Mercer Island urges water conservation as reservoir levels drop dangerously low

MERCER ISLAND, Wash. — The city of Mercer Island announced Monday afternoon that its reservoir levels are being depleted faster than they can be refilled due to a recent spike in water usage.

The city first asked residents to conserve water back in April when a main water supply pipe failed and needed repairs. And now the plea is even more urgent for all businesses and residents to really work on conserving water.

"We just came from a 1000-mile trip. Our car needs to be washed, and it’s not getting washed," Mercer Island resident Will Shelton told KOMO News.

The car wash on Mercer Island was closed Monday, with cones blocking the entrance and its water feature turned off.

Now that the heat's moved in, City Manager Jessi Bon said island residents are using so much water that they may end up in a dire situation if there was a fire on the island.

While the main 24" supply pipeline is being repaired, Mercer Island is getting water from Seattle Public Utilities through a 16" pipeline.

The city's been able to fill up its holding tanks overnight during the repairs, which won't be completed until the end of July. But this week, water consumption spiked so high that they can't keep up.

Mercer Island's water use peaked at more than 6,000 gallons per minute over the weekend, which is significantly above normal peak consumption, according to the city. And it reached 7,000 gallons per minute on Monday.

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The city refills its holding tanks using the smaller supply line in the overnight hours, when businesses are closed and residents typically use less water.

Mercer Island said it's only receiving 2,500 gallons per minute from a backup line that's supplying water to its reservoirs, which is the maximum amount of water the pipe can provide.

But, from midnight to 6 a.m. Monday, customers used 1.2 million gallons of water, more than the city can refill in those overnight hours.

The city's now adding urgency to that April request to conserve water, because if the water levels in the holding tanks fall much more, they will reach what's called the fire band.

"When the water levels in the tanks reach about 19 feet. That is what we call fire band. We need the water levels in those reservoir tanks to stay above 19 feet to maintain adequate pressure to power our fire hydrants and our fire suppression systems on Mercer Island," said Bon.

“That’s pretty worrisome, especially now in this heat, anything could catch fire,” Latia Aquila told KOMO News.

The city, on Tuesday, told KOMO News they did notice a reduction in water usage overnight, with the 1.2 million gallons used on Monday morning cut down to 787,000 gallons during the same midnight to 6 a.m. time frame on Tuesday.

“We have made our showers shorter, and we don’t flush the toilet as often. And our sprinkler systems are on the days that they requested, and we have cut that back completely,” said Shelton.

Mayor Salim Nice also asked people to let their lawns go dormant, even sharing a picture of his browning lawn.

“They want us to water, I think, every other day, but that’s there’s no way - they wouldn’t stay alive if I watered them every other day or every other day in this heat,” Aquila told KOMO News while holding a hose, watering her small pea patch.

She estimated that she only uses three, maybe four gallons of water on her plants.So, could she offset that by taking shorter showers?

“Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely, not washing your hair every day, yeah,” said Aquila.

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Mercer Island is asking all residents and businesses to conserve water now by taking the following new or additional actions:

• Ensure automatic irrigation systems are turned off
• Talk with any landscaping providers about cutting water use
• Avoid doing laundry for the next two days
• Minimize shower water use
• Do not run sprinklers
• Water plants/yards as little as possible
• Let your lawn go dormant (brown)
• Do not wash vehicles
• Do not refill swimming pools or hot tubs
• Turn off water features, such as fountains

Additional water reduction measures can be found on Let's Talk. You can monitor the city’s real-time water usage on our Water Usage Dashboard.