City wants water use voluntarily cut by 10%

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Mayor Paul Schell yesterday asked Seattle Public Utilities' 1.3 million customers to voluntarily conserve water to prevent mandatory restrictions later this summer.

There are exemptions, though.

Showing off sample shower timers, low-flow toilets and water-conserving faucets, the mayor, City Council President Margaret Pageler and utilities director Diana Gale asked people to cut use by 10 percent. Schell and Pageler said the city would lead by example, cutting its own use by that amount.

"We've experienced the driest winter on record in our watersheds," Schell said. "Recent rains were not enough to replenish our snowpack."

The Cedar and Tolt river watersheds, where Seattle gets its water, hover at 65 percent of normal. Forecasters are predicting normal spring rains, Gale said, which should be enough to prevent the sort of mandatory lawn-watering and car-washing restrictions adopted in 1992.

But "they've been wrong before," she added.

Seattle Public Utilities supplies water to 26 other providers, ranging from the city of Edmonds to Covington, and includes most of the Eastside.

Pageler applauded the region's conservation ethic, pointing out that recent requests for energy conservation have led to a 7 percent cut in electricity use, "and now we're asking them to turn off the taps."

"Every drop we save now will be available in late summer for people and for fish," she said.

She encouraged simple measures - shortening showers by one minute, flushing the toilet once less each day, watering lawns at night - rather than dramatic changes.

"Saving water is not hard," Pageler said.

City officials are encouraging people to visit with landscapers and other gardening experts rather than simply cut water use. They also said even though cutbacks were voluntary, they include exemptions for homeowners with new lawns or who are putting in new landscaping.

Peter Dervin, director of the Washington Association of Landscape Professionals, said the exemptions are in response to requests from the $1.2 billion-a-year landscape and nursery industry. Already, he said, contractors are concerned because some customers are choosing to put off new landscaping until fall.

"Our biggest concern is to make sure the public doesn't perceive this as a call to stop putting in landscaping," he said. In fact, he said, spring is the best time because April and May rains help in establishing vegetation without using water.

He said the state industry, 80 percent of which is in Western Washington, was unfairly devastated following the mandatory watering restrictions of 1992.

"It was a depression," said Steve McGonigal, government-affairs director for the Washington State Nursery and Landscape Association. "One day in May our industry opened its doors and people just stopped coming in."

He said his industry already uses water as efficiently as possible. Gale, the utilities director, acknowledged that conservation requests target residential users, who consume 60 percent of the water.

"The cumulative effect of that is very significant," she said.

Richard Gustav, resource conservation manager for the utility, said the city wasn't asking major water users - bottling companies or cement makers, for example - to use less water.

On average, Seattle Public Utilities customers use 150 million gallons of water a day, a figure that jumps to 220 million in the summer. Two-thirds of that increase is on outdoor watering, Gustav said.

"We're trying to get a 10 percent reduction in total peak use," he said.

Gustav and Gale said many businesses are working directly with the utility to lower their water consumption or to adopt new strategies during the drought.

Schell pointed to Flying Fish in Pike Place Market, which he said was recycling all its ice.

Craig Welch can be reached at 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com.

INFORMATION

Using, saving water

Seattle Public Utilities estimates each person uses, on average, 83 gallons of water a day. The utility is asking that be cut 10 percent. The following is a sampling of how many gallons a person uses - or loses - a day.

Toilet - 19 gallons

Clothes washer - 13 gallons

Shower -- 13 gallons

Faucet - 9 gallons

Leak -- 7 gallons

Dishwasher - 2 gallons

Seattle Public Utilities also encourages those with questions to review water-saving tips at:

www.savingwater.org