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Mayor announces local water shortage |
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Thursday, 30 August 2007 |
by LAUREN LAWSON
News Reporter
Town of Boone Mayor Loretta Clawson announced a stage one water shortage Friday in light of recent droughts plaguing all of North Carolina.
This is in addition to a mandate set by Gov. Mike Easley directed at state agencies to stop
non-essential water use.
“After speaking with Public Utilities Director Rick Miller and investigating intakes, we realized there was not much water,” Clawson said.
The Town of Boone receives water from the South Fork of New River and Winkler’s Creek.
“We are rotating between sources, running one and turning the other off
which is keeping us in stage one. We are checking the conditions daily
to see whether or not stage two will be necessary,” Clawson said.
A stage one water shortage declaration is voluntary but recommended for
conservation, while stage two is mandatory and includes possible fines
for not following the water shortage regulations.
"My estimates are that if there is no rain within the next two weeks, we might have to declare stage two. We definitely need some rain."
-Rick Miller
Public Utilities Director
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“My estimates are that if there is no rain within the next two weeks,
we might have to declare stage two. We definitely need some rain,”
Miller said.
Appalachian State University does not use the same source as the Town of Boone for its water supply.
“We have a separate reservoir - a small lake off Rainbow Trail down
U.S. Highway 194 towards Todd,” Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs
Greg M. Lovins said.
“Right now our lake is at full capacity. It holds approximately 270 million gallons of water,” he said.
Lovins said Appalachian uses about 600,000 gallons of water per day during the summer months.
“Once students returned we started using about 800,000 gallons per day,” he said.
Clawson said they are currently working on a water source interconnect between Appalachian and the Town of Boone.
“The interconnect would mean that, if say, Boone was running out of
water we would borrow from Appalachian’s source and vice versa,” she
said.
Clawson said the Town of Boone uses about 3 million gallons of water per day.
“The interconnect will be a big benefit because the town can then also
have access to on-campus facilities to work on our sewage lines which
will be a help,” Lovins said.
Lovins said Appalachian has done many things in order to help with the
current water shortage problem, including “curtailing washing
university cars, watering athletic fields, window washing, power
washing streets and other areas around campus.”
While Appalachian’s water supply is currently doing fine, Lovins said
the right thing to do is to conserve water during this time of drought.
“One thing we have not done is gone out to students in residences to
ask them to cut back on showers and other water usage, but students
need to be aware,” Lovins said.
Clawson said she is very concerned for the citizens
of Boone.
“Hopefully things will get better, but right now we have to work together,” she said.
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