Wichita council tables final approval of drought plan
Wichita won’t have a plan to battle water shortages for at least another week, after the City Council tabled final approval of a drought plan for at least a week.
City officials want to fine-tune the drought plan to give vegetable gardeners options to grow during water shortages. So staffers will spend the next week researching ways to keep drip irrigation systems – the controlled delivery of water to plants through piping – operational through all but water emergencies. Public works director Alan King told the council that the proposed four-stage drought plan doesn’t differentiate between types of irrigation. Final recommendations are expected at next week’s council meeting.
“I might suggest that we add some kind of language for those types of opportunities – community gardens, people growing their own food,” council member Jeff Longwell said. “I would think we’d want to address that.”
“It’s concerning to me, too,” council member James Clendenin added. “My thought is that at least in stage 3, we be able to still allow irrigation if you’re irrigating a certain way. Although, I don’t know how you’d police that.
“But if we’re at 35 percent in Cheney (a water emergency), I don’t think you need to address that situation.”
The proposed four-stage plan would be triggered at each stage by average yearly conservation pool levels at Cheney Reservoir, a primary water source for the city. It still contains some hefty fines – up to $500 for repeat violators – but stops short of the controversial $1,000 fine proposed by city staff for over-users last spring.
The stages include:
King said that water levels remain good at Cheney this month, at about 98 percent in the conservation pool. As a result, the city is drawing a little more of its drinking water than ususal from the lake “to create a hole that we expect to fill with the rains this winter.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2013 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Wichita council tables final approval of drought plan."