Six ThingsTo Do If Your Water Pipes Freeze

One thing you can predict about Pacific Northwest weather - it will be unusual. A stretch of hot dry weather in summer – unusual. A white Christmas – unusual. A week of temperatures below freezing the week before Thanksgiving – unusual. It would also be unusual to have more than one big winter storm. However, don’t be surprised if there is more winter weather to come. Our phones at KPUD were ringing last week with tales of woe about frozen pipes. It’s time now to think ahead to our next deep freeze. Here are some tips:

Prepare For Freezing Temperatures

1. Learn how to shut off the water supply to your house.
2. Insulate all exposed pipes including outside faucets. Don’t forget pipes in unheated outbuildings, garages and pump houses.
3. Disconnect all garden hoses. Shut off and drain any outdoor water features or irrigation systems.
4. Cover footing and foundations vents. Keep temperatures in the house to at least 55 degrees F.
5. Open cabinet doors to allow heat to reach pipes beneath sinks.
6. In extended cold weather let an indoor faucet drip slightly. Select a faucet that is on an outside wall furthest from the water meter.

IF Your Pipes Freeze

1. Be ready to turn off your water supply if the pipes are cracked a broken.
2. Do not use an open flame on a frozen water pipe.
3. Turn on a faucet that is fed by the frozen pipe so you can tell when it begins to thaw out.
4. Arrange a sheet of tin foil behind the frozen pipe to reflect heat back onto the pipe.
5. Blow hot air evenly onto the pipe using a hair dryer or heat gun. You can also wrap a heating pad around the pipe. Begin thawing close to the open faucet and work backwards.
6. When the faucet begins to drip – check for cracks or small leaks and get them repaired immediately.

Privately owned water system? Read this!

I wrote recently about the Municipal Water Law being upheld by the Washington State Supreme Court. Just looking at the word "municipal" in the title may make you hit delete. But wait. Adjust your radar. Do you have a community drinking water well? Are there 15 or more homes sharing this water source? If so, you have a privately owned water system which has the same water use efficiency requirements as a public water system.

By upholding this law, you as a "group A" water system are responsible for submitting an annual report to the Washington Department of Health by July 1, 2011. Now that I have your attention, don't panic. Your first report will let DOH know that you are working toward compliance with the WUE requirements. Mike Dexel at DOH is there to help you through this process. He's a nice guy, really! He has come up with three things that you need to prepare for your report:

1. Start collecting metered data. You are responsible for reporting on how much water is pumped from your source and how much was consumed. Your well should have a source meter already. Assign someone to record this data! What you probably don't have are meters at individual homes. When you do have those meters they will have to be read and compared to the source meter to make sure that you do not have leaks on the system.
2. Hold a public meeting to establish water efficiency goals. This means getting the people sharing the water source together, maybe in a living room over coffee. If you don't have meters yet, you can establish a goal based on your source meter. ex: "Reduce annual source meter production by 5% by 2015". Giving information to your customers is not a goal . . .that is a conservation measure which is also a requirement.
   
3. Develop a plan to install meters. You will need to explain your plan on you July 1 online report.You need to develop a plan to get every residence metered by January 22, 2017.

There are many ways to get your water conservation goal. EPA sponsored website http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/ has many tips on water saving appliances and fixtures that will help your community save water.

Visit Washington Department of Health Office of Drinking Water at http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/dw/default.htm to find out what will be required from your water system. If you have a privately owned water system, find out your responsibilities today.

Seven Groundwater Facts You Need To Know

Do you know where your water comes from? Pipes? The Puget Sound? Amazingly, I have received these answers more than once and not from little kids either. In Kitsap County we get our drinking water from the sky. Yes, bless these drippy winters because eighty percent of us here in Kitsap use groundwater that is the result of rain percolating through the topsoil into the ground. Here are a bundle of facts about groundwater you need to know.

