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Faced
with a dwindling water supply and little rain in the long-range forecasts, the
Raleigh City Council may vote Tuesday to ban all outdoor watering, including
the permits to water new lawns.
The
new rules would not be the stringent Stage 2 regulations, which banned washing
vehicles except at approved locations.
For
many Wake Forest residents, the new measure is long overdue. Several people
have said they are affronted by homeowners and businesses which continue to
spray drinking water on their lawns, viewing them as selfish at a time when
this area is experiencing exceptional drought. (The level of drought is based
on several factors, including soil moisture, groundwater levels, rainfall, and
effects on agriculture and human activities.)
Wake
Forest residents see a local rainfall deficit of 8.45 inches, a number which is
still better than the 21.57-inch deficit in Lumberton or the 20.35-inch deficit
in Wilmington.
They
see the level of Falls Lake dropping by two or three hundredths of a foot each
day. Wednesday morning the reservoir – the water source for more than 410,000
people – stood at 243.83 feet above mean sea level, 7.67 feet below its normal
pool level.
They
know that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the lake and dam,
must release enough water downstream for drinking water supplies in Goldsboro
and Smithfield and for aquatic life.
Raleigh
officials are suggesting they could release water from Lakes Benson, Johnson
and Wheeler into the Neuse to help maintain the river flow and allow the Corps
to release less from the Falls dam. There has been no decision about this yet.
Wednesday
Corps officials met at noon in Raleigh to talk about all the local lakes:
Falls, Kerr, Jordan.
Their
presentations, released in advance, were not heartening.
Terry
M. Brown, the water control manager for the Wilmington District, wrote:
“Reservoirs upstream of Falls Dam which control about one-third of the drainage
area are in serious drought status.” Lake Michie, a water source for Durham, is
down 14.3 feet, the Little River reservoir is down 17.1 feet.
Brown’s
chart of the remaining water supply in Falls shows it dropping off to zero
percent about Jan. 20 if there is no rain and usage remains at its present
level.
Below
a level of 236.5 feet in Falls Lake, Raleigh’s water treatment plant would be
withdrawing from the sedimentation storage pool where water is increasingly
loaded with sand and silt and more difficult to treat. The lake level has to
fall another 7.3 feet to reach that pool.
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