Monroe residents step up to meet challenge of water shortage - KEZI TV

Monroe residents step up to meet challenge of water shortage | News | kezi.com

MONROE, Ore. – Facing a similar water shortage situation to the neighboring community of Junction City, the City of Monroe’s residents have stepped up to reduce their usage as needed, according to city officials.

The city said they issued a water emergency notice late last week that called upon its residents to reduce water usage by 30 percent. Residents actually exceeded that figure, according to Steve Martinenko, Monroe’s city administrator and one of the city’s water operators.

“The folks responded immediately,” Martinenko said. “The mayor put it out on our social media, we posted around town… we were hoping for a 30%, we actually got about a 34% reduction in water usage. The folks have been phenomenal.”

Martinenko said that the city had equipment issues late last week that were related to the hot weather. The city’s filtration systems are operated by computers and one of the units was malfunctioning due to the hot weather, he said. The issue was resolved by changing one of the components and operating the plant much earlier in the day, Martinenko said.

In light of continued forecasts for highly temperatures and out of a sense of caution, the city decided to issue the level 2 water emergency alert, he said. Martinenko said he believes the concerns will be alleviated once temperatures begin to cool down.

“At this point, number one, the heat goes away, I think that's the number one factor in this,” he said. “And number two, find what our heat related issue is in one of our filtration units and once we have that taken care of, I think the level two restriction can be removed after some evaluation.”

The 30 percent water use reduction was a preventative measure in case of an actual equipment failure, Martinenko said. City officials said that the city’s reservoir has about 800,000 gallons of water on hand, about twice the amount normally kept, and serves as a reserve source for fires and other local emergency needs.