Dateline: June 29, 2006

Greenbelt enacts drought contingency plan

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

Greenbelt Water Authority officials this week are asking all residents to conserve water wherever and whenever they can due to continuing dry weather and low reservoir levels.

General Manager Bobbie Kidd said Monday that Greenbelt Lake had fallen to a depth of 56.5 feet – its lowest point since 1974 – and that the authority had implemented stage one of its drought contingency plan.

“It’s all voluntary at this point,” Kidd said. “We’re running public notices in all the newspapers in towns we serve and notifying city officials of the situation.”

Stage one seeks a ten percent reduction in the daily demand for water, which Kidd says will not be hard to achieve.

“We just need everybody to be aware of the situation and to cut back when and where we can,” Kidd said.

The water authority is several stages away from implementing penalties on its member cities. Every three-foot drop in the lake level will activate another trigger in the plan, Kidd said, and the next immediate stages will involve the authority not completely filling water tanks in Clarendon and other cities. That reduces water pressure, which reduces water usage, he said.

“Eventually we will ask member cities to implement their own drought contingency plans,” he said.

Kidd also said he believes the next stage won’t come until August or September in the worse case scenario but also says he can’t be sure of that.

“I never thought we’d get to this [first] trigger when we made the plan in 1999.”

The low water level is also affecting recreation at the lake where only one boat ramp – the one at Marina Point – is really usable, Kidd said.

Demand for water from Greenbelt has actually been declining in recent years. Kidd said the declining populations in the cities served by Greenbelt is the man reason for lower demand.

New water-saving plumbing fixtures have also probably helped, he said.