By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer
Heavy rain pelted the windows of Town Hall Tuesday night as Ed Kerwin, executive director of Orange Water and Sewer Authority, delivered his monthly briefing on the drought for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen.
Clearly delighted, he told them he’d drop by anytime if they could guarantee rain like that.
By 7 a.m. Wednesday morning, the thunderstorms and showers that rolled through the Cane Creek and University Lake watersheds had provided a substantial boost to the dwindling reservoirs.
Callers to The Citizen enthusiastically reported that passing by University Lake Wednesday morning offered a much different sight than just the same grassy brown fields that have dominated the landscape since mid-summer of last year.
A check of the lake did indeed reveal an inundation of turbid, brown water fresh in from nearby swollen creeks. And for the first time in a long time, the floodplain of nearby Morgan Creek appeared to live up to its name.
While the visuals outside are pretty impressive, it’s the charts and graphs and spreadsheets at OWASA headquarters that will determine the decisions ahead — chief among them being when and whether the utility might recommend lifting some of the Stage Three restrictions it approved just last week.
Kerwin told the board that the late-winter and early-spring months are traditionally the time when rains refill the reservoirs. But prior to the Tuesday-night rain, reservoirs were only 40 percent full.
“For Cane Creek to be this low this time of the year is really unprecedented,†he said, adding that the last time the community’s main reservoir was full was last April.
On top of that, the past 10 months, he said, have produced the lowest rainfall in OWASA’s records.
The Stage Three restrictions severely limit the amount and type of outdoor irrigation and other uses of OWASA drinking water (see bottom of page 6 for the list). Rate surcharges, aimed at encouraging heavier conservation, are due to take effect March 17. The surcharges rise from 1.25 times the normal rate for 3,000 to 5,000 gallons per month or $5.875 per 1,000 gallons to five times the normal rate or $52.20 per $1,000 for 16,000 gallons and above.
OWASA planning director Ed Holland said Wednesday that the rains had caused the water supply to rise from 40 percent of capacity to 48 percent, with about 300 million more gallons in the reservoirs and more flowing in rapidly. Overnight, the estimated number of days left in the supply went from six months to eight months.
Holland said that the utility’s staff had advised the board of directors to wait to see if the lakes return to at least 60 percent of their capacity by April 1 before lifting the Stage Three restrictions.
Should the optimism generated by the rains dry up with the reservoirs, Kerwin detailed at Tuesday’s meeting a number of emergency measures the utility has drawn up. They include running a temporary supply line from the Haw River to Cane Creek. Drought or no drought, the utility plans to continue discussion on joining with other local governments to tap Jordan Lake, which has a massive 1,668-square-mile watershed compared to Cane Creek’s and even without the rain is full and overflowing.