Drought Update from Durham City Council Work Session August 6, 2026

Duration: 10:21 1870 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

Following a recent period of significant rainfall, the Durham City Council received an update indicating that while water supply conditions have improved markedly, substantial work remains to fully resolve the ongoing drought in northern Durham County and surrounding areas like Orange County and Roxboro. Although precipitation has saturated local soils and boosted reservoir levels from 145 days of supply to approximately 219 days—a notable increase—the city's storage is currently at about 55%, which still lags behind typical non-drought years where refill rates are much higher. The drought status in the region has stepped down from exceptional to severe or extreme, offering a tremendous relief that allows for continued monitoring and gradual recovery rather than an immediate return to normal operations. To manage these constraints, Durham residents and commercial establishments have adhered to Stage 2 water restrictions, achieving a usage reduction of roughly 14% over the last month against a target goal of 20%. While this achievement is commendable given that Durham already ranks in the top 10% nationally for low residential water use, officials acknowledge it was challenging for many homeowners and businesses. The city has successfully transitioned away from receiving emergency water supplies from AASA by ramping up full capacity deliveries from neighboring utilities like the Town of Kerry and Tier Quarry, which now provide a combined total that allows the city to analyze whether they can scale back external dependencies later in the week. However, moving out of Stage 2 restrictions requires modeling data showing a 95% probability that usable storage will rise within ten weeks, a threshold currently dependent on steady rainfall rather than heavy tropical storms, suggesting an exit from these measures may not occur until early or late fall at the earliest. Legal and procedural questions arose during the session regarding Homeowners Associations (HOAs) fining residents for non-compliance with city watering bans, leading to guidance that municipal ordinances generally supersede private restrictive covenants in times of emergency. Council members also discussed the effectiveness of Durham's water shortage response plan compared to Raleigh's earlier intervention and noted differences in their respective watersheds and river sources affecting recovery speeds. The consensus among council members was strong on following established plans during active shortages while reserving detailed evaluations for after the crisis passes, ensuring that future policies are tweaked based on real-world data gathered from this event rather than mid-crisis adjustments. The meeting concluded with expressions of gratitude toward neighboring municipalities such as Chapel Hill and Carboro for their critical support in supplying water when local resources were strained, highlighting a spirit of regional cooperation during the crisis. Officials emphasized that while the summer was difficult for those maintaining gardens and plants due to strict conservation measures, the collective effort has yielded tangible improvements in storage levels. As the city continues to monitor weather patterns closely, the focus remains on sustaining current restrictions until natural replenishment meets safety thresholds, with a commitment to updating response plans once the immediate emergency subsides to better prepare for future water scarcity events.

