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We are sweating under August’s hot sun,
losing water, and so is Falls Lake.
Without extended rain soon, much of Wake
County could face stricter water-use
regulations.
Surface evaporation and a
lack of inflow from the streams that
usually feed the lake are combining to
shrink the lake each day.
Early Wednesday morning,
Aug. 8, the unofficial lake level was
248.31 feet above mean sea level, down
well over 3 feet from its normal level
of 251.5 feet.
The water supply for 400,000
people is also shrinking. Falls is the
sole supply for Raleigh, Wake Forest,
Rolesville, Garner, Knightdale, Wendell
and Zebulon.
On Monday, when the lake
level was 248.5, Terry Brown, the water
control manager for the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineer’s Wilmington District, said,
“Both water supply and water quality
storage in Falls Lake is nearly
one-third depleted.”
Brown also noted that the
average inflow thus far for August is
-74 cubic feet per second “which will no
doubt become larger with the upcoming
hot days ahead. The lowest inflow month
in the previous 79 years of record was
1997 with an average inflow of -47 cfs.”
The Corps uses the water
quality water in the lake to release
enough water to maintain a target flow
254 cfs at Clayton. The Neuse River both
above and below Falls Lake is suffering
from a lack of inflow from its feeder
streams because of the dry conditions.
Brown projects there will be
only 56 percent of the water supply left
in Falls by the end of August and that
will drop to 43 percent by the end of
September.
Raleigh stands ready to
impose more restrictions on water use if
weather forecasts continue to show only
scattered showers. Last week Dale Crisp,
the city’s Public Utilities Director,
was ready to indulge in a dream of a
low-grade hurricane which would move
into the Triangle with low-velocity
winds and clouds heavy with rain.
Monday the Raleigh City
Council voted to allow the city manager
to declare Stage 1 water restrictions in
which lawns may be watered by irrigation
systems or sprinklers only once a week,
vehicles may be washed only on weekends
and the fines increase substantially.
Tuesday night, Wake Forest’s
Deputy Town Manager Roe O’Donnell said
the water use in town has leveled out.
Both here and in Raleigh people are
apparently observing the permanent water
rules: No watering on Mondays and
alternate watering the rest of the week
based on the address number. |
