The City of Port Townsend expects to start drawing from Lords Lake this week to meet the city’s water needs – more than two months earlier than is historically normal.

The move signals an increasing awareness of the severely low snowpack throughout the state, which prompted Gov. Jay Inslee to call a statewide emergency drought situation in May.

On Monday, June 22, the state Department of Natural Resources expanded a burn ban on all state-protected lands to include those west of the Cascades.

Even Port Townsend Paper Corp. is looking to save water by considering the installation of a second cooling tower, which would save it an additional 500,000 gallons a day.

Olympic National Park officials, who are currently monitoring a lightning-caused fire in the Queets Valley in West Jefferson, report that this is the Olympic Peninsula's driest year since 1951.

LORDS LAKE

“We’ve never had to draw from the lake this early,” said Ian Jablonski, City of Port Townsend water quality manager and a 22-year city employee. It's typical to draw from the lake in early September, he said.

City officials aren't calling the situation a crisis, but Jablonski said Tuesday it is time for city residents to think about water consumption.

“It would be a good idea for our customers to stop watering lawns and restrict unnecessary water use,” Jablonski said.

At one water gauge below the city's diversion point, the Little Quilcene River had a flow of 32 cubic feet per second, the lowest recorded flow for this time of year since the gauge was installed in 1994, he said.

No official declaration urging water conservation has been made by the city.

In the meantime, the city has received permission from the state Department of Ecology (DOE) to raise the level of Lords Lake for a second time in three months in an effort to capture more water from the Big Quilcene River, which also is dropping because of the low Olympic Mountains snowpack.

“Hopefully, we’ll get a few more million gallons,” Jablonski said of the effort to add to Lords Lake.

Although it rained briefly last week, snowpack, not rainfall, is what the city relies on for its water.

In April, the state DOE approved of the city raising the level of Lords Lake by 2.5 feet above its normal surface level, which gave it an additional 50 million­–60 million gallons of water to draw on this summer.

Lords Lake provides from a 45- to 500-day supply of water, while City Lake provides between a 12- and 120-day supply.

The city uses an average of 1 million gallons of water daily, and the Port Townsend Paper Corp. has been using as much as 10 million gallons of water a day.

SECOND COOLING TOWER?

The mill, Jefferson County's largest private employer with almost 300 jobs, recently installed a temporary cooling tower, which allows it to cool water that has been through the hot paper machines for reuse.

Mill spokesperson Felix Vicino said last week that the first cooling tower is up and running fairly well.

“We’ve reduced our consumption by about 1 million gallons,” Vicino said.

Vicino said the mill is looking at putting a second cooling tower on line in July, if necessary.

He said a second cooling tower would save another 500,000 gallons a day – in addition to the 1 million gallons being saved by the first tower. There is a $10,000-a-month cost to rent each tower, so there is a point of diminishing returns on the investment.

“Dirty water is not best for the press [paper machines], so we are trying to balance that and conserve as much water as we can and still make a decent product,” Vicino said.

Mill officials have said this year that the goal is to reduce daily consumption to 8 million gallons.

Both Jablonski and Vicino noted that Jefferson County got a smattering of rain on June 18, and both expressed hope that more rain will appear in the coming weeks.

This week, however, a heat wave is predicted, which would further accelerate mountain snow melt.