Officials eye Potomac water levels for drought preparations - The Washington Post

Officials eye Potomac water levels for drought preparations - The Washington Post

The Potomac River, which supplies 78 percent of the drinking water for the more than 5.1 million people who live and work in the Washington area, is running low enough that officials are watching for drought.

“The last thing we want to do is panic people and have them buying bottled water,” Michael Nardolilli, the executive director of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, said in a phone interview. “They should rely on their taps but use water wisely.”

The Interstate Commission initiates drought operations based partly on the Potomac’s projected flow at Little Falls — an area of rapids not far from Chain Bridge. When a lot of water use is expected and precipitation is not, officials begin to be concerned.

In an email, D.C. Water spokesperson John Lisle said there are no water restrictions in place now, but the utility urged its customers to “be mindful of how much water they use.”

“Anything they can do to conserve water will help until the water levels in the Potomac return to normal,” Lisle said. “The Potomac is the only source of drinking water for the District.”

Lyn Riggins, a spokesperson for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), which serves nearly 1.9 million residents in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, also said in an email that drought restrictions aren’t currently in place — but “year-round water conservation is a message we regularly convey to our customers.”

“It’s important to conserve this precious natural resource, and lower water usage also saves our customers’ money,” she said.

Despite recent dramatic storms, drought operations come after a very dry spring that persisted into early summer, according to Nardolilli. Summer storms also hit downstream from where utilities draw water, and so they didn’t add to the water supply.

Though D.C. isn’t currently in drought, Nardolilli said, regions upstream — including the Potomac watershed in Pennsylvania — are.

“Down here the lawns are green,” Nardolilli said. “The rest of the basin is dry.”

Officials said the Potomac has not seen drought operations since 2010. But the region is nowhere near conditions seen in 1966, when the Potomac dropped to its lowest level ever recorded, lawn watering was banned in Prince George’s County and trees planted along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway as part of a Lady Bird Johnson beautification project were left to wither.

Steve Bieber, director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ Water Resources Program, said his agency looks to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s drought monitor to assess local conditions. And, though there’s no emergency yet, the monitor’s metrics have moved in the wrong direction just in the past month.

“Things have gotten drier,” Bieber said. While the monitor does not indicate drought in the District, drought emerges in Upper Montgomery and Frederick counties as well as Loudoun County, where conditions are classified as “severe” in western areas.

A drier river basin doesn’t mean disaster. Conditions are likely to change in the next few months, according to Bieber, as temperatures cool and trees lose their leaves, absorbing less moisture. In addition, he said, forecasters expect this fall may be wetter than usual.

The region has prepared for drought since the 1980s, investing in upstream reservoirs that can come to the rescue. The Council, meanwhile, is working with the region’s congressional delegation to get funding for a federal study of water supply alternatives to ensure future resiliency, Bieber said.

Still, according to Bieber, officials and utilities plan to meet in early September to consider issuing a drought watch, which would lead to more strident calls to conserve water. After a drought watch, the next alert level — a more serious drought warning — could follow, though one has never been issued since the Council developed a regional drought plan in 2000, according to Bieber.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberal water use. After all, those who get paid to predict whether it will rain are not always right.

“Any weather forecaster — as my daughter would say, they’re just predicting,” Bieber said.

Jason Samenow contributed to this report.