Boone braces for peak water usage

By Frank Ruggiero

ruggiero@wataugademocrat.com

October is the town of Boone’s peak month for water usage, and Boone Public Utilities is hoping to further emphasize the importance of conservation.

With the recent hiring of Andrea Gimlin as program coordinator for the Every Drop Counts campaign, public utilities director Rick Miller plans to step up conservation education efforts.

Gimlin will implement numerous recommendations devised by the town’s water conservation subcommittee, including the placement of residential audits on-line. This would allow water customers to visit the town’s Web site and download a self-audit sheet, “so they can look for leaks and get their water usage down,” Gimlin said. “A residential audit is significantly easier to do than a commercial audit.”

Gimlin and Miller also hope to place a commercial audit application on-line. Once the application is complete, staff will visit the business and identify methods to conserve water and recommend certain measures that can be taken, unique to each business. Participants will then receive Every Drop Counts stickers to display on their doors for that year. A small fee will most likely be attached to the commercial audits, Gimlin added.

Gimlin and Miller will meet with the Land of Sky Council from Asheville in October. The organization has been implementing conservation measures in that area since the ‘90s, “and they work with engineers that really understand how to track the water usage and influence changes for large facilities,” Gimlin said.

Gimlin wants to implement a water conservation award for residences and businesses, where certain users will be recognized after submitting conservation stories via the town’s Web site.

Miller said public utilities will offer an elementary school poster contest again. Last year’s contest at Hardin Park School yielded successful results, and Miller said this year’s will be held at the Appalachian Christian School and Two Rivers Community School, as well as Hardin Park.

Gimlin said she’ll concentrate on helping teachers find an effective way to involve students in conservation. The teacher that inspires the most involvement from his or her class will win a field trip for the class to the town’s water treatment plant, followed by a pizza party.

A prepared public presentation on water conservation will be made available for civic, community and other organizations, Gimlin said, adding it will be a 15 to 20 minute presentation with a script and list of frequently asked questions. She’d also like to include brochures, pins, fact sheets and residential audits with the presentation package.

“We want to have a resource available for people to take back and do themselves,” Gimlin said.

Her first priority will be to concentrate on commercial auditing, as 65 percent of the town’s water usage is commercial. “We want to approach it as a customer service tool we’re offering, because it’ll save them money,” she said.

In the meantime, Miller is gearing up for October, which has historically shown the highest water usage in Boone. Last year, October’s maximum daily demand (MDD) was 2.026 million gallons (mg). The MDD was 1.719 mg in 1995 and 2.5 mg in 2003. A water leak resulted in the high number for 2003, as 2004’s MDD was 1.893 mg, Miller said.

“The reason October’s the peak part of our season is, of course, the tourists, Appalachian football games, the Woolly Worm Festival,” Miller explained, also telling how the ground freezes and begins shifting, sometimes causing water lines to break.

To emphasize the importance of conservation in October, public utilities will distribute Every Drop Counts brochures throughout the community, including offices with waiting rooms.

“We’re just trying to keep the awareness up,” Miller said, adding the town will present new public service announcements, newspaper notices and information crawls on cable. “It’s just an ongoing effort.”

For more information on Every Drop Counts, contact Gimlin at 266-1183 or andrea.gimlin@townofboone.net, and visit http://www.townofboone.net/departments/pu/water/index.html on the Web.