Published: July 09, 2009 11:44 am      

City officials remind citizens to conserve water as usage jumps

By Cristin Ross

cross@jacksonvilleprogress.com

Only 18 days into summer and city officials across Cherokee County are reporting water usage has jumped.

While Sunday’s rainfall brought a smidgen of relief to the county’s drought conditions and summer temperatures, city officials are urging their citizens to watch their water usage right now, so nobody gets rationed later.

“It’s not really a surprise,” Jacksonville City Manager Mo Raissi said. “Usage always goes up in the summer. We’re looking pretty good right now, but we’re always keeping an eye on future needs.”

Jacksonville Utility Manager David Brock said water production for the city has dropped significantly since Sunday’s rain, which also helped bring levels on Lake Jacksonville up, too.

“I know before the rain the lake was down five inches, which isn’t too bad,” Brock said. “I haven’t gotten any measures since the rain, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that put it up two or three inches.”

Before the weekend showers, the city of Jacksonville was pumping an estimated 4 million gallons of water a day, from Lake Jacksonville and all five of the city’s wells. Brock said production was going into two shifts before recent storms, but has slowed since the area received that rain.

“It’s dropped off significantly enough, we could turn a well or two off now,” Brock said.

The situation is much the same for the cities of Rusk and New Summerfield as well.

New Summerfield Utility Director Peter Eads said his city’s usage is normal for this time of year.

“We’re doing good,” Eads said. “What helps us especially is our water loss ratio. It’s at just over 2 percent for the whole system. That’s unheard of.”

The city of New Summerfield recently refurbished the city’s water infrastructure, as mandated by the state of Texas.

Rusk officials reported the city is pumping about 1 million gallons a day for its residents.

“Everything’s working well, and the rain helped us a lot,” Rusk City Manager Mike Murray said. “We reach critical level when we start pumping 1.4 million gallons a day. The recent rain we got probably decreased our production by 25 percent or more, so we’re not close to the critical mark yet.”

Officials will all three cities remind residents to conserve as much water as possible, so as the summer months drag on, the cities’ drought contingency plans won’t have to be put into effect as soon.

“We’re not even close to the level set for the contingency plan to come into play at this point,” Brock said. “No one needs to waste water, and if we all do our parts now, no one will have to be without later.”