Even after a gray, rainy weekend, Carvins Cove’s water level will remain lower than usual for the time being. The Carvins Cove Reservoir’s water level currently sits 11 feet lower than normal, Mike McEvoy, executive director of the Western Virginia Water Authority, said during a Thursday afternoon meeting.
The Roanoke region is experiencing one of the top 10 driest periods in 133 years, according to the water authority. That’s happening as the authority is discussing changes to its drought strategy.
The authority’s reserves are still far from what would trigger Virginia’s drought assessment warnings. The Virginia Drought Management Task Force, a coalition of drought experts organized by the Department of Environmental Quality, assesses drought conditions in the state and follows guidance in a response plan.
In the state’s assessment, water reservoir storage for 120 days or more is considered to be “normal conditions,” 90 to 120 days of water would be considered “watch conditions,” 60 to 90 days is “warning conditions,” and less than 60 days represents “emergency conditions.”
The WVWA’s reservoir levels, for Carvins Cove and Spring Hollow Reservoir, hold over 500 days worth of water, according to tables shared at an authority board meeting on Thursday afternoon.
The WVWA provides water and wastewater services to Roanoke, Roanoke County, Franklin County, Botetourt County, the towns of Boones Mill and Vinton, and contracts with Fincastle and Craig-New Castle. The authority’s water sources are the Carvins Cove Reservoir, Spring Hollow Reservoir, Crystal Spring, Beaverdam Creek Reservoir, Falling Creek Reservoir, Smith Mountain Lake, and 72 wells throughout its distribution area.
The authority’s largest reservoirs are Carvins Cove, which stores almost 6.5 billion gallons of water when full, and Spring Hollow, which holds over 3 billion gallons of water at capacity, according to the authority’s website.
“The reservoirs are doing what they’re supposed to do,” McEvoy said Thursday. “They provide that volume to get us through.”
The state does not consider these reservoirs in its assessment, Laura Schirmer, spokesperson for the water authority, said, but “it is a helpful comparison to consider locally.”
Will Bulloss, the WVWA’s chief strategy officer, said via email Friday that the authority can’t say for sure why the state does not include the authority’s reservoirs in its assessment, but that the state’s Drought Assessment and Response Plan looks at major reservoirs that support a wide variety of uses.
The four major reservoirs that the state lists in the plan are significantly larger than the authority’s, and are located on large rivers, while Spring Hollow and Carvins Cove are primarily filled by smaller bodies of water, Bulloss said.
Carvins Cove is about 75% full as of last week, and Spring Hollow is about 89% full, according to a WVWA graphic.
Though the region will see rain throughout the holiday weekend, it’s not expected to end the “drier than normal” conditions, Schirmer wrote in an email.
McEvoy said during the meeting Thursday that the drought isn’t expected to break up until July or August.
One factor contributing to the drought throughout the Southern and Eastern regions of the country is La Niña conditions — the cooling of sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific — that have lasted for the majority of the last six years. These conditions have historically caused dry weather for Southwest Virginia.
McEvoy said that because all of Virginia is in some measure of drought the state could require action at some point. The majority of the state, including the Roanoke region, is in “severe” or “extreme” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The WVWA is considering changes to its drought contingency plan and creating an additional tier to the authority’s cost structure, with Google soon to break ground on data centers in Botetourt County. A fourth rate tier could be added so high volume users of water pay more.
In June, Google closed a $14 million deal with Botetourt County for 312 acres in the county’s Greenfield industrial park. In March, the company officially announced that it would build a data center campus on that land, involving three data centers and other infrastructure.
An agreement between Botetourt and the Western Virginia Water Authority states that an estimated two million gallons of water could be used per day in the beginning of the project, and with potential expansions of the project, rise up to eight million gallons per day — raising questions from residents as to what might happen in case of a drought when Google is a customer of the authority.
Questions from readers, many regarding water, have been addressed and answered here, in an FAQ that will be continuously updated by Cardinal News as more information about the project becomes available.
During Thursday’s board meeting, McEvoy said that the current drought contingency plan is almost 20 years old, and “doesn’t recognize a higher water user like the Google project.” The current plan also doesn’t reflect capital improvements that have increased reliability, like improved interconnection between Spring Hollow and Carvins Cove, Bulloss said.
However, McEvoy said the authority is hesitant to alter that plan while the region is still experiencing a drought.
“Authority staff are focusing attention on continued optimization of the region’s water supplies and reservoirs, along with treatment and distribution efficiencies to ensure quality service to authority customers,” Bulloss said Friday. He said the authority doesn’t want to make changes as an “overly-reactive response to current weather patterns.”
The tiered rate structure changes, McEvoy said, are being discussed in an effort to “encourage conservation” on Google’s part and to provide an “economic incentive” to be efficient with water use, authority agenda documents stated.
McEvoy said the authority will explore this next year, as he said the authority is still working with Google to figure out exactly how much water its Botetourt County project will use.
