Back on Sept. 17, The Herald-Sun reported that Durham’s “Interim Water Management Director Vicki Westbrook said the city has 74 days of water available given current use patterns and supplies.” This was just one day after I heard Mayor Bill Bell say on TV that we were down to a 68-day water supply. I blogged on the situation at the time with some musings about what was and was not allowed under the voluntary restrictions that had just been announced.
Well, it’s been 45 days since then and we’ve had about three days of rain, which, we were told, had done next to nothing to improve the water supply.
Imagine my surprise just now when I went to the Durham Water Management Web page and found that we now have 75 days of supply remaining. Boy, my strategic flushing has really paid off! Not only is Durham not losing water, it’s gaining it quite dramatically, it seems, even without rain. I can understand how conservation might slow the depletion of our reservoirs, but I fail to understand how it can raise the water level absent significant rainfall.
I may be a layman when it comes to water consumption, but by my reckoning we should be down around 30-35 days of water remaining. That’s the original 74 minus the 45, and adding a few days for the brief rains we had. Did officials over-hype the problem back in September, or are three days of not-very-heavy rain enough to add 40 days worth of water supply to Lake Michie and Little River Reservoir?
