The city of Durango plans to implement water restrictions this week or next as it anticipates a difficult water year during extreme drought conditions.
Public Works Director John Harris said the city’s 2020 water supply and drought management plan is somewhat toothless as far as actionable water management steps, and he is working on a revised plan.
However, expecting the worst drought conditions since 2018, the city cannot wait for the new plan to be completed before enacting water restrictions, he said at Tuesday’s Durango City Council meeting.
Harris said he will recommend revised stage 1 restrictions limiting lawn watering to three days a week and assigning days by household.
He said Public Works data demonstrate most residents water their lawns about three days a week. The restrictions are intended to spread out demand on the water system on any given day.
“By spreading the irrigation out over a six-day period, people will still be able to irrigate three days a week,” he said. “Maybe instead of Monday, Wednesday, Friday, it might be Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.”
Lawn irrigation accounts for 70% of city water use, or about 100 gallons per capita per day, he said. Indoor uses such as showering, washing clothes and drinking water make up the remaining 30% of water use.
“The greatest opportunity to reduce water use is to cut back on our lawn irrigation where we can,” he said.
The city currently prohibits lawn irrigation between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. when no drought restrictions are in place.
New stage 1 restrictions would restrict residents from spraying off their driveways and sidewalks and restrict outdoor fountain use at nighttime to reduce evaporation, Harris said. The city will encourage businesses to reduce their water use, but more well-defined restrictions would be implemented at later stages.
Additionally, the city would reduce its fleet vehicle washing and temporarily suspend its fire hydrant flushing program.
Harris said the Parks and Recreation Department has already begun revising its irrigation schedule to reduce water use.
“That’s more of a challenge as you can imagine for a large park that might have 15 or 20 irrigation zones,” he said. “It’s just not possible to go to a three-day week schedule.”
The department is already reducing the time it spends irrigating large parks.
Harris said stage 2 would impose restrictions on personal vehicle washings, although commercial car washes would still be permitted. Outdoor fountain use would be prohibited entirely. Businesses would be further encouraged to reduce their water use. The city would not wash fleet vehicles except in cases where not doing so would endanger public health.
“We will for the first time restrict use of water docks to indoor use only,” he said. “Entities, businesses, individuals that might be using water for outdoor uses, we would restrict that use if we go to stage 2.”
The city’s existing drought management plan was developed in 2020, and though it makes recommendations throughout stages 1 and 2, it doesn’t actually enforce water restrictions until stage 3, he said.
Currently, stages 1 and 2 are focused on educating residents about water conservation and warning of possible restrictions in later stages.
The plan is tied to the city’s reservoir levels and snowpack, and according to the plan, the city should already be in stage 4 water restrictions. Harris said it’s too early for stage 4, but not too early for limited restrictions.
“Most people have not yet started irrigating their lawns,” he said. “It would be good to get folks in the habit of these changes as they turn on their systems for the year.”
Referencing the U.S. Drought Monitor, he said most of La Plata County, including Durango, are in extreme drought conditions. A northern part of the county is in exceptional drought conditions.
“Shades of gray, really – there’s not a lot of water,” he said.
Snowpack, which measures the height and depth of snow, is lowest on record for Southwest Colorado. He said the current snowpack is just 13% – about 4 inches compared with 30 inches.
Snow water equivalent – which he described as the amount of water that would remain if snow were to instantaneously melt – is also lowest on record dating back to the 1980s at less than 3 inches compared with the 30-year average of 18 inches.
The city of Durango relies primarily on the Florida River for its water supply. It has water rights to 8.92 cubic feet per second, or 5.76 million gallons per day from the Florida River, he said. When the city needs more supply, it pulls from the Animas River, from which it has water rights to 6.82 cubic feet per second, or 4.4 million gallons per day.
Pumping water uphill from the Animas River isn’t cheap. Harris said in years when the city has had to use the Animas River, electrical power alone to pump water costs about $100,000 annually.
In spring, the city typically has a demand of 2 million gallons per day. That nearly triples from July to September, he said.
In 2018, the city’s Florida River supply went from about 6 million gallons per day to about 2 million gallons per day – “a pretty significant loss,” he said.
“We are technically in what we call a normal condition. Water is flowing as it normally would this time of year,” he said. “But you can look in the mountains and see that’s not going to last for very long.”
Harris said lawn irrigation would be further limited to two days out of the week should the city need to advance to revised stage 2 restrictions.
The idea is to reduce water use by 20% in stage 1 restrictions and 33% in stage 2 restrictions – totaling more than half the city’s water use, he said.
cburney@durangoherald.com
