Water Conservation
By Ashley Perryman

The summer heat is setting in and OWASA is urging its Orange County customers to use water wisely. The shoreline at University Lake has been getting wider as the temperature gets hotter.

Local reservoirs were diminished to 30 percent of their size in the record breaking drought of 2002, when OWASA enacted strict water use restrictions. Since then, the lakes have refilled to 89 percent capacity. OWASA representative Greg Feller said that despite recent rainshowers, the restrictions are still necessary.

“The stream flows to our lakes are well below normal and the rainfall we've had in the last month or so really didn't change our reservoirs very much. We were over 90 percent full in late April and now we're 89 percent full so rainfall doesn't always fall evenly everywhere,” he said.

Feller said it was the efforts of customers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro that have enabled Orange County's streams and lakes to refill.