8/30/22 – As drought conditions in the region continue, Norwich Public Utilities (NPU) has issued a Water Supply Warning and put into place water conservation measures for both commercial and residential customers until conditions improve.
As part of this effort, NPU is asking its water customers to reduce their use by 10%.
“With the ongoing drought in the region and no significant rain in the immediate weather forecast, we are approaching a serious water supply situation. Therefore, we must strongly encourage our customers to be more aware of how they are using water,” said Chris LaRose, General Manager of NPU. “It would be very helpful to have all our customers reduce their water usage by 10% in the coming weeks.”
As of Monday morning, NPU’s two reservoirs are at 72.43% of their capacity and with no rain expected this week, these levels will more than likely be below 70% by the end of this week. NPU has approximately 228 days of water supply in its reservoirs; there have been 2.87 inches of precipitation at Deep River and 4.53 inches at Stony Brook this far in August.
At 100% capacity, NPU’s two reservoirs have nearly 1.8 billion gallons of water, enough for 321 days of supply.
As part of the Water Supply Warning, NPU is taking a number of operational steps to conserve its water supply, including:
- Contacting major water users to determine the potential for emergency water conservation and request that they reduce consumption
- Evaluating emergency supply options such as bringing the Norwichtown Well online which can provide an extra 1 million gallons of water per day.
NPU is also encouraging its residential customers to reduce their day-to-day water use by taking a few steps that should not impact their lifestyle. Such steps include:
- Taking shorter showers
- Only running dishwashers and washing machines with full loads
- Limiting non-essential water use, such as watering lawns and gardens or washing cars
- Hold off on refilling any swimming pools