Water Conservation Measures

The Town recently amended its Town Code language pertaining to water conservation measures to reflect current practices around water conservation, operational decisions and to provide tools to ensure the system is capable of serving its water customers during times of water emergencies.   

TOWN CODE SECTION 8.1 PERTAINING TO WATER CONSERVATION

In the event, the Town Manager determines Middleburg to be in a severe, extreme, or exceptional drought or whenever other operational needs require it, the Town Manager may declare a water emergency to exist and water conservation measures to be in effect.  If this occurs, the Town Council will consider approving or terminating the water conservation measures at its next meeting. Below are the three categories of water conservation that may be imposed:

Voluntary Measures: encourage residents to implement water conservation best practices to reduce their consumption.

Mandatory Water Conservation: requires residents to abide by certain restrictions:

• No use of outdoor irrigation or sprinkler systems;
• No watering of landscaping between the hours of 9am and 6pm;
• No topping of pools;
• No other outdoor use of water.
• No use of private wells for anything other than critical operations or equipment (as approved by Town Manager)
• No serving of drinking water in restaurants, except upon request.

Water Rationing – Mandatory Restrictions: 

◦Requires users to abide by the limitations above; 

◦Institutes a complete restriction on any outdoor use of water;

◦Requires users to reduce usage by an amount to be set by the Town Manager or Town Council based on the circumstances.  Reduced usage may be set as low as no more than 150 gallons per day for residential units and reduction of 10% for commercial users (unless usage is already below usage limit for residential users).

◦Failure to abide by the water rationing restrictions may result in a surcharge of user fees.

MEASURING WATER USAGE

• There are various ways to calculate your household or business' daily water usage:
  • Review your bi-monthly bill and divide the "calculated usage" by 60.
  • Each bill also contains the amount of water used every two months for the prior year.
  • Furthermore, if you visit the Town's online payment portal, you can find prior "invoices" (bills) which show past consumption history. All you need is your account number and last name to find your online account.
• Additionally, the Town has restarted taking weekly meter readings. This will help us identify leaks more quickly.
• Finally, if the Town had to enter into water rationing, it would conduct reads more regularly and make those available for residents to view online. The Town would proactively contact those who appear to be using more water than permitted, and residents could see their direct consumption amounts on a regular basis.

OTHER EFFORTS

• The Town is taking other measures to combat water supply concerns. These include:
  • Regular maintenance of our wells to ensure they are producing at maximum capacity;
  • Cycling of wells to allow them to recharge more effectively;
  • Reducing Town use of potable water in our processes to limit waste;
  • Identifying leaks quickly to reduce loss of water.
• The Town is also preparing to conduct a study on water supply and treatment options for Well 3, as well as to explore whether an additional source of water is appropriate at this time. This study will inform future long-term projects related to water capacity and treatment.