Water conservation considered by Moses Lake council

MOSES LAKE — With the obvious decline of water levels in the aquifers that provide Moses Lake with water drinking, bathing, cleaning and lawns, the time has come for the city to stop looking at the problem and focus on solutions, according to Council Member Mark Fancher.

“We know the problem. We’ve got to not spend so much time on the problem,” Fancher said during a regular city council meeting on Tuesday. “We have got to start spending a lot of hours on the solution.”

Fancher’s comment came after a presentation from Kevin Lindsey, a principal hydrogeologist with Kennewick-based GeoEningeers, evaluating years of data from city wells showing a clear decline in water levels and water pumped from wells for more than a decade.

“The aquifer is dropping. These wells are producing less water over time,” Lindsey told city council members. “The solution is back to the water budget. It’s pretty simple. Somehow, you’ve got to reduce water out, maybe conservation, maybe and/or increase water in. Some sort of storage project or find an alternative water supply.”

The city of Moses Lake has 18 wells, three of which are currently completely or partially offline due to chemical contamination, according to data from the Columbia Basin Development League. The pumping capacity is roughly 21 million gallons per day, with average water demand around 4.2 million gallons per day peaking at around 16 million gallons per day in the summer.

“You’ve got to figure out how to adjust that water budget because right now the water budget is net negative, not neutral or positive,” he said.

Both Levey and Mose Lake Engineer Richard Law said agriculture uses roughly 80% of water in the aquifers under the Columbia Basin. Cities and towns like Moses Lake use nearly all of the remaining 20%. Saving water is not about saving the aquifer, Law said, but about increasing and improving service to residents, limiting the stress on water delivery systems and mitigating rising costs.

“Conservation will allow us to continue to grow as a community and service more people for the same water budget that we’re fighting with today,” Law said. “Conservation can do good things for the city of Moses Lake.”

As part of the solution, the city council has been reviewing proposed changes to the city’s water conservation ordinance. The proposal, as originally presented to the council, limited when and how often people could water lawns, instituted a permit system to water new sod, require all major water leaks on private property be stopped within 72 hours of discovery, and make and institute the measures year-round rather than from June 1 through Oct. 1.

However, council members expressed concern with the limits, noting that restrictions on when people can water will probably prompt people to water longer, negating savings the city might get.

“I just believe that people are going to water more because they only have three days to water,” said Council Member Judy Madewell, noting the contrast with the city’s current summer restrictions limiting water to odd and even days for odd and even addresses. “That’s my concern there.”

Council members were also concerned with how the permit for watering new sod was named, in part because it sounded like the city would require people to obtain permits to put down sod rather than to water it.

“Maybe a variance? A new sod watering variance?” Law suggested — a name the council readily accepted.

Under the revisions asked for by the council on Tuesday, the city will still require people to apply for a variance to water new sod but will not limit how variances someone may obtain in a year. The council also asked for an extension in the leak shut-off deadline from 72 hours to 96 hours.

Law said the deadline was for a shutoff to limit the loss of water, rather than for a repair.

“You don’t necessarily have to have the final repair done in 72 hours,” he told council members. “But we’ve got to figure out how to stop the water flowing within three days.”

Council left proposed restrictions on lawn and garden watering in place. Under the new ordinance, which has not yet been passed by the city council, lawn and garden watering will be prohibited from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily and prohibited outright on Monday. Instead of the current odd-even restrictions, residents will be limited to watering three days per week, either a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday schedule or a Wednesday-Friday-Sunday schedule, depending on the address.

After the meeting, Law said city staff will revise the proposed ordinance and bring it back to the city council at their next meeting.

“Hopefully, they will pass it,” he said.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.

By the numbers:

Moses Lake has 18 wells.

Three Moses Lake wells are at least partially down.

Agriculture uses about 80% of aquifer water in the area

Cities use most of the remaining 20%.

Moses Lake has the ability to pump about 21 million gallons of water per day.

Residents of Moses Lake use between 4.2 million and 16 million gallons per day, depending on the season.