mandate conservation.

As of Thursday, more than two-thirds of the state's 100 counties were still in some level of drought, with 32 counties in extreme drought.

=======================

* I say mostly good, because there are a few annoying, if ultimately irrelevant errors. for example, demand for the month of June 08 is not higher than last June's 33.79 mgd, at least not yet, although it has spiked above that level on several occasions. she also writes "Meanwhile, water use, after hovering mostly below the daily figure of 25 million gallons in May, hit a high of about 36 million gallons on Wednesday, 15 million more than the same time last month," without putting in the context that water restrictions were not in effect last June, and that usage likely spiked on Wednesday precisely because it's one of the days on which residents are allowed to water their gardens. The city does not publish daily water use figures over the weekend. You need to read the daily use chart to get an idea of what those are, and the chart does not always match up to the published figures. So far, they haven't updated the chart to reflect this weekend's use. I suspect that we'll see another spike on Saturday. And if that trend continues for the next couple of weeks, especially if inflows to our reservoirs remain below a combined 10 cubic feet per second (or about 6.6 mgd) we'll see Wednesday watering eliminated in the near future.
UPDATE: graph of recent daily use has been updated. It appears that demand was around 33 mgd on Saturday, third highest day of the month.

Continue reading The lost art of copy-editing

Streamflows

Streamflow dropped precipitously at Little River overnight, and are now below the previous lows for the date, recorded in 2002. It's not quite so bad over at Lake Michie, where inflows are still above 10 cfs. With virtually no rain in sight for the next 10 days, though, expect to see those numbers dropping into the single digits real soon now. Through June 11, year over year demand for the month is down 18%. Spikes on watering days (Wednesdays and Saturdays) are pushing that up, however. We'll keep an eye on Saturday's numbers.

Continue reading Streamflows

Not good

Water usage in Durham spiked up yesterday to above 35 mgd, the highest use of the year, and higher than the monthly average for June of last year. We've got the odd thunderstorm in the forecast for the next 10 days, but again, you can't count on those. Current inflows at both Little River and Lake Michie are at their lowest levels in over a month (Little River in particular is getting near its all-time low for June again.) We're currently on pace to add onlyabout 8.75 mgd back to the reservoir.

Look for the city to go back to Stage IV (one day a week watering) if we don't see significant rainfall by the end of the month. I can't imagine that they will be caught with their pants down two years in a row.

Continue reading Not good

Ruh-roh

That spike to almost 35 mgd? That was Saturday.

Expect the city to be a lot more proactive this year than last about increasing water restrictions if we go more than a couple of weeks without rain. That could mean only one day a week to water your lawns. Current forecast calls for 30-40% chance of T-storms Wednesday and Thursday, and again over the weekend. Let's hope.

Also, the numbers say usage yesterday was 30.5 mgd. The graph shows it at around 29 mgd. Keep that in mind.

UPDATE: Damn, i knew i should have made a copy of the image, rather than linking to the city's graph. When the city's website comes back on line, i'll do that. Meantime, trust me, usage on Saturday got damn near 35 million gallons/day, far and away the most of any day this year.

Continue reading Ruh-roh

Drought watch?

Not yet. But, it's worth noting that for the first time in over two months, the levels at Lake Michie have dropped. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. That's why you have a reservoir.

The good news is that stream flows, although still below historic medians, have been above 20 cfs at Lake Michie for the past month or more, and have only dropped below 10 cfs once at Little River. Last year at this time, inflows at Lake Michie were the lowest recorded for spring (tied with 2002, another drought year), at about 5 cfs. 30 cfs yields about 20 million gallons a day. Better news is that demand has remained about 20-25% below last year's early summer levels, at around 22 - 25 mgd.

I think this helps to reinforce my contention that we need to stop thinking about "droughts," and start thinking about long-term imbalances between our demand for water and our supply. We've seen our reservoirs get seriously low 3 times in the past 8 years. Nothing suggests that it won't happen in the future at least as frequently.

Continue reading Drought watch?

Lost in the shuffle

With all of the Election Day hoo-ha yesterday, it was kind of easy to miss this:

Water users will pay higher rates starting July 1, the City Council decided Monday night, against the objections of the local Chamber of Commerce and one council member.