1. There is not an underground river that we tap into. Our groundwater is stored in between the spaces of rocks and gravel which comprise our aquifers. Picture pouring water into a cup of gravel.
2. We do not get any recharge from snow pack in the Olympic or Cascade Mountains. The water we have falls on our peninsula. What you see is what you get.
3. Groundwater will not recharge through impervious surfaces. We need vegetated areas to allow rainwater to soak into the ground. Native vegetation is the best. Grass can actually cause rainwater to run off similar to a parking lot.
4. Our wells don't all pump water from the same aquifer. Separate glacial events formed our aquifers over hundreds of thousands of years. Some aquifers are shallower than others. Some are even what we call perched aquifers.
5. Most of our wells are artesian. This means they are under the pressure of impermeable confining layers separating our aquifers. Some of this water is under such pressure that it bubbles up to the surface. Think of a spring fed lake.
6. Groundwater feeds our streams. Groundwater is always moving to the surface. How fast depends on the materials it is moving through. You can see groundwater seeping out through cliffs at the beach.
7. Anything that is put onto the ground has the potential of winding up in our water supply. Think about that before applying herbicides to your lawn!

Most of us drink groundwater. Now you know.

Muni Law Confirmed Constitutional

The Washington Supreme Court decided on the side of water utilities by unanimously confirming the constitutionality of the Municipal Water Law on 10-28-10.

In 2003 utilities saw the need for a law that would give utilities more flexibility with water rights in order to plan better for the future. A 1998 ruling had stated that water rights holders must use the water they had rights to or lose them. The legislature enacted the Municipal Water Law that enables water suppliers to retain their rights to the water that their pumps and pipes are capable of delivering not just the water that they are using at the present time. Saving for a rainy day – or dry day – as in this case makes sense. The law removes a lot of uncertainty to municipal water suppliers across the state.

When dealing with water – nothing, however, is simple. Some people have problems with the definition of a municipal water supplier. The law defines a municipal water suppliers as any group A system, that is a water system with 15 or greater connections. Environmental groups, some individuals and several tribes feel that this law encourages sprawl and water speculation. They feel that there will be greater development in the rural area by developers who will have rights to water that would have been allocated elsewhere in the past. They also are concerned with the possibility of individuals selling these water rights at will. This was the basis for the law suit filed in 2006, Lummi Tribe v State.

The municipal water law also stipulates that municipal water suppliers must conserve water. So since all parts of the law has been upheld, all municipal water systems, even those run by a local neighborhood associations must follow the law. This law states that these systems must:

· Provide the department of health with a conservation plan.

· Make conservation goals in a public forum.

· Report the progress of these goals to the department of health.

· Maintain system leakage to below 10%.

· Install water meters on each connection of the system.

This law is good for utility planning and good for water conservation. The legislature has left the door open for further clarification of this law by individual law suits, of which there will likely be plenty. For more info visit http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wr/rights/muni_wtr.html.

Facebook is not a Fad

If you are reading this you have probably already embraced social media. Some of us are a bit behind the times. Yesterday I attended a workshop about using facebook and twitter for water utility messaging and communication. According to the Portland Water Bureau they are way, way ahead of the social media communication game. They have had their posts picked up by the NY Times, twice! Thrilling. They got their notoriety from posting a picture of a chagrined teenager who had just dumped soap into a Portland fountain for a giggle and a shot of skinny dippers in the reservoir. Point taken, humiliation gets attention.
Some take home points I received about using social media at my water utility from the presentation by Matt Smedley from Frause and Sarah Bott from Portland Water Bureau are:

• Fly rogue. Some managers are old school. Just go for it. (Sarah made this point by showing a picture of her frowny face boss)

• Be prepared for negativity, but don't let it get to you. Matt pointed out that most off the wall comments are policed by the other readers.
• Don't be stupid! Use common sense about what you post. Don't call your boss a jerk.
• Be consistent. Make your page's goals transparent so your readers will know what to expect
• No lecturing. (Sorry if I've done that in the past)
• Must be fun. Know how to keep your audience's attention. Promote interaction.
• Feed the machine. Keep those posts coming. Sarah spends 4 hours a day on social media!

