Years ago, Oregon used to issue water advisories to residents restricting water usage when drought conditions prevailed during the summer months.

The city’s water plant had a capacity of just eight million gallons per day, so it wasn’t unusual for the city to try to limit water usage at the time, recalls Public Service Director Paul Roman.

“With hot weather like this years ago, we would have been putting out notices asking for lesser use of water,” said Roman. “We had water restrictions in 1998 and 1999. It was very difficult to even think about asking people to limit watering their lawns on certain days. I think we just asked people to just stop watering. Period. I had even stopped city personnel from watering trees. We had pulled all hydrant permits to irrigate, so we were doing everything that was possible, but it was very difficult to enforce.”

When there was a risk of demand exceeding limits, line breakages, pump problems, and a decrease in water pressure were possible, he said.

“You would just not have the pressures you needed, which would be the main problem,” said Roman.

The city in the last decade started planning to expand its water plant to avoid such problems, he said.

In 2003, the city had completed Phases 1 and 2 of an $18 million water treatment plant expansion project to meet existing and future water demand. The project, which increased plant capacity from eight million gallons per day to 16 million gallons, was completed in five phases.

Funding for Phase 1, which totaled $3.8 million, came from a $620,000 Ohio Public Works Commission (OPWC) loan and grant, $670,000 from outside city customers, and $2.5 million from the city.

The city also kicked in $308,000 for water treatment plant security improvements, including increased lighting and the installation of a new security system.

Water use restrictions are now a thing of the past. Last month’s dry spell caused the average water use in the city to jump to 12 million gallons per day, said Roman.

“Now that we can treat and distribute up to 16 million gallons per day, we are in very good shape,” he said. “Normally, when you’re not in a drought, like this past spring when it was wet, our average demand was around eight million gallons per day.”

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