The increase is needed to help pay for nearly $250 million in capital needs, such as building a new intake on Jordan Lake and fixing leaky water pipes, officials said. The five-tiered system, under which customers will pay higher rates the more water they use, also is intended to discourage waste.

Tiered rates are a necessity, although i think the system Durham has adopted is more complicated than it needs to be. I think it would also be better to have a lower base rate, and significantly higher rates at the top tiers.

Here's something that confused me:

The average city customer uses about 800 cubic feet, or about 6,000 gallons of water, per month.

If all that water comes from indoor taps, those customers pay $15.06 per month now. Under the new system, they will pay $19.93 per month.

Currently, outdoor irrigation is subject to a double rate, $3.12 per 100 cubic feet. Under the new system, outdoor water will cost $3.87 per 100 cubic feet, the same as the Tier 5 rate.

Are there residential water customers in the city with both indoor and outdoor meters? How does the city propose to measure that? I'm pretty certain if i run the drip irrigation system in my vegetable garden on a Saturday evening, that's going to show up as indoor water, no?

UPDATE: Matt explains the details over at the Bull's Eye.

Continue reading Lost in the shuffle

Are we still in a "drought"?

Julia Borbely-Brown opened last night's Women for Wise Growth forum on the drought with an emphatic "The drought is not over" statement. In the Herald-Sun today (and circulating as well on local email lists) is a letter from Joe Curtis and Sylvia Le Goff (of Keep Durham Beautiful) saying the same thing.

In both instances, the people saying this are hoping to convince others not to give up on the conservation measures they've been practicing over the past 6 or 8 months, since water supplies in the Triangle dropped perilously low.

After listening to last night's presentations, and monitoring rainfall, stream flows, and reservoir elevations for the past 6 months or so, i've reached the conclusion that, regardless of whether or not we're in "a drought," it's simply no longer useful to be discussing our water woes on that basis.

Elaine Chiosso of the Haw River Assembly spoke at length last night about water quality issues in the Haw basin and Jordan Lake. Most of these issues relate to stormwater runoff, especially nutrient (phosphorus and nitrogen) pollution and sedimentation. This pollution impacts the ability of Jordan Lake to act as the region's buffer against water shortages, and is actually increased by normal rainfall. Barry Jacobs, of the Orange County Board of Commissioners addressed development issues, and more than once referenced the innate carrying capacity of the system as a limiting factor in how much population can be supported.

What i realized is that the constant reference to "the drought" leads to a way of thinking, which has found expression in the comments here, at Bull City Rising, in letters to the editor at our local newspapers, emails to elected officials, and private conversations, that once we get adequate rainfall, "the drought" will be over. And i think that as long as we keep referring to our water issues as "drought" related, that kind of thinking will be the logical and appropriate response. What we need to do is start addressing our water issues as a long-term, systemic imbalance between supply and demand which cannot be addressed as an economic problem simply by increasing supply. That's beyond our capability. We can manage our supply better, but how much rainfall we're going to get in any given one, five, or ten year period is not ours to determine. We can also manage our demand a lot better, and that's where the most significant change in our thinking has to come. Stage III and Stage IV water use restrictions are emergency measures designed to respond to a crisis. We need to move beyond those.

Melissa Rooney, a South Durham activist, presented a slide show at the conclusion of last night's forum, showing some pretty abominable development practices, including clearcutting and mass grading. The result of these practices is quite predictable: increased stormwater runoff leading to lower groundwater retention, higher pollution levels, and increased water use by new homeowners trying to "green up" their properties.

It's almost inconceivable that these practices are permitted under Durham's new UDO, but apparently the rules requiring buffers and trees are flexible enough that developers are able to work around them as they see fit. On a smaller scale, i've recently discovered to my dismay, that the UDO similarly contains no provisions dealing with creating impervious surface on existing residential lots. If you want to pave your entire backyard and turn it into a parking lot in Durham, you have the blessings of the city.

The solution to what seems to be becoming a chronic issue of water supply is complex, but most of the answers are available. It's going to require a lot of creative thinking on the part of our elected leadership to get these best practices implemented however. Especially if we continue to have leaders who are more comfortable managing crises, rather than preventing them.

Continue reading Are we still in a "drought"?

Tiered water rates

The city's first proposal for tiered water rates was introduced yesterday, and discussed in the HS and the N&O.

