Heat driving up water use bringing warning from water agency
Leonard Sjosten of Petaluma says he's careful about his water use but acknowledges with landscaping, a pool, two fountains and a hot tub, his water bill this summer might come in on the high side.
John Burgess / PD FilePublished: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:07 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 10:07 a.m.
Turn off the hose!
That’s the message from the Sonoma County Water Agency, which has notified cities and other entities it supplies that storage levels are growing dangerously low because of increased watering during recent hot weather.
“This is where the rubber meets the road,” Sonoma County Water Agency spokesman Brad Sherwood said Wednesday, a day after cities and other wholesalers were notified of a sudden decline in water storage.
The spike in temperatures Monday and Tuesday caused a surge in water demand large enough to cut stored supplies by an average of 5.8 million gallons a day, enough to consume the available stored water in 14 days, Sherwood said.
The message? Turn off the faucets, fix the plumbing and irrigation leaks, and learn to let your lawn go brown, or at least not as green.
Conservation experts said it may not be necessary to give up on lawns and gardens to meet the conservation goals.
“It’s OK to stress your plants out, and it’s not necessary to be adjusting (irrigation) up and down constantly,” Pam Jeane, the water agency’s deputy operations engineer, said.
Michael Wooley of Santa Rosa said he already is taking water conservation measures, such as washing his car monthly instead of weekly.
“We have a gardener and he cut back our watering to shorter times, from 10 minutes to two to three minutes,” said Wooley, who acknowledges it has left his lawn with a few brown spots.
The water agency supplies 600,000 consumers through the cities of Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Windsor, Cotati, Petaluma, and Sonoma, as well as the Valley of the Moon, the North Marin and the Marin Municipal water districts.
All have been asked to cut water use by at least 25 percent under a state mandate to reduce the amount of water pumped from the Russian River by the same percentage relative to 2004.
The water agency also has limitations on how much water it can provide because of budget cutbacks that have made some pumping facilities along the river unavailable, with the result that it is limited to supplying 53 million gallons of water a day.
When temperatures soared into the mid-90s Monday and then up and over 100 degrees on Tuesday, consumer demand spiked more than 13 percent to 60 million gallons a day. That forced the water agency to draw down water storage it can’t readily replace from the reservoirs and rivers because of years of dry weather.
Water tanks with capacity for 129 million gallons were down to 85 million gallons Tuesday, the threshold requiring notification of cities and other customers that water storage had declined.
The volume continued dropping Wednesday, despite a slight cooling.
Wherever the slide ends is where storage levels will remain until the next heat wave, barring extraordinary conservation, Sherwood said.
If the storage level drops to 70 million gallons, there would be mandatory conservation required through the system, according to a draft agreement, Sherwood said. That means each city would have to implement its conservation measures and be responsible for enforcing them.
At 60 million gallons of storage, the water agency would only deliver enough water necessary to meet human consumption, sanitation and fire protection needs, he said.
Water officials are cheered by the fact that even the recent spike in water use is lower than historically is the case, Jeane said.
But “it’s not a normal year,” Sherwood said. “We just can’t replenish it like we would be able to in years of non-drought because we literally don’t have the water in the river system to do that, and the state has ordered us to cut back 25 percent.”
Santa Rosa, the water agency’s largest customer, had a 32 percent reduction in water use from June 2004 to June 2009, and a cutback of 25 percent from June of last year, said Dan Muelrath, the city’s water conservation coordinator.
Santa Rosa nonetheless posted a reminder to its online water conservation page warning consumers to resist the urge to use too much water.
“A lot of times people increase irrigation 25, 30 40 percent,” Muelrath said of hot weather days. “In reality the landscape may have needed just an extra minute that day.”
Magie O’Meara, a clerk at the Home Depot, Santa Rosa, garden section, said the customers they see are increasingly water conscious.
“They ask for drought-resistant plants,” she said. “To a large degree, people are aware.”
O’Meara herself embraces many of the practices from the previous drought years.
“I don’t flush the toilet at night, and when I’m in the shower, I put in buckets to collect the water before it gets hot. I use it to water the potted plants in the house,” O’Meara said.
Muelrath suggested residents consult the city’s Turf-Time hotline (543-3466), which contains irrigation tips for different kinds of weather, or its Web site, www.srcity.org\watershortrage,
“We were very lucky to have the cool start of the summer,” Sherwood said, “and now I think we’re starting to hit that regular heat of the summer that we normally get.”
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