Mayor warns of coming drought
Dry skies and lawn sprinklers sprout the likelihood that the region will again face a water shortage
STAMFORD — Drought again threatens the Stamford area, and the reasons are the same as they were during the historic water shortage of four years ago.
Rainfall is below normal. And people are overwatering their lawns.
Mayor David Martin is concerned enough that he requested a last-minute addition to the October agenda of the Board of Representatives’ Public Safety Committee, inviting Lori Mathieu, the branch chief who oversees Connecticut’s drinking water systems for the state Department of Public Health, and Jeff Ulrich, vice president of supply and sustainability for Aquarion Water Co.
“The Stamford reservoir is at 58 percent, significantly below the 20-year average,” Martin told the committee. “Normally we’re at 75 percent capacity this time of year.”
Water demand in Stamford has been declining for 10 years, despite its growing population, Martin said. But Stamford shares a water system with Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan, and
summertime demand in those towns “is substantial and primarily driven by irrigation,” Martin said.
“Greenwich has roughly half the population of Stamford, but in the summer, Greenwich consumes more water than Stamford,” Martin said.
The case is similar in Darien, the mayor said.
“There is a huge jump in summer demand in Darien,” he said. “Stamford also goes up, though not in the same extreme.”
During the virtual meet
ing Ulrich laid out Aquarion’s data in a series of eye-opening charts.
Most Aquarion customers are residential and “water-efficient” — 50 percent of them use 21 percent of the water, Ulrich said.
The top 25 percent of customers, in terms of volume used, are the problem, he said.
“They are using 56 percent of the water — more than double what they represent in population,” Ulrich said. “They are drawing the rest of the customers into emergency situations because they are using significantly more water than what others are
using, and probably beyond what is necessary.”
The summer spikes are concentrated in Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan, Ulrich said.
“Stamford has been a good story for the whole summer – demand has been at or below average, staying generally below,” he said.
But water supply cannot be considered by town, Mathieu said.
Decades ago, she said, “towns had their own water companies. But over the years, because of shortages, a pipeline was put in place to move significant amounts of water from (the
Bridgeport area) through Norwalk to Darien, New Canaan, Stamford and Greenwich.”
Water is shared now, Mathieu said.
“It’s all interconnected, so you can’t say, ‘These are our reservoirs and those are their reservoirs,’” she said. “I would think of it more as a regional system.”
Stamford, like the three surrounding towns, “needs water every day to meet its daily demands,” Ulrich said.
“There isn’t enough water in the four towns to supply them,” he said. “It’s coming down from the
Bridgeport system.”
During the 2016 drought, Aquarion set above-ground pipes along the Merritt Parkway and certain city streets until permanent pipes were installed underground.
It was the worst drought in recent memory, beginning in June 2016 and ending in May 2017 – a total of 46 weeks. In November 2016, the problem was considered severe in 45 percent of Connecticut.
The state issued mandatory and voluntary water restrictions. Wells dried up and reservoirs fell dangerously low. Hardest-hit were Greenwich, where reservoir capacity was 24 percent, and Stamford, where it was 34 percent.
Things are headed that way now, officials said.
Oct. 6 data from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows the eastern third of Connecticut in extreme drought, the middle third in moderate to severe drought, and the western third, including all of Fairfield County, as abnormally dry.
The world’s climate is warming, and rainfall patterns are changing, Mathieu said. Drought is about more than water quantity.
“When supplies get so low that you can see vegetative growth in reservoirs, that is not good for water quality,” she said.
Aquarion has a mandatory irrigation schedule for homeowners, particularly those with automatic sprinkler systems, which use 40 percent more water.
People whose addresses end in even numbers may irrigate on Sundays and Wednesdays. Those whose addresses end in odd numbers may water on Saturdays and Tuesdays.
It worked for a while, Ulrich said. “This summer people were watering more on Mondays and Fridays. Both are non-irrigation days,” he said. “The thing is you don’t need to water grass more than two days a week, and that is what will reduce the likelihood of running into these droughts as often as we do.”
Martin said he met with the owners of irrigation companies, and they said the same.
“They told me some customers believe they have to water every day, but they are really overwatering,” Martin said. “It is driving demand. Household savings are a drop in the bucket compared to irrigation.”
Her office plans to push people to do things differently, Mathieu said.
“This does not happen in other parts of state, this significant increase for irrigation purposes,” she said. “We want people to have their landscapes, but we have to do something so that every couple of years we don’t find ourselves in the same situation.”
Town reservoirs are already inadequate, and Aquarion has to act before the same happens to the regional Bridgeportarea supply, Ulrich said.
“There is a limit to how much water we can bring down here,” Ulrich said. “The water supply can’t be developed any more than it is.”