Cedar Rapids isn’t sweating high water demand

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's a safe bet that the city's Water Division has pumped and treated more water in June than ever before and is on pace in July to easily surpass last month's record, city officials said on Tuesday.

Even so, no one at City Hall is sweating.

Mayor Ron Corbett on Tuesday said the city's long-term investment in additional water pumping and treatment capacity over more than a decade has positioned the city to easily handle its current historic water demands and more.

“Cedar Rapids isn't rationing water when other communities are or may have to,” Corbett said.

The city is on pace in July to pump and treat an average of 49.79 million gallons a day, up from 45.99 million gallons a day in June. The daily maximum demand in June was 53.346 million gallons and it's 53.469 million gallons so far in July. The system's capacity is 60 million gallons a day.

By way of comparison, the city's Water Division delivered 43.24 million gallons a day on average in July 2011 and 39.6 million gallons in August 2010, which were the monthly highs for those years.

Bruce Jacobs, the city's utilities engineering manager, on Tuesday said the current pace of water pumping and treatment is, no doubt, a record for the city because this summer is the driest one since the city built a second water treatment plant in 1995 to expand the capacity of its water system to 60 million gallons a day from about 40 million gallons a day, Jacobs said.

Corbett said high water usage is bringing in higher than expected revenue for the city's Water Division, though Steve Hershner, the city's utilities environmental manager, said that added revenue isn't all profit. Pumping and treating more water requires more electricity and more lime and chemicals, he noted.

Even so, the city's ongoing investment in its water system has turned the state's current drought into a “non-issue” for the city, Hershner said.

“We're not telling you to use extra water, but were not telling you not to use water,” he said.

The city pumps its water from shallow wells along the Cedar River above the downtown.

One of the easiest jobs in the city is managing the city's dam at the base of the 5-in-1 bridge.

Hershner and Jacobs said the city operates the dam, currently keeping the pool of water above it at a constant targeted height for recreational uses established years ago by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In years past, Quaker Oats used river water and the city operated a hydroelectric plant at the dam site, which required additional management of the dam, Hershner noted. The DNR requires some water flow over the dam to aerate water as it goes downstream, Jacobs added.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Cedar River at Cedar Rapids below the dam was flowing at a level of 3.05 feet, well below the level of 5.98 feet a year ago and the city's 12-foot flood stage. The flood of 2008 sent the water level to 31.12 feet..

Hershner reported that the water level equated to a water flow rate of 809 cubic feet per second, well below the typical median flow of 2,200 cfps of the Cedar River at Cedar Rapids. The historic low flow was in 1911 at 410 cfps he reported.