PORT TOWNSEND — Five inches of rain over the weekend in the Quilcene watershed could alleviate this year’s water shortage, according to the city’s public works director.
Ken Clow, who has given water status reports at every City Council meeting since first-stage conservation measures were imposed in August, was scheduled to do so at Monday night’s meeting, during which he expected to recommend their suspension.
Recommend measures
“We don’t know what will happen, but if the situation doesn’t change, I will recommend that we take the conservation measures off at the next meeting,” Clow said Monday.
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.
Flows spike
This weekend’s storm raised the flow of the Big Quilcene from about 60 cubic feet per second to about 1,000 cubic feet per second.
Currently the city has been able to add about 6 million gallons daily from the Little Quilcene River into Lords Lake, while the Big Quilcene is moving too fast to route into the lake.
Matter of time
“It’s just a matter of time until we can route the water into Lords Lake. We are just waiting for the streams to clear up,” Clow said.
The most recent Lords Lake level, 12.1 feet, was measured Monday morning, according to Clow.
This is a significant increase from the lake’s lowest level this year, 7 feet at the end of October.
Currently, the city is using about 750,000 gallons daily, while the daily usage by the Port Townsend Paper Corp. approaches 10 million gallons.
Second stage
If the lake’s level fell to 3 feet, this would trigger the second stage of water conservation which would require the mill to shut down operations and operate on a skeleton crew.
The mill has imposed conservation measures that has cut its water consumption and will continue to do so as long as levels are low, according to spokesman Felix Vicino.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
