The City of Port Townsend is looking to raise the level of Lords Lake Reservoir in April and plans to meet regularly with Port Townsend Paper Corp. officials on water issues in the wake of a March 13 declaration by Gov. Jay Inslee of a drought on the Olympic Peninsula.

City water resources asset manager Ian Jablonski said city officials are talking with the state Department of Ecology (DOE) and have asked hydrologists if the city can add boards to a spillway to hold back water that normally would run back into the Quilcene River.

Lords Lake Reservoir, which holds 500,000,000 gallons, and City Lake Reservoir, which holds 140,000,000 gallons, currently are full, which is typical for this time of year, Jablonski said.

But officials are keeping an eye on water levels, snowpack and rain, and are keenly aware of the state of Washington’s declaration of a drought emergency on the Olympic Peninsula and elsewhere in the state because of a low snowpack.

MILLIONS A DAY

The city uses an average of 1 million gallons of water a day, and the paper mill typically uses about 10 million gallons a day.

“We’re not super-concerned, but it’s something we are keeping an eye on. We’ll be watching it as the situation develops,” Jablonski said.

“It is typical for us to start drawing from Lords Lake Reservoir in early September due to low streamflow,” Jablonski said. “Our concern is the timing of the reservoir drawdown and the start of the fall raining season, which will allow us to refill the reservoir.

“In addition to the snowpack, rainfall during the summer months, timing of fall rains, and other weather factors combine to determine the impact of drought conditions,” Jablonski explained.

The city typically starts drawing from Lords Lake in September, but also pays attention to streamflows.

City manager David Timmons said the city and the mill work hand in hand on the system. He said the city is awaiting the mill’s new management to begin planning for the season.

“What we see here at the city is, the real impact would be economic since the mill will be the first and most impacted if our supply and resupply are limited below the conservation levels they can sustain,” Timmons wrote in an email on March 16.

Felix Vicino, human resources manager and mill spokesperson, said on Monday that the mill has been talking about water concerns for the past few weeks and encouraging conservation.

As for the 10 million gallons used a day by the mill, he said, “We’re working to reduce that to about 8 millions a day. It’s something that’s very real. We’re talking about [water issues] more so than we have in the past and a lot earlier.”

In event of a drought, there are protocols for conservation measures, city officials say.

SNOW, NOT RAIN

Al Latham, who has been keeping rainfall records for more than 35 years and was manager of the Jefferson County Conservation District, said the drought issue is a matter of snowpack.

“There is little to no snowpack in the Olympics, so this will affect systems dependent on accumulated snowpack for water in the summer, such as the Port Townsend water system,” he said.

For the “water year” – which runs from Oct. 1, 2014 to Sept. 30, 2015 – so far, there has been higher than normal rainfall, Latham said.

“For instance, the average rainfall near Center for the period of October through February is 18 inches. October through February this water year, we’ve had 21.8 inches. So, areas not dependent on snowpack in the mountains for water, such as the Chimacum watershed, are not in a drought emergency, Latham said.

State officials say the snowpack is “7 percent of normal in the Olympic Mountains.”

“We can’t wait any longer, we have to prepare now for drought conditions that are in store for much of the state,” Inslee said in a statement earlier this month.

In ordering a drought emergency, the DOE concluded that a water supply shortfall could be felt in the Yakima River Basin, Wenatchee and Entiat basins, Walla Walla Basin and on the Olympic Peninsula.

WEATHER BLOG

Latham follows University of Washington professor of atmospheric sciences Cliff Mass and his weather blog – cliffmass.blogspot.com – which, on Sunday, March 22, noted that 2015 so far has been one of the warmest winters in Northwest history.

The most recent blog entry, on March 22, talks about what researcher Dennis Hartmann called the North Pacific Mode.

“The bottom line of the bulk of the recent literature by top NOAA and university scientists is that the unusual conditions we have seen this year and last reflect natural variability, with much (but not all) of it associated with the North Pacific Mode,” Mass wrote.

“Thus our unusual weather is probably not the result of anthropogenic global warming, and it appears that trendy theories of the impacts of polar warming are probably without merit. The best news is that since it is natural variability one might expect that it will soon end.”