Dirina Reza of Lansdale checks the level of her backyard rain barrel, after heavy rains the night before. (Dan Sokil – MediaNews Group)
LANSDALE — On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, just off of an alley in Lansdale, Dirina Reza held a teal plastic basket full of purple leaves she had just picked from her backyard garden, as she checked the level of her white plastic rain barrel.
“We’re saving it up in the big jar — you see, the white one there. It’s full now,” she said. “Yesterday, it was not full, because we are watering every day. We take the water from there, and water everything.”
A step or two away, her mother and mother-in-law kept a watchful eye over the family’s backyard garden, sprouting spinach, potato, tomato, chili, okra, tea leaves, squash, pumpkin, coriander and more. She planted the garden in late spring, and it had minimal rain before Tuesday, when the first downpours in several weeks filled her rain barrel back up, so she can use it to fill a smaller watering can to keep her sprouts hydrated.
“We use the water from the rain. That’s a good way to save the water,” she said.
The rain barrel came with the house, when they moved in about five years ago. The garden itself is a full family effort, with her parents and in-laws all helping turn the soil and then plant in early spring. They’ve done it all without lessons, just family know-how: “I don’t think it needs an expert. We don’t need to be experts, we just have it for our household.”
The lack of rain so far this spring had been “really alarming,” she added, eyeing her barrel, in essence, and function a smaller version of the roughly 2-million-gallon North Penn Water Authority water storage tank just a few blocks away. As she spoke Tuesday, Dirina looked at the roof of the garage next to the rain barrel, thinking of ways to channel more rainwater in.
“It just came in from the rain — I will talk about that with my husband, that’s a good idea,” she said.
Just a few houses down, Mohammad Mahmoud was doing something similar, moving around plastic pails full of eggplant and tomato plants, as a few pink and red patterned bedsheets dried in the breeze on a clothesline. He’s lived there for about eight years, his garden was planted a few months ago, and his rain barrel is closer to the house, but he uses it often.
“There was enough rain for it last night. Before, I did it (watering) every day. With the rain, it’s better,” he said.
Other plastic pails and pots in his backyard contained different types of vegetables, including corn closer to his porch, and about a dozen of his plastic bins contained sprouts peeking over the rims.
“I like to use the rainwater. It helps to lower the bills,” he said.
Tuesday’s rains were a godsend for local water authorities, who had been warily watching the water levels in their much larger storage tanks, reservoirs and lakes from which they draw their water — and where demand’s been higher than ever lately.
“It was the highest month of May that we’ve had, in the history of the Forest Park water treatment plant. We reached all-time peaks,” said Bob Bender, executive director of the North Wales Water Authority.
“The plant is rated at 43 million gallons per day, and we hit 40.5. We weren’t right up against it, but we’ve never hit 40.5 million before in May. Normally it’s July and August when we hit those peaks, so that’s really what heightened our concern,” he said.
That high demand, earlier than usual, promoted a round of communication from the North Wales Water Authority, and their counterparts in the North Penn Water Authority, asking customers to start thinking about ways to conserve.
“Our water supplies are fine. We have sufficient capacity. We are just going through a short-term dry period here,” said Tony Bellitto, executive director for the NPWA.
“This happens pretty much every summer, we have a stretch of this dry weather. It’s a little unusual for this time of year, and inevitably the dry, hot period is replaced by a cooler, wetter period. We’re confident that we’ll get into a normal pattern in the future,” he said.
Several factors have played into the relatively high demand for water, according to Bender and Bellitto, including the growth of demand due to a population increase in recent years, combined with water sales to several nearby municipalities dealing with PFAS, the contaminant linked to firefighting foams at former military bases throughout the area.
“The PFAS contamination has certainly affected us. We’re selling water to Horsham Township, Warminster Township, and Warwick Township, in higher volumes than ever before, because they’ve had to close down wells” due to the contamination, Bender said.
“But we’ve been selling them water for the past couple of years, and haven’t hit these kinds of peaks. I think it’s primarily weather-related,” he said.
And that weather effect dates back more than a few weeks, Bellitto said: a winter with virtually no snow didn’t help recharge the groundwater supplies that the authorities draw from.
“The snowpack in the upstate New York reservoirs assists in the melt that goes into the reservoirs, which then feed into the Delaware River. We had a situation this past winter where we had a minimal amount of snow, and that does translate to less runoff in the spring,” Bellitto said.
“Infrastructure-wise, in the foreseeable three to five years, we’re looking at most likely a need to expand the Forest Park plant to give it more capacity. As we see growth in the area, every year we use more water because we have more customers,” he said.
Both water authorities have recently posted lists of tips for saving water on their social media channels, and those suggestions include turning off the water while brushing teeth, taking shorter showers, looking for leaks in or around old fixtures or appliances, and installing low-flow fixtures when possible.
Residents can also cut back on water usage by only running dishwashers or washing machines when they’re fully loaded, cleaning driveways or sidewalks with a broom instead of a hose, and planting drought-resistant trees or plants, all of which will help.
And local municipalities are trying to spread the word about conservation too: Lansdale’s Environmental Advisory Commission will host a rain barrel workshop at 6:30 p.m. on August 31, and holds monthly meetings at 6:30 p.m. on June 15 at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street, according to commission members.
“We’re fortunate. We’re entitled to withdraw up to 93 million gallons a day from the Delaware River for our Forest Park plant. Thus far, the Delaware River Basin Commission hasn’t seen a drop in the river,” Bender said, nor have they asked the water authorities to reduce their demand. Lake Galena in Bucks County is “full, or close to full,” he added.
Bender said he recalls the only time local water authorities had to impose mandatory conservation measures was the early 1980s, which included drastic steps including citations by local police departments for nighttime sprinkler use, measures he “would hope to never see again.”
“We don’t see that on this horizon, but ask again next month,” he said.
Bellitto agreed, saying he recalled some mandatory restrictions before the Forest Park plant opened in 1994, but none since, and hopefully none soon, perhaps because a new generation is more water-aware.
“People are much more conscious of water usage. Certainly, indoor plumbing fixtures like toilets and washing machines are made these days to be water-conserving, and people are generally conscious about not being wasteful with their use of water. I think people are very attuned to the problem,” he said.
People like Dirina, who said the bowl of spinach leaves she picked Tuesday afternoon was headed into a salad, soon.
“These are some leaves, we cook it with the salt and spices, and then we eat it with plain rice. It’s really good,” she said. One basket will feed about five people, and “when you cook it, it becomes very small, and then we eat it with rice for our lunch today. The ladies just have to be smart cooking.”