December 24, 2008
Swiftmud extends emergency order for the Alafia River
RIVERVIEW — If a big storm hits and the Alafia River rises quickly, water supply officials want to be able to take advantage of that extra rainfall quickly. So the Southwest Florida Water Management District has extended an emergency order allowing the area’s main water wholesaler to take extra water from the river without seeking special authorization.
The order had been scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. Instead, it will last through Sept. 30, 2009.
But it won’t come in handy unless the Alafia rises — a lot.
“Right now the river’s far too low to take any water from,” Swiftmud spokesman Michael Molligan said this morning.
Long stretches of dry weather have drastically reduced the river’s flow. During November, it was about 88 percent below normal, according to Tampa Bay Water.
The new order allows Tampa Bay Water to take up to 60 million gallons of water per day, or 19 percent of the flow, from the Alafia without seeking special authorization. But the withdrawals can only take place when the river’s flow is more than 124 cubic feet per second. These days, it’s about 50 cubic feet per second, Molligan said.
Using river water, once it becomes available, would reduce the amount of ground water needed to meet demands. Studies have shown that temporarily withdrawing water from the river does not significantly threaten its ecology, according to Swiftmud.
Tampa Bay Water needs to be able to pump from the Alafia because it cannot use the full storage capacity of the C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir in southeastern Hillsborough County.
The reservoir was designed to hold 15-billion gallons of water, but after the summer rainy months it held just 6.5-billion gallons. As of Dec. 15, it was down to 3-billion gallons. Tampa Bay Water has been drawing on that supply since mid-September to meet demand and to allow engineers to investigate cracks that have appeared in the reservoir’s soil cement layer.
Tampa Bay Water is a regional wholesale water supplier that gets its water from several major wellfields, local rivers and a desalination plant. It provides water to Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties, as well as the cities of New Port Richey, St. Petersburg and Tampa. Other cities in the three-county area receive at least some of their water from these six public supply systems.
In addition to trying to augment supplies, water officials have enacted new conservation measures in recent months and encouraged local governments to crack down on water wasters.
