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HomeMy WebLinkAboutO-1682ORDINANCE NO. AN ORDINANCE TO ESTABLISH AN EMERGENCY WATER CONSERVATION PLAN FOR THE CITY OF FAIRHOPE FOR CUSTOMERS OR PERSONS WHO USE THE CITY OF FAIRHOPE WATER SYSTEM BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF FAIRHOPE, ALABAMA, as follows: 1. PURPOSE The purpose of this Emergency Water Conservation Plan is as follows: • To provide contingency plans to manage drought and emergency conditions: and to continue and deliver a cost effective, adequate safe and reliable supply of water to our customers; and • To identify successful public information strategies which will motivate the community to reduce normal consumption to drought allowances; and • To identify critical points of change which would result in an acute or long-term water outage and to establish preemptive stages to address the outage; and • To recommend a programmed response for each stage which would most effectively reduce water consumption to the available supply with the least adverse impact to the City of Fairhope community. IL WATER CONSERVATION PLAN The plan as outlined in this document consists of a menu of response measures to be enacted by the City of Fairhope in response to the shortages either acute or chronic. A water shortage may exist in localized areas of City of Fairhope any time the system demand is in excess of 85% of the available capacity and widespread water outages can occur whenever system demand is in excess of 100% of available capacity. Serious shortages could also be caused by system failures and power interruptions. HI. WATER CONSERVATION RESPONSE OPTIONS • Public Education and information for Voluntary Reduction - public information and education programs would be implemented at the earliest drought or emergency stage to make our customers aware of the problem, to respond to customer concerns and questions, and to motivate the customer to take action to reduce water consumption. A major component of City of Fairhope water conservation program focuses on public education. These programs, typically through bill inserts, website notices, and media announcements, are aimed at reaching the greatest amount of people in the largest water use category which are residential customers. During an emergency, these existing programs will become the core of an expanded program working with the public to reduce water consumption. • Outdoor Water Use Restriction and Bans - residential outdoor water use is a significant portion of daily consumption. Water consumption increases dramatically in the summer months. In the early stages of a drought or emergency, outdoor water use restrictions would most likely be voluntary. However, starting with the second stage, some reduction in water consumption is mandatory. • Nonresidential Water Use Planning - because the highest percentage of water consumption is due to residential customers, implementation of water use restrictions for industrial and commercial customers is usually insignificant until the final stage of the drought or emergency occurs.