PORT TOWNSEND — The city’s water supply reservoir has fallen to about 11 feet, coming closer to a benchmark that would trigger Stage 2 water restrictions and heavily impact the Port Townsend Paper Co. mill.
The city is currently in a Stage 1 water alert, which mandates outdoor watering on alternate days.
If Lords Lake drops to 3 feet, the second stage of water conservation measures enacted in August would be triggered.
Stage 2 would require the mill to shut down or vastly curtail its water use.
Lords Lake was a little higher than 15 feet last week, and recent rains have not replenished the lake enough.
More rain in the Quilcene basin is needed before the supply reaches a comfortable, safe level, according to City Manager David Timmons.
“We need to get to the point where we are putting as much into the reservoirs as we are taking out,” he said.
“After that, it’s going to take a lot of steady rain to build up our reserves.”
Timmons said a comfortable level for this time of year would be 70 feet and that it would take several hundred million gallons to reach that point.
Under non-drought conditions, the city takes all of its water out of the Big Quilcene and Little Quilcene rivers, routing it to City Lake in Chimacum and using Quilcene’s Lords Lake reservoir as backup.
During a wet winter, all the water needed for both the city and the Port Townsend Paper Co., about 12 million gallons a day, will come from the rivers, which constantly replenish reservoir levels.
Since declaring a water emergency in August, the city has used water from Lords Lake.
Ken Clow, public works director, said the Lords Lake level now is almost 11 feet.
The current reserves could last the city several years if it were not replenished, Timmons said. The shortage results from the water usage needs of the Port Townsend Paper Co. mill, the county’s largest private employer, with 298 workers.
Currently, the city is using about 750,000 gallons daily, while the daily usage by the mill approaches 10 million gallons.
Although the city will always have enough water, closure of the mill would have a devastating effect on the community, Timmons said.
“This is an economic issue,” he said.
“It will hurt the city if its largest employer has to shut down.”
The mill has implemented water conservation measures and plans to bring in pumps that will pull water from the lower portion of Lords Lake in a way that does not lower its water level, Felix Vicino, mill spokesman, said in an email.
“The pumps are a precautionary measure,” he said.
“We would only use them if the lake level got too low to flow into the intake structure.”
The pumps will arrive next week and will be able to be put into service by the end of the week, Vicino said, adding that “given the current outlook we do not anticipate their use.”
Other contingency plans include the use of cooling towers, which have been in place since June, resulting in the mill conserving over 200 million gallons of water, Vicino said.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
