City of Raleigh discusses upcoming water restrictions amid spring drought

Little river reservoir

They have 2 stand we're good

All right we are good to go

Go ahead

Just introduce yourself for us real quick

My name is Ed Buchan

I'm an assistant director with Raleigh Water

OK so what are we looking at today What's going

on So we're in the middle of a uh severe

drought for most of North Carolina at this point and

it's been affecting the uh inflows to Falls Lake

And so right now Falls Lake has 84% of its

water supply pool remaining

So not all the water in Falls Lake is dedicated

for drinking water supplies divided up with about 58% set

aside for drinking water

The other 42% is for downstream releases

So when we talk about percent remaining at Falls Lake

we were talking about that water that is specific for

drinking water supplies

So this is an unusual drought event because Falls Lake

has always been full on April 1st

It clearly is not

It's over 2.5 ft down right now so this is

highly unusual from an environmental perspective

Previous droughts usually even in 2007 2008 our last very

serious drought the lake was full in early spring

So this is unusual and this is why we're taking

this step now

We're trying to be preemptive in case this intensifies later

in the year

Early forecasts suggest that we will have above normal rainfall

in May and June

We're certainly hoping for that

So we're doing this out of an abundance of caution

We want to make sure that we have plenty of

water for the rest of the year

So why now Is there something specific that triggered this

for today instead of maybe Thursday Friday or early next

week Well that's a great question

We get a report from the Army Corps of Engineers

every Tuesday

About the water supply remaining in Falls Lake they do

that calculation for us and so we're always kind of

waiting for them and we were a bit surprised that

it fell below so quickly

The week before it was at 87% so it dropped

3% in a week

So that's a lot in a very short period of

time I think

Part of that is we're seeing a lot more evaporative

losses right now than we normally would

It's obviously very hot so our drought trigger system is

based on the time of year

And so it changes month to month what that trigger

is

In April it is going to be 85%

So once we got that number from the Corps we

had to validate that number and then we go ahead

and make the decision to implement drought restrictions

Is he the only thing that plays a role in

making that percentage go down so quickly So there's two

things that happen

They calculate the amount of water we withdraw every day

So we send them a report every day

We average around 50 million gallons a day out of

this lake

So that's part of it but also the evaporative losses

are the other issue there

And of course those are going to go up as

the temperature goes up

And it's also been fairly dry in terms of air

temperature and humidity which I think exacerbates the evaporative losses

So that's the big drivers right now

So when I hear restriction

I immediately go worst case scenario that people are going

to have to you know start conserving their water for

consumption but when I see this list it sounds like

it's purely for you know excess water that you might

use in landscaping

I mean what would you tell people to you know

maybe calm them that this isn't you know that we're

at a worst case scenario

So a couple things

One I will go back to the last significant drought

we had in 2007-2008

At that time the only water source we had was

Falls Lake and I mentioned earlier the 58 42% split

At that time it was reversed so it was 42%

reserved for water drinking water and the other 58% was

for downstream releases in 2019

We had a lot of that water reallocated so since

then in 2019 we added 5.6 billion gallons of water

compared to what we were seeing in 2007 and 2008

And now we have Lake Wheeler and Lake Benson line

So this again is an abundance of caution

We have a lot of water available to us

We still feel very good that we're going to be

able to manage through this

We planned for this event

This is why we developed this drought plan which is

based on over 100 years of hydraulic modeling

So we know that we want to take action now

as almost a reminder

A lot of it is to your point elective use

outdoor elective use irrigation that's the main thing that will

be restricted

And because obviously this time of year you'll start to

see a big spike in irrigation demand so we want

to try to limit that and make sure that people

use water for the more necessary things for consumption and

other sanitation issues

At what point do we go to stage 2 stage

3 of this restriction So it's going to depend on

the month

I think right now it would have to get probably

I don't want to quote myself on that one but

I'll send those numbers to you

Stage two would be a long ways away

I think stage 1 April is the highest trigger 85%

