It
’s a natural connection: when temperatures soar, people use
water. And in a city with four of its 13 municipal wells shut down
in the face of a chemical pollutant, this can become a problem. It
has.
It’s a natural connection: when temperatures soar, people use water. And in a city with four of its 13 municipal wells shut down in the face of a chemical pollutant, this can become a problem.
It has.
So, to meet the demand in the face of a continuing heat wave, city officials ordered the second Dunne Avenue well back into service Thursday afternoon when the thermometer soared past 100 degrees. Water reserves had dipped close to the 25 percent required for fire protection and usage was still high.
“It was too close for comfort,” said Mori Struve, deputy director of Public Works for operations.
Watering at municipal parks was reduced by 50 percent over the weekend and the city contacted larger businesses and the school district Friday to alert them to the problem, hoping they would reduce their watering also, said Anthony Eulo, assistant to the city manager.
“We didn’t want to shut off park watering altogether,” Eulo said Friday, ” because then you run the risk of permanent damage to the plants.”
Though the weather has cooled off and the impending “crisis” eased, the city asks residents to take care with water use because storage tanks need time to refill and temperatures are predicted to rise again toward the end of the week.
Eulo said he was surprised to see that the peak water-use period was shortly after midnight over the weekend.
“Everybody’s watering their lawns then,” he said.
One oft-repeated plea from water providers during past droughts was that residents not water their lawns in the afternoon but to wait until the sun set and the wind died down, increasing efficiency since more water would actually fall on the grass and not be subject to evaporation.
The Dunne well and the nearby Condit and Nordstrom wells were taken off line earlier in the year because they showed levels above the state designated “action level” of 4 parts per billion of perchlorate when customers must be notified. Levels in the Dunne well were barely detectable when it was shut down.
Any level below 4 ppb is considered “nondetect.” Above 40 ppb the water cannot be delivered to users.
In subsequent monthly testing, including the latest available on June 25, the Dunne well showed nondetect, as it has since it was first removed from service.
Perchlorate was discovered in large numbers of South Valley wells this January, having leached into the underground aquifer from a now-closed flare and skeet manufacturing plant, owned by the Olin Corp. located on Tennant Avenue at Railroad Avenue.
Olin Corp. has taken responsibility for the chemical in wells south of its Tennant Avenue site but not those north, which includes the Condit, Nordstrom and Dunne avenue wells.
Perchlorate is also used in the manufacture of rocket fuel; it is known to cause thyroid malfunctions of varying seriousness, though the danger levels have not been determined by health officials.
Struve said he wished the Nordstrom well could re-enter service since, at 1.4 million gallons per day, it pumps a lot of water.
For the time being, however, the city has enough potential back up, he said, from the Burnett Avenue well, offline because of nitrate levels.
Though Burnett has been shut down for 10 years, it will work as a standby water source because a nitrate treatment plant has been installed, allowing the well to produce clean water. The action level for nitrates is 45 parts per million.
The city also plans to install a perchlorate treatment plant at a cost of between $300,000 and $400,000, with a loan from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, on the Nordstrom well. Struve said the plant should be up and running by July 15. A similar treatment plant for the Tennant Avenue well is waiting for final approval from the Department of Health Services, Ashcraft said. “Once we receive approval we can go into testing mode,” he said.
The city Capital Improvement Plan includes adding only one more well in the next five years.
“Of course, we have dug two unplanned wells in the last year because of the perchlorate problem,” said Jim Ashcraft, public works director. “If perchlorate would go away, we would be fine.”
Currently, the city is digging a well on Peet Road but has not yet found water.
One water-related item was not cut back – the water feature outside the Children’s Pavilion at the new Community Center. Recreation Manager Julie Spier said they considered turning the feature off but decided they would lose more than they gained.
“It only loses about 15-20 gallons a day – from evaporation and walking off on the kids – since it is on a recirculating system,” Spier said. Her theory is that, if you have 30-40 children sharing the water together at the Community Center, that is 25-30 families not playing “slip and slide” with the hose at home.
Indeed, the water feature and the adjacent play yard are popular new playtime spots for Morgan Hill tots.
“Moms set up their umbrellas on the lawn,” Spier said, “and watch the little ones having fun in the water.”
Spier said the center’s fountain, closer to the front of the complex, has been shut down though it doesn’t pull from wells.
“It has to be filled with a hose,” she said.
By Monday afternoon, the situation had changed again.
A decision was made shortly after noon to shut Dunne off again and increase park watering to 75 percent.
“Between (sufficient) storage and production, we will have enough to comfortably supply Morgan Hill,” Eulo said. “We will have a net savings of 25 percent among the parks, cutting the shady areas more and the sunnier areas less.”
Asked if Morgan Hill residents would be entering a “drought mode,” hauling gray water between laundry, bathroom and kitchen and outdoor plants, Eulo said “No, but we would like them to be sensible and try to conserve, even delaying watering gardens and lawns a bit.”
