Five-years of near-drought conditions are taking a toll on the amount of water a southwestern Iowa utility can distribute to its customers. The Regional Water Rural Water Association, based in Avoca, has instituted “Level Red” mandatory water restrictions for customers across the Avoca Treatment Plant System, including parts of Audubon, Cass, Harrison, Pottawattamie and Shelby counties.
Regional Water General Manager Tom Kallman says the wells are very low due to the drought and excessive draws to meet demand.
“Our well field is situated here on the Nishnabotna Watershed and we are pulling 740 gallons a minute out of our wells, which is about 120 gallons a minute less than at this point last year,” Kallman says. “It’s not a question of the mechanical operation of the wells. I’ve got guys out there making sure that they’re all working properly, the issue is the water is not there.”
Communities impacted include: Avoca, Persia, Panama, Portsmouth, Westphalia, Kirkman, Tennant, Earling, Exira, and Brayton. Kallman says they started pumping from their wells 24 hours per day back on March 29th to meet demand, and they’re still pumping 24/7 which is causing issues with maintenance of the utilities’ facility.
“I can’t shut it down to do the maintenance because I’ve got to keep pumping water,” he says. “We are doing everything we can to pump as many gallons into the system as we can, even if demand was the same now as it was last year, I’m still producing 188,000 gallons of water less per day, when you do all the math on that 120 gallons a minute.”
A “Level Red” water restriction means usage should be limited to essential needs only.
“We have outages. That means there are people without water. We’ve had places that were temporarily out of water that included the assisted living facility up here near Avoca. There are a couple of hospitals that are on our system,” Kallman says. “My biggest concern is human consumption, cooking and personal hygiene.”
That means no filling of pools, no washing vehicles or driveways, no watering lawns, and having restaurants serve water to their customers only upon request. Kallman says they’ve been in a “conservation mode” for nearly the past three years.
“I don’t see us getting more water out of the same well field,” he says. “We applied for and got approved for a federal loan to get this connection with Council Bluffs and we are close. It will be done by the end of this summer. The problem is the summer of ’25, I told them was where I considered the most risk. We’re going to have to go through the summer together to get to that point where we have that water from Council Bluffs.”
He says there are two other aquifers Regional Water can tap into, but they are very deep, and test holes so far have come up empty, especially with regard to the Dakota Aquifer. The Jordan Aquifer is about 3,000 feet deep, and Kallman says it would take one-million dollars to drill that far, money they don’t have. Kallman says they need a one-inch soaking of rain every day for 40 days, as their water supply is four-feet below average for the last four years.
“For those who believe in a higher power, we are firm believers in prayer and we need to pray for rain in this area,” he says. “If it misses us, we want it to miss north, so that it can come down the river and we get a little bit of the benefit.”
He urged residents to remind their neighbors that water rationing is in effect, especially since some people are seemingly unaware of the situation. The forecast calls for the chance of rain in the region late Sunday and the first few days of next week.
(By Ric Hanson, KJAN, Atlantic)