According to Ray Gronberg's report, base prices for both the water and sewer portions of the bill would nearly double, from $2.58 to $5.12/month, and $3.19 to $5.72/month, respectively. Per unit sewer charges are going to remain static, at $3.28 per unit. A unit is 100 cubic feet, or 748 gallons, if you're wondering. We'll return to the sewer billing portion at some point in the future. Since the city doesn't meter sewer use, it assumes that all water used in the house exits view the sewers. As we've learned, though, by banning outdoor watering, a lot of water either gets soaked back into the ground or runs off into the storm sewer system. Expect to see some bitching about this in the future.

The plan for tiered water rates, though, is the big news. And here, the city has opted for a per household baseline, wherein households that use 2 units or less per month are rewarded, while households using 9 units or more are penalized, regardless of the number of people living in the house. There will be five tiers under the proposal, 2 units & under, 3-5 units, 6-8 units, 9-15 units, and over 15 units per month. The average household is expected to fall into the 6-8 unit per month category. From what i can tell, these aren't marginal increases either. That is, if your household uses 6 units per month, you'll pay the higher rate for all 6 of those units. Presumably it's too difficult at this point to program the computers to bill all customers the same for their first 2 units/month, and then bill the overage at the higher rate.

Quite frankly, the proposal doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Tiered rates should be raised on the margin, not the base. And at the highest levels (over 15 units/month) the proposed price is way too low, at only 2.25 times the base price. There are also too many tiers. Three should be adequate to distinguish between water wasters and water savers. A base rate for the first 3 units per month, say. Then a higher rate for the next 7 units. And a much higher rate for anything above that. If we're going to go with the household based rates.

It also shouldn't take too much imagination to find the inequities in a system that charges a single mother with 3 kids using 32 gallons per day per person (which is not a bad target when you're taking care of little ones) more than a single person using 50 gallons per day, or the same as a DINK couple using 60 gallons a day each.

But this is the first run through on this proposal. Presumably some of these kinks will be worked out before implementation. And when the new computer for handling water bills comes on line, perhaps some more fine-tuning will be possible. Including some exemptions for folks who are going to be really impacted by these rates.

Continue reading Tiered water rates

A couple of additional thoughts on drought

These are not necessarily past of last night's forum, and i didn't know how to incorporate them into the post below.

First, a lot of people, myself included, have been commenting on how the reservoirs in Durham are now full. We're not necessarily drawing the same conclusions from this, however. I'm not convinced that the drought is over, for instance, although i do believe that the crisis mode we were in last December has passed, and i'm comfrotable with the current Stage III restrictions, at least for the time being.

But, not counting whatever rainfall we get today, we're still 1.9" below normal rainfall for 2008 so far, and we're a full 5.8" below normal for the past 12 months. But even with this shortfall, we've managed to top off our reservoirs. The logical conclusion from that is not that the drought is over. Rather, it's that we have very small reservoirs. And if they filled up that quickly, they can be drawn down that quickly.

The second thought has to do with conservation measures alluded to below. I'm not referring solely to retail conservation at the consumer level. We don't have to declare a moratorium on development, for example, to institute workable conservation policies at the development level. One thing that i finally realized last night is the relationship between runoff and ground water. Most suburban type development entails creating a lot of impervious surface. Why is impervious surface bad? Because it increases runoff.

But runoff goes to the streams, and the streams go to the reservoirs, and they get filled. So what's the problem.

Well, the reservoirs are already filled. So all that runoff is, so to speak, water over the dam. Not to mention all of the pollution and unwanted nutrients that get carried directly into the streams and rivers.

We've got two places to store water - the reservoirs and the ground. Think of them as bowls and sponges. We can only make our bowls so big. Once they're filled, that's it. And it's expensive, not only in terms of cash, to build more bowls. But the sponges take up most of the area around us. They soak up and hold a lot more water, releasing it more slowly than runoff, and helping to keep the water flowing into the bowls even when the rainfall is less than adequate. All the impervious surfaces we build make the sponges smaller, without increasing the amount of water we can hold in the bowls. So, it shouldn't be too difficult, as a matter of policy, to tie development practices to making sure the least amount of impervious surface per project is created, and the more sponge is left to help keep the groundwater where it belongs.

Continue reading A couple of additional thoughts on drought