Add water to the list of woes facing Harford County.
As noted by us frequently, the county needs wider and better roads, more school buildings and a larger water treatment plant, just to catch up with past growth, not to mention to be at the ready for BRAC.
Until recently, however, the thought of not having enough water to drink was confined to the City of Aberdeen, where a potential crisis has existed for at least decade, and the last three city administrations essentially fumbled away opportunities to deal with it in a realistic fashion.
Oh yes, there is periodic concern, though not now, about the Town of Bel Air's privately-managed supply from Winters Run.
Anyone who has driven by Loch Raven Reservoir along Dulaney Valley Road north of Towson, as I did Saturday afternoon, is stark witness to a prolonged period of not enough rainfall and snowfall and too much demand for drinking water in our region. The water level in the coves is as low as I can remember in my 37-plus years of driving this route. To someone living in Abingdon or Edgewood, it might be hard to fathom that this condition affects their drinking water, but it does.
Late last year, Harford County was put on notice by Baltimore City that because of the low condition of the Loch Raven supply, the city intended to immediately begin drawing water from the Susquehanna River from the pool behind Conowingo Dam. This river water will travel through the huge aqueduct, called the Big Inch, which the city constructed at the same time I-95 was built in the early 1960s. A decade ago, Harford County government decided to use the Big Inch as a principal drinking water source and built a treatment plant off of Abingdon Road to tap the water line. Harford County has a right to so many million gallons of untreated water from this line by act of the legislature, but it's left up to the city and county to agree to the price and actual amount.
When Harford first tapped the Big Inch, which was originally constructed as a backup for Baltimore's main sources from the Big Gunpowder Falls (Loch Raven Reservoir) and Patapsco River (Liberty Reservoir), it was cheaper for the city to send water out from its Lake Montebello Reservoir fed by Loch Raven than it was to draw water from the Susquehanna, the latter which the city wasn't using anyway. There's a huge lift required to get water from the Susquehanna over the west ridge of the Deer Creek Valley. Many of you who travel along Stafford Road in Darlington where it crosses Deer Creek have seen the city's massive pumping station, which is expensive to operate.
We've reported previously that it may cost the county a little more to buy and treat the water from the Susquehanna, which the city began supplying Dec. 18. And, though there's no immediate danger of the supply being restricted, the situation demonstrates the county is no longer flush with drinking water used by about half its population — the other half being supplied by private wells or the three municipal water systems.
Water demand slacks off in the winter, but county public works officials have already started to request voluntary conservation from users. The first real test will come this summer if there hasn't been adequate rain and snowfall to replenish Loch Raven.
Harford has other water sources from the Susquehanna River at Havre de Grace and from a wellfield in Perryman. But with the water in the Baltimore City system also supplying all of Baltimore County and parts of Anne Arundel, Howard and Carroll counties, a once seemingly endless resource is starting to appear a bit constrained. A few good storms would fix the situation but, possibly, only temporarily. To grow, communities need a reliable, clean source of water, and there's every reason to believe its become a more finite resource in our region than many of us might have realized.
There's no range war brewing, but caution and careful management of this essential resource are a must. At the very least, it's going to cost more for many Harford residents to turn on the spigot this year.
As we've seen with oil and gasoline, higher prices don't necessarily drive conservation, as long as the supply isn't interrupted. Still, it's best to begin conserving now and live to be able to drink as much as we need later.
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