The digital welcome sign at the entrance to Bayou Vista summed it up pretty well for Galveston County: Now is a good time to conserve water.
With the drought, Municipal Utility District No. 12, which provides water and sewer services for Bayou Vista, the Omega Bay subdivision of La Marque and the unincorporated community of Old Bayou Vista, is asking its 1,400 customers to cut back on the amount of water they use.
“Right now, it’s just an awareness program that there is a water deficit,” Bill Alcorn, president of the utility district board said. “It’s not to a point where we want to restrict anybody.”
The cautionary call for voluntary water conservation came after the Gulf Coast Water Authority, which supplies most of the surface water supply for cities in Galveston County, issued a Stage 1 Drought Contingency Plan. Surface water is water from lakes and reservoirs, as opposed to water from wells.
Stage 1 is the lowest level alert. It asks water customers to find ways to reduce water consumption to 95 percent of what the water service purchases from the water authority. For example, if a city contracts to buy 20,000 gallons of water, it would be asked to keep its usage to 19,000 gallons.
Robert Istre, the manager of the water authority, said the flow rate at the Brazos River, where most of Galveston County’s surface water come from, is 5 percent less than it should be. Couple that with higher demand from the 13 communities the authority supplies, and supplies are not where he’d like them to be.
Istre said the water authority has the capacity to pump about 50 million gallons of water per day. In the last week, the peak levels for demand were about 39 million gallons each day.
Istre characterized the water supply situation for the region as “weak.” That is what prompted the call to voluntarily reduce water consumption.
Meeting that goal should be no problem for MUD No. 12 customers, who average about 65 percent of the water service’s capacity each month, Alcorn said.
Nearby Tiki Island and its water district also were cautioning customers through a series of phone calls Friday after the water authority issued its memo about the drought conditions. Officials wanted to make sure the city had enough water as rain chances seemed slim the rest of the week.
Water usage is not a problem in Texas City, either, where customers on average use 75 to 80 percent of the city’s surface water allotment, Les Dodson, supervisor for the water department, said. Still, even with 11 backup wells ready to make up any shortage, Dodson said the city is talking about conservation. He said there may be a voluntary call for Texas City’s 15,000 customers to reduce water consumption by week’s end.
“It’s a precious commodity that (people) don’t think about,” Dodson said. “We just want people to be mindful of what’s going on.”
One way to save that precious commodity would be to water the lawn at night to prevent much of the water from evaporating during the day, Dodson said. He also said, “Don’t leave your hoses running.”
Water conservation measures are the norm in Friendswood, city spokesman Nick Haby said. While the city gets its water from the city of Houston, rather than the Gulf Coast Water Authority, the 12,000 customers in the county’s most northern city are used to calls to conserve water. Friends-
wood usually is one of the first communities to alert residents about potential shortages.
Much of the public works page on the city’s Web site is dedicated to conservation tips.
If the county’s cities could use some water, the folks on the Bolivar Peninsula have more than enough.
“I wish I could find a way to pipe it to them,” Jennifer McKnight, the manager of the Bolivar Peninsula Special Utility District, said.
“We’ve got more water than we could use. If I could send it to them, I would.”
Since Hurricane Ike wrecked much of the peninsula, the number of water customers there dropped from 6,000 to about 2,100.
The district gets its water from the Neches River.
The water is pumped through a treatment plant in Winnie and then to the peninsula, McKnight said.
Istre wasn’t looking to get any water from McKnight, but he wouldn’t mind some steady rain along the upper Brazos River watershed.
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Drought Level Alerts
Stage 1: Mild condition, request for voluntary reduced water use
Stage 2: Moderate condition, extra emphasis given on voluntary reduced water use
Stage 3: Severe condition, mandatory reductions are imposed
Stage 4: Emergency Condition, as a result of an unforeseen event, an immediate mandatory reduction is imposed.
Source: Gulf Coast Water Authority
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Rainfall
Year to date: 10.86
Normal year to date: 18.60
Source: National Weather Service
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Online
Some simple water saving tips in the Between the Lines blog at galvnews.com.
