• Water conservation needed as demand spikes,
Oklahoma City' s water treatment plants are running at typical summer levels— and nearing current capacity — as residents take steps such as letting their faucets drip to keep pipes from freezing.
Low system pressures were being felt citywide.
Utilities Director Chris Browning said Wednesday the city was pumping 150 million gallons of water per day. Typical for this time of year is 80 million gallons.
Mayor David Holt urged residents to continue to conserve where they can — take shorter showers, delay doing laundry—while letting faucets drip to prevent pipes from freezing.
Browning recommended letting faucets run at a stream no more than the diameter of a pencil, and on outside walls, to conserve water. One faucet running at that rate amounts to 75 gallons per day, he said.
Winter is the time when the Utilities Department schedules routine maintenance.
Because of t hat, Browning said, 150 million gallons per day is approaching the system's capacity.
With the current demand, the system is not recharging storage tanks the way it does in the summer, Browning said.
He said summer capacity is 250 million gallons per day. With some plant components down for maintenance, he said the system has plenty of capacity f or most challenges but not “storm of the century” capacity.
“Mother Nature is throwing us some curve balls this week,” Browning said.
Water treatment plants were switching over to generator power for at least several days to avoid interrupt ions from potential rolling blackouts and to reduce demand on the electric grid.
The city reported Wednesday morning that line maintenance crews had worked on 31 water main breaks across the city since the onset of the win try weather. Five were being worked Wednesday.
Utilities employees had responded to more than 400 calls due to frozen pipes on private property.
Repairs were taking longer as water main breaks were difficult to locate beneath the snow and ice, the city said.
Some northwest Oklahoma City homes were experiencing low pressure or water service interruption sin the morning due to a mechanical breakdown at a booster station.
Crews had worked through the night to get the station back in service.
Wednesday afternoon, Browning said issues with low pressure were being seen citywide. Customers actually without service, though, probably numbered in the hundreds. Oklahoma City has 225,000 water customers.
Temperatures had moderated overnight, dropping only to about 10 degrees in Oklahoma City after falling to 14 below zero on Tuesday morning, the coldest morning in central Oklahoma since 1899.
Wednesday afternoon temperatures crept back into the 20s.
Nevertheless, problems were expected to crop up as the weather wams.
“We're going to continue to have main breaks next week,” Browning said.
Reminders to avoid frozen pipes:
• Leave cabinet doors open to allow warm air to circulate below sinks.
• Don't use open flames or boiling water to thaw pipes.
• Avoid using space heaters in crawl spaces; the Oklahoma City Fire Department has responded to several fires started that way.
• Know where the home's water shutoff is, in case of an emergency.