The afternoon sessions were a little more realistic. Kirk Stinchcombe from Econnics told us to ask ourselves if, truthfully, do our customers really want to get posts from us two or three times a day? Wouldn't they rather be getting tweets from Lady Gaga? A couple of times a week, or when we really have some important, relevant information is plenty!

OK, I opened a facebook page for Kitsap PUD. I promise to post only relevant information and let people know if they (God forbid) need to boil their water even if its Thanksgiving weekend. Facebook is not a fad. I will use it for good!

Looking for a Bargain?

Quench your thirst for under a buck! Get 748 gallons of water for only 92 cents! This is a bargain, but water rates go up the more you use. Our drinking water is precious. It is a finite resource. That why Kitsap PUD, like most water utilities, have tiered rates for water consumption. Tiered rates, also called conservation rates, encourage wise use of water and discourage our customers from becoming water hogs. This tiered rate charged for water consumption is in addition to our bi-monthly service charge of $41.04. Kitsap PUD has the following tiered rates. Consumption rates are rounded down to the nearest 100 cubic feet.

0-1,400 cubic feet: $0.92 per 100 cubic feet
1,500-2,400 cubic feet: $1.32 per 100 cubic feet
2,500-4000 cubic feet: $1.66 per 100 cubic feet
4,100 cubic feet and over: $4.12 per 100 cubic feet

Most people don't think in cubic feet like we utility folks do. There is 7.48 gallons per one cubic foot of water. So, doing the math, 100 cubic feet is 728 gallons. This means that our first tier customers can use 748 gallons for only 92 cents! This is tasty, tested to be healthy, convenient to get drinking water. Think about that next time you are waiting in line at the convenience mart for a bottle of water.

Water consumption in tier two and three increases the cost of water less than $1.00 more per 100 cubic feet. The big jump is to tier four. Customers using 4,100 cubic feet or more of water during a two month period will pay $4.12 per 100 cubic feet. We are talking about 30,668 gallons of water! Who uses this much water over two months? No one does during the winter. Customers irrigating lawns, usually with automatic irrigation systems, consume the most water during the summer months.

Can you have a luscious garden and not break the water bank? Yes, use irrigation systems wisely by only watering when plants truly need watering. Most people turn on the system for the hottest month's water needs and run it that way all season! Yes, you know you do.

Water is a bargain, but pay attention to how much you use and choose to use it wisely.

Lets toast the new year

Happy New Year! Happy new water year that is. October 1 marks the new water year 2011. Time for us at KPUD to reflect on 2010 rainfall. Having just gone through a season that could only marginally be called summer, I think we all know it has been wet. How wet was it?

Rainfall in Kitsap County varies so greatly that in order to get a complete picture of our county's precipitation, our office collects rainfall data from 40 collection stations. Most of the rain gauges have computerized loggers that collect rainfall data every fifteen minutes, but a few of the rain gauges are at private residences where committed homeowners collect the rainfall measurements and bring them into our office.

During 2010, the gauge at our office on Finn Hill Road in Poulsbo registered 53.02 inches. This compares to the measly 27.67 inches reported in 2009. Our average rainfall is around 40 inches at this spot. The north part of the county is in the rain shadow. The rain gauge at McKenna Falls in the Bremerton Watershed registered 80.72 inches this year! If you are interested in finding out about rainfall at other sites visit our websit at kpud.org. I'll tell you how to navigate the labyrinth of the website to find this info and more:

• go to kpud.org and click on "water"
• click on "reference data" on the top bar and choose "hydrologic"
  
• check the "I agree" box
• click on "Water Resource Data"
• after arriving at the county map, click on the "Daily Rain Page"
• pick your precipitation gauge site and year for daily rainfall totals

Also on this page are deviation contour maps. These maps allow you to compare twenty years' rainfall data at a glance. Areas of the maps are colored with red/yellow for dry, green or average rainfall and blue/purple for wet areas. What colors do think will predominate on the 2010 map?

Lets toast the new water year by drinking a big glass of Kitsap County tap water. Here's to wet weather!