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No longer any doubt: The state's in a big drought
By adamg on Fri, 11/08/2024 - 5:08pm
All that rain we haven't been getting has meant dramatically lowered rivers, a statewide "red flag" warning about how easily things can go up in flames and now a state "critical drought" designation for "Massachusetts's Central and Northeast regions, including the Charles River watershed," according to the Charles River Watershed Association:
Streamflow in the Charles River is at critically low levels, with some sections showing zero flow.
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how's the Quabbin Reservoir doing?
and for that matter, the Cambridge reservoirs out in Waltham and Lincoln?
85.96%
85.96 percent full as of 5:43pm on Friday. Going into the summer, it was 100% full and the spillway was heavily in use.
This is the lowest it's been since Dec 1st, 2022. While it's currently low, it's not extremely low for this time of year.
The Quabbin is a terrific resource but I do fear it's large capacity gives people the impression there's no need to conserve. It can't sustain the region without rain indefinitely. We shouldn't expect spring rains will bring it back to 100%.
Conservation is always good
But also good is that while the MWRA was building the Giant Sewer Eggs on Deer Island, it was more quietly making major repairs to our water system, in particular, plugging (or getting local water departments, such as the BWSC, to plug) zillions of holes in all the pipes between your kitchen tap and the reservoirs out west and undertaking or helping to pay for other conservation measures. The result of all this is that 40 years later, a system that was exceeding the Quabbin's "safe yield" is now well under it (government can work, imagine that!) :
Source.
So, yeah, not to see that, given the accelerating weather issues we can expect as a result of federal decisions to come over the next four years (remember: Windmills give whales cancer, so let's go back to coal), on top of what we're already seeing, we could probably do more, but we're a long way from facing a "day zero" crisis.
Agreed, our abundant, clean
Agreed, our abundant, clean and relatively cheap water is a major benefit to living in Boston. I bitch a lot about government but this has to be the biggest success story.
The (free!) Waterworks Museum in Chestnut Hill provides some interesting perspective on what it took to make it happen.
https://waterworksmuseum.org/
Cambridge Reservoir is VERY low
I drive by it daily. Close to 95 looks nearly dry, or at least swampy. Not sure what the official % Cambridge lists but by eye, it is super low.
Cambridge can switch to the Quabbin
Cambridge liked to thumb their noses at MWRA but they have an agreement to switch over the Quabbin whenever they want, just at a higher cost.
1. Turn off the water when
1. Turn off the water when you brush your teeth.
2. Don’t use a gallon of water for every article you put in the recycling, and use cold water to cut down on your CO2 footprint. Water and heat ain’t cheap.
3. Military showers.
4. Avoid boring lawns of decorative grass monocultures in the yard, and do mix in more clover and natives.
5. For the greater global warming picture curtail the passage of container ships. Take the yoke off the American consumer- as in “The American consumer will bail us out of this downturn” -and find ways to disincentivize consumption and ennoble restraint. Produce locally, cleanly. Think out of the box. Counterintuitively, if we pull out of Paris would the diminution of China’s coal burning-based economy massively offset the expansion and CO2 output of our’s and other cleaner economies and further stimulate China to dictate their investment in greener technologies?
I was listening to Curtis
I was listening to Curtis Silwa's (Founder of The Guardian Angels) radio show out of New York City [WABC] earlier tonight and he said New Yorkers are limited to one shower every 12 hours because of the drought. They have it way worse than up because one of their reservoir pipelines was shut down because it was leaking millions of gallons of water per day and they still haven't repaired it.
And you believed him?
This is Curtis Sliwa. If he told me the sun was shining, I'd go outside to look.
Further research proved you
Further research proved you are right @Ibb. At least according to the New York City Mayor's office website.
Oh My Run for your lives -- its another Dust Bowl
Actually the precipitation since January 1 this year is a bit less than 1/2 inch below the 30 year normal for Boston
check out the NWS official statement for 11/10/24
https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&product=CLI&issuedby=BOS
as edited to show only the relevant precipitation data with some reformatting to make it more readable
Ergo for a giant body of water such as the Quabin --- no need to worry about it going dry
However this is a cautionary tale about how we compare things to averages