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Falls Lake – after briefly reaching its
normal level late in April – has begun
shrinking again, and the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers reduced the downstream flow
from the dam Tuesday morning to 100
cubic feet per second.
The lake level had dropped
from its normal 251.5 feet above mean
sea level to 251.26 feet Wednesday
morning and was dropping at every hourly
reading. The flow from the Eno, Flat and
Little rivers into the lake was at 38
percent of normal for May, and those
figures were also dropping.
“For Falls Lake, [the] water
supply storage remaining is 98 percent
and water quality storage remaining is
97 percent,” Terry M. Brown, the water
control manager for the Corps’
Wilmington District, wrote Tuesday in
his weekly lake status e-mail.
Brown reported the immediate
future does not hold much hope of
improving. “Rainfall deficits continue
and inflows over the past 10 days are
seriously much below average. If overall
forecast dry conditions over the next
few days materialize, feeder streams
will decline and all five reservoirs
(Falls, Jordan, Kerr, Philpott and
Scott) will begin to show more stress.”
The Piedmont area continues
in a moderate drought condition, and
Raleigh’s rainfall deficit stands at 6.6
inches for the year.
Dale Crisp, Raleigh’s public
utilities director, said Tuesday there
were no plans yet to implement any water
conservation measures. “We will continue
to monitor it, but it’s not in the works
yet.”
When the Raleigh City
Council chose to end the mandatory Stage
2 water conservation measures earlier
this spring, the members did urge all
city residents and other users of city
water to practice voluntary
conservation.
Falls Lake, through
Raleigh’s water system, supplies water
to about 350,000 people in the city and
across northern and eastern Wake County.
The plant to provide 20
million gallons a day of water from a
second source – Lake Benson – will not
go on line until 2009 or 2010. Crisp
said they are expecting to receive final
approval of the environmental assessment
document by the middle of June with a
final permit for the plant 30 days
later. With that in hand, the city can
advertise for construction bids in July
or August and break ground in the fall.
Under an agreement with the
Corps reached before construction of
Falls Lake, Raleigh is authorized to
withdraw up to 100 mgd from the
reservoir. The city’s only water
treatment plant, E.M. Johnson on Falls
of the Neuse Road, processes an average
of 47 mgd but demand can spike that to
60 mgd or more during a hot, dry summer. |