If we had been able to manage through April it

would have been 75%

Um so we were kind of right on the edge

of being able to manage through this without having to

adopt restrictions but um stage two it would have to

get a lot lower than it is now

That 85% is it so high because you're preparing for

the warm weather ahead Correct OK so that's why it

goes down

Is it Do you remember the numbers 85 75% and

does it go lower in July and August Correct

Normally there's like a natural drawdown and refill cycle of

a lake like this so it'll go down in the

summer and early fall

Oftentimes falls can be very dry if you don't get

tropical weather like either a hurricane or the stuff that

comes off the Gulf

But then the expectation is you usually have a very

wet winter and wet spring here in central North Carolina

and we just did not have that this year

One thing I saw too in the release that was

sent out is if people don't follow these guidelines or

I guess these restrictions that they could be facing penalties

What does that look like So the first noncompliance would

be a warning letter and so then after that it

would start to have civil penalties associated with $50 and

then up to $200 for a second violation

And again we don't ever want to get to that

point

We want this to be more of an education effort

at this point to make sure people are aware of

the restrictions

We do have modern metering technology that can look at

irrigation meters

A lot of times people will have a meter for

the domestic uses in the house and then they'll have

a separate meter for the irrigation system

So those things can be monitored very closely

So that's something that we want people to be aware

of that that data is available to us

Um I was talking to a gentleman earlier who you

know he's been in the area for 30 40 years

and he remembers in '06 that um the drought that

you guys had to deal with then and remembered talks

about you know maybe adding a reservoir or something that

he says that that didn't happen

I know you said the other lakes are providing it

too but I mean is there any discussion or plans

to try to avoid something like this happening you know

in another 20 years So we are actively looking at

our next water resource

We have a lot of options on the table right

now one of which is another reservoir in eastern Lake

County called Little River that's been talked about since the

90s so that is still something that we're considering and

there's also a possibility of taking more water out of

the Noose River downstream of the lake

So there's a couple of things we're investigating right now

and literally we're studying that

This year and so we'll have some direction on it

pretty soon

And one of the things in the guidelines that were

sent were about the watering of your landscape

It says a max of 0.5 inch of water per

week

I mean how am I supposed to know Well that's

a recommendation

And so that's just something that irrigation specialists would say

to somebody

The old thing that they would recommend is you get

a tuna can and just put it out there and

that's how you would kind of measure it

But irrigation systems are pretty a lot of them are

pretty advanced now compared to it was 20 years ago

so they can get a lot more accurate about how

much water they put out

So some of the older ones are still

You're kind of having to guess but um But the

main thing is keeping the water on your property

We don't want people watering the street or watering so

much that it's running off the property

Is that a good guideline to kind of guess if

you're doing too much yeah because I'm thinking you know

I have that you know back and forth kind of

sprinkler that I I can't gauge how much that is

Is there like a time or anything that you would

suggest for Well obviously you don't want to do it

in the middle of the day like right now because

evaporation is at the peak so you would want to

do it at night or early in the morning

I'm getting a little bit out of my lane but

you know sometimes there's people having concerns about watering too

late at night because that can create its own issues

with fungus or something of that nature

But we all know that watering in the middle of

the day is not advisable

When will this be reassessed Is it a day to

day thing or are you going to look at it

after the rain on Sunday Every week OK and I

hope it does rain on Sunday

I don't know how much it will be but um

yeah we'll we'll look at it every Tuesday

OK so that's when we would know whether or not

we're still on this lane

All right cool um anything else that you were hoping

to talk about or No we just appreciate everybody's cooperation

in this and again this is out of an abundance

of caution we still feel very confident that we'll be

able to manage through this and that we just ask

that everybody pitch in right now and try to curb

any sort of irrigation that you have plans for right

now

Julian anything else Oh great awesome

Well thanks for doing