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Good afternoon. >> Um, good afternoon, Mayor, mayor, prom, members of council, Don Gley, Water Management. I'm here to give an update on the um water shortage that we currently have, the the drought that's going on. Um, things have definitely improved. Um, the rains that we've seen the last several weeks have made an sign significant improvement to our water supply. However, we still have a ways to go to improve our water storage and looking forward to having continual rains. the rains that we have had have been able to um saturate the soil that have allowed the other more recent storms to run off into our streams. Um this is the current uh condition the North Carolina um drought management council uh drought um above in northern Durham County, Orange County, Roxboro is where our wersheds are. So that map has been exceptional drought in our wersheds for the last several weeks and as you can see here it's now moved into severe and extreme. So it's stepped down which is tremendous for us. Um as I said some of that rain has been coming. Although more rain has been hitting around our wersheds than what's been in our wersheds. It has made a significant improvement. Um as you can see here the red line shows our storage the last few weeks. You can see it's gone up. So, um, much improved. Current today we're about 55%. Um, the blue line that you can see, the solid blue line is our typical response outside of drought years. So, you can see how far away we are from our, you know, typical years with how our lakes refill um as as we go through the the water year. Um, over the last um month or so. um like to send an appreciation to all the residents in Durham and all the commercial establishments for adhering to the stage 2 restrictions. Um those are a challenge for Durham because we have tremendous water-wise use in Durham. So we we're in the top 10% of for the low water use for our residents in the country. and for our residents to cut back. I know it's a it's been a challenge, but I want to reach out and um thank all of our customers and all of our commercial customers as well. Um as you can see here, you know, our the trend is down over the last 30 days. Our goal is about was 20% reduction. We we achieved 14%. Which is still great. Um we would have liked to seen more, but as I said, it's it's been a challenge to our customers considering how well they how wisely they use their water to start with. Um, as of today or yesterday or two days ago, um, the running average for demand from our reservoirs is about 23 million. Um, we currently have 219 days of supply. That's up from 145. So, a big change there. Um, we are currently getting um, 9 million gallons a day from the town of Kerry and 4 million gallons from the tier quarry. Um we we were getting water from AASA as well, but that was waiting for the town of Kerry to finish their water plant um improvements for maintenance before they could ramp up to up to nine. So now that K's um uh was able to start giving us the full 9 mgd that we'd like, we were able to um discontinue getting water from AASA. And at this point, I also want to extend our the city's appreciation to AASA, the town of Chapel Hill and and Carbor and the town of Kerry for being able to supply water through us through through this time. So, um we are currently doing the uh because the improvements, we are currently doing the analysis to see if we could start scaling back um getting the water from our um neighboring utilities. Um and we should know a little bit more by the end of the week if we can start scaling back. Um to be able to come out of stage two restrictions um we have to through our modeling uh there's a 95% chance that within the next 10 weeks that our usable storage would rise to 95%. So we're still waiting for that trigger to happen before we can move out of stage stage two. So and until if we have these steady rains that's probably not going to get us there. If we have a heavy tropical storm or the residue of a storm come up through, then that might bump us up so we can move out of stage two, but we don't anticipate probably coming out of stage two till either early fall or later in the fall at the earliest. So, with that, I just open it the floor for questions. >> Thank you. Any questions? Go ahead, Mayor Williams. >> Yeah, thank you. Thank you [clears throat] for that information. I have more of a legal question. So, I'm getting a lot of uh uh calls from folks that are in communities, members of HOAs, and they are um they're getting fined for not watering their lawn. Now, I have my personal thoughts on HOAs for you all who live in HOAs. I don't know how you do it, but that's on you. Um but they're getting fined, and I know that they're governed by the state or something like that. Uh I'm wondering if our uh restrictions supersede the uh the the HOA's bylaws or whatever because folks are actually getting legally uh financially fined by not watering their lawn and they're saying, "Hey, look, I cannot water my lawn. The city has restrictions. The H president this is on three occasions." Well, you can hire someone to come in and do it. It's still the water here locally. So, how would how are we how do we what should I say to them? Adamie, [laughter] >> Mr. Mayor, you know, I love it when you spring a surprise on me. Um, >> there's so much going on today. I'm sorry. >> My inclination, I am not by any stretch wellversed in homeowners association law. Um, and I don't follow it that closely, but I would think that an actual municipal ordinance would supersede a restrictive covenant that applies to a property. So, my inclination is that these homeowners should be appealing any fines that their HOA is assessing and pointing to the law that um would pro prohibit them from watering their lawns in compliance with HOA standards. But these are private matters between private parties. And I always hate to tell individuals that they need to retain their own counsel, but that's that's what they need to do. the city attorney's office cannot advise them on these matters. >> Council member Cook, >> can you share those slides with us? >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. That was a very good I mean, I knew I knew what you were going to say, so I'm not surprised by anything that was on there, but I thought that particularly the graph that showed where we are generally at in in non-Rout years was helpful for those of us who are visual learners. So, thank you for the presentation. >> We'll get those later today. >> Thank you. >> One more comment. And I I just want to uplift the uh the camaraderie amongst the other municipalities. We have uh stepped up and provided support to other municipalities in a time of need, especially western North Carolina. So, I just want to publicly thank our part our neighbors for uh supporting us on this water supply issue. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> All right. >> Go ahead, Council Member Vicker. >> Yeah, I want to second that as well. Thank you to Carrie and Chapel Hill. Um just one question. And uh first of all, thank you for all all of this work that that you've done. Um I remember early on in the drought, Raleigh put in place uh measures, you know, to cut back on water use and um we were delayed in that kind of something wasn't triggered. We we hadn't reached a point where we felt it was necessary. Do you think that was right? Do you think our do you think our policies around that are uh sufficient or do you think that we need to take a look at when we want to re-evaluate when we want to enforce um more strict uh water uh restrictions? >> Yeah, good good question. Um, you know, when we we have a water shortage response plan that we plan in advance based on the the as much information as we've had and and this is the plan that we invoked during this trip. Um, we will certainly be taking the information that we've learned and additional because it's been a couple years since we updated that [snorts] um and additional data that we'll have and we'll be taking another look and seeing how the response of our customers are to re-evaluate our water shortage response plan. I think you know when you have an event like this and you have a plan in place it's always good to follow your plan because that's what you know you think the best information that you had to prepare the plan you should follow that now you can try to adapt in the middle of it but you should follow your plan once you come out of that that's when you really sit down and do re-evaluate what your plan was how effective it was how you tweak it and that's what we fully intend to do um the city of Raleigh you know they They hit their trigger early before us. So they invoked, you know, their wage storage shortage response plan and the rains have helped them. So their water supply is back up to 83% or is at 55. So they were able to hit their trigger to come out of their drought. So but we will definitely be looking at our plan and seeing where we can update it and tweak it. So, >> council member Rrist, >> thank me for Tim. Um, is is part of the difference in triggers also it's different source of water, right? Raleigh is Falls Lake. We are higher up in the in the >> we're higher up in the waterershed. Certainly, both of our rivers supply Falls Lake, but you know, there are other rivers and streams that feed falls lake as well. Um, but also some of the storms have come in have just kind of hit >> other areas rather than our wersheds. So, they've been able to to bounce back faster. >> Thanks, Thank you. Thank you so much for the uh update and thank you to all your staff and and uh and to residents for for tightening their belts because we know it's hard for all of us who have lots of gardens and plants. It was fun times this summer. >> Absolutely. Thank you.