Drought worry prompts water plea

Worried that a continuing drought could plunge the city into a water crisis, officials called on residents Thursday to take steps to conserve as much water as they can.
Residents should immediately adopt an odd-even system for washing cars, watering flowers and other outside uses, officials said. They should also try to scale back water use inside the home.
The city’s reservoirs are short more than 350 million gallons of water and have water levels have fallen to 70 percent of capacity.If they are drained to half their capacity, mandatory restrictions would go into effect, as they did during a major drought in 2002. In 1999, water levels nearly fell far enough to require another crackdown.
“The lack of rain and dropping levels have forced us to ask for the cooperation from our customers" to minimize water use, said Robert Longo, acting water superintendent.
"A lack of rain and unseasonably warm weather over the past few weeks has lowered our reservoirs along the aquifers that our well fields draw water from to levels that require the Bristol Water Department to request conservation from our customers," said Longo, who stepped into the job when longtime Superintendent Leonard Valentino retired this month after nearly four decades with the department.
Mayor William Stortz said it is paradoxical that in the spring the city was trying to cope with floods and now it’s facing a water shortage.
Longo said the city has reached out to large outside irrigation users, including the parks, schools and the golf courses at Pequabuck and Chippanee to reduce their water use.
"Currently the City is in a drought advisory and we expect that the change in seasons along with the cooperation from customers should aid us to bring the water levels back to normal prior to spring," the mayor added.Water officials have long said that the worst case scenario would be to begin the winter with the reservoirs down substantially and then fall into a serious drought that left the reservoirs depleted heading into the summer.
Bristol’s water supply, though it’s been bolstered by tie-ins with New Britain and new wells, is iffier than officials would like.
A long-term plan to build a massive new reservoir in Harwinton, known as Cook’s Dam, has been shelved for years because environmental concerns trumped worries about water supplies.
The city’s half dozen reservoirs -- in Bristol, Plymouth and Harwinton -- contain about 1.2 billion gallons when they are full. There are also some wells in eastern Bristol that add to the supply.
The city uses as much as 7 million gallons on a hot summer day, but not as much during cooler weather.
Stortz said that "water levels at the reservoirs and wells will continue to be monitored regularly to assure that the levels are stabilizing before mandatory restrictions would be required."
Any one with questions on the restrictions or the City’s water supply can contact the Bristol Water Department at 860-582-7431.
Information on the voluntary restrictions along with other ways to conserve water can also be found on the Bristol Water Department website atwww.bristolwaterdept.org.

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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com