conservation

Since Lincoln’s outdoor watering ban went into effect last week, the town’s Water Department has issued 42 warnings to residents for violating the ban—about 30 percent more than the usual total for an entire summer.

The sharp increase is a result of the complete ban on sprinklers and automatic watering systems necessitated by the severe drought. Normally, residents are allowed to water lawns two days a week during certain times of day during the summer, but this is the first time there’s been a total prohibition. Town officials informed residents about the ban with a reverse 911 call to all households as well as the town website, social media and news outlets.

Lincoln is not alone—many Massachusetts towns have instituted voluntary or mandatory watering bans as the dry conditions have only worsened as the summer has gone on. However, not everyone in the area has complied, some even going so far as to post bogus “Well Water” signs on their lush green lawns, according to an August 25 Boston Globe article.

Water Department Superintendent Greg Woods patrols the town several times a week looking for watering violators, knocking on doors and leaving notices on doorknobs for violations he can see from the road. The department also gets occasional phone calls from civic-minded residents who take to heart the dictum “see something, say something” when it comes to water conservation.

This summer has seen an uptick on the number of calls from “people reporting that their neighbors have unusually green yards and they suspect excessive watering is going on,” said Woods, whose department issues 20 to 30 warnings in a normal year for watering violations. “Irrigator violators” are slapped with a $50 fine for a second offense and $100 for subsequent offenses. Two or three residents a year incur fines for a second offense, “but we’ve never gone to a third notice,” he said.

Despite the public outreach (which will be augmented with sandwich boards this week), “there are still people that don’t know,” Woods said. One resident who was out of town and has an automated watering system called the Water Department to apologize. “We were about two hours away from mailing that warning to them,” he said with a smile.

Although the increased demand on the town water supply due to outdoor watering will drop off once the fall weather arrives, there’s no telling how long the drought will last. “The hope is that we have a wet fall, winter and spring,” Woods said. “I’ll be doing the rain dance a lot.”

The Lincoln Water Department has instituted a mandatory outdoor water ban that prohibits all lawn watering by means of automatic irrigation systems or manual sprinklers due to the worsening drought, which Monday morning’s storm did little to help.

The storm, which brought an EF-1 tornado to parts of Concord, dropped 0.55 inches of rain on Lincoln, according to Water Department Superintendent Greg Woods. Flint’s Pond, Lincoln’s primary public water source, is 55 inches below full capacity, “so even a full year’s worth of precipitation (typically 48 inches in Massachusetts) won’t bring us back to normal levels, even assuming we don’t withdraw any water as it’s filling,” he said.

The Water Department’s precipitation records show that the town is almost 7 inches below its median precipitation level for the last 40 years. Ground water levels have decreased 1.8 feet since May. As a result of the scarce rainfall, there’s been more demand for water for lawns and gardens; water use for June and July was 20 percent above 2015 and 30 percent above the five-year average, and current withdrawal rates are causing the pond level to drop one foot per month, Woods said.

On August 18, the U.S. Drought Monitor upgraded its drought assessment for most of Middlesex (including Lincoln) and Essex Counties to “extreme drought.” Several other area towns including Concord, Acton, Wayland and Sudbury have instituted watering bans similar to Lincoln’s, and 53 Massachusetts communities have restricted outdoor watering to one day a week or less.

Until the drought is over, Lincoln resident may not use underground or above-ground sprinklers or soaker hoses. They also may not fill or top swimming pools by more than two inches, or use games or toys such as water slides and sprinklers that use a continuous stream. Car washing is also prohibited.

Watering vegetable or flower gardens by means of a handheld hose is allowed from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. only. Drip irrigation systems are also permitted for two days a week as determined by a resident’s street address (even-numbered houses may water on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while off-numbered houses may do so on Wednesdays and Fridays). Violators will receive a written warning for a first offense, a $50 fine for a second offense and a $100 fine for a third offense.

Although the ban covers only outdoor water use, the Water Department encourages everyone to conserve water inside their homes as well. Conservation measures include reducing shower frequency and duration, showering instead of taking baths, reducing toilet flushing, avoiding continuous running of faucets, and using the washing machine and dishwasher only when full.

Woods said he didn’t think a complete outdoor water ban had ever been imposed in Lincoln. The water level in Flint’s Pond was lower during the 1964-1966 drought and residents were asked to conserve water voluntarily, but lawn irrigation systems were not as prevalent as they are today, he noted.

There’s no immediate danger that Flint’s Pond will run dry. The pond is still at slightly more than 50% capacity and the Water Department has increased its use of its Tower Road well to help reduce the demand on the pond. However water levels in the well have dropped 1.8 feet since May, “so we need to watch that level as well so the well pump isn’t damaged,” Woods said.

The microfiltration plant on Sandy Pond Road that treats the water from Flint’s Pond can cope with the increased concentration of organic matter in the water, Woods said. The plant treats anywhere from 450,000 to 900,000 gallons a day before sending it to a 1.2-million-gallon holding tank at the top of the hill on Bedford Road. From there, the treated and filtered water flows through Lincoln’s 57 miles of water mains to residents’ faucets (see the Lincoln Squirrel, September 28, 2014).

The bigger concern is the uncertainty in the long-range forecast and whether this will be a multiyear drought. “We started this year  about 20 inches below full capacity because 2015 was dry. If the pond level doesn’t recover this winter and spring, we could be in the same [watering ban] situation next year, but potentially earlier in the season than August,” Woods said.

Residents can now recycle paper and cardboard in the same bin with their metal and plastics after the town signed a contract with a new recycling hauler, Waste Management of Billerica, in June. Glass will still be collected at the transfer station, but it can’t be mixed with other recyclables.

Glass is heavier than other recyclables (and thus more costly to haul) while also being more difficult to separate from other materials, so it’s worth very little in today’s recycling market, as explained in this 2015 Wall Street Journal article. Waste Management charges by the ton for picking up materials from the transfer station and then pays a rebate for non-glass recyclables, so the recycling rebate and the fee for removing glass will balance out to a small net gain for the town, according to Assistant Town Administrator Mary Day.

At its facilities in Billerica and elsewhere, Waste Management separates commingled materials using machinery including suction equipment, magnets and optical detectors. One items that poses problems is plastic grocery bags, however. “They kill the machine that does the separating,” said Day, noting that residents should recycle them in bins inside supermarkets and not at the transfer station.

Town officials made the change in recycling companies because the former vendor, Integrated Paper Recyclers, was not doing the job, Day said. That company sometimes did not pick up the full containers on time, meaning that the transfer station had to either close or require residents to combine materials they had previously separated, such as putting plastics and cans in the glass container, she said.

“We had no choice because it was happening so frequently,” Day said, adding that transfer station workers were often the target of complaints from irate residents as a result of the problem. When interviewing other potential vendors, town officials were impressed by Waste Management’s “unbelievable state-of-the-art facility… we were so pleased with what they had to offer us and their responsiveness,” she said.

Sometime in the next few weeks, the transfer station will also install new bins and a larger compactor. One reason for this is the increased volume of paper and cardboard, requiring a transfer station worker to stand by almost full-time to shove down the material and run the compactor frequently to keep up.

“It has gone from way more than just paper to a lot of cardboard with everybody buying from Amazon,” Day said.

This fall, officials hope to update the procedures for recycling CRTs (cathode ray tubes such as old TVs and computer monitors) and white goods such as washing machines. “We don’t really had any hard policy and that’s one of the things that’s costing the town a lot of money,” Day said. One possibility is limiting how often residents can bring such materials. “We’ll have to see what other towns are doing that makes sense.”