Mr. Mayor, Councilors.

My name is John Wheeler and I reside at 505 Eighth Street N.E. in the City.

I urge you to get dead serious about this drought by doing three things.

First, I urge you to cut off water service to residences and most businesses soon, while there is still a large reserve left in the reservoir for the uses that are most essential for public health and safety and economic stability. It will be a disaster to bottom out the reservoir, leaving fire hydrants without pressure and leaving essential enterprises such as hospitals, nursing homes, doctors' offices, and grocery stores without running water for the duration of this drought.

I myself feel particularly at risk because I live in an old, crowded, wooden neighborhood. Right now I feel safe from the risk of fire because we have the best fire protection in the world. But that protection is based on hydrants fed by a reservoir of water. I well remember when Reid's grocery store on the Mall burned down, and I wonder whether we would have lost more buildings to that fire if it had been fought with tank trucks running back and forth to Chris Green Lake. And while I'm on the subject of Chris Green Lake, I hope that you don't count on sucking the county's recreational lakes dry. As this drought deepens we are going to see forest fires on a scale we've never experienced before. We have whole mountainsides just to the west of us that have been dead and brown for months. The county is going to need every drop in its lakes to protect us from forest fires.

I am talking, of course, about setting priorities for allocating the last drops of this precious resource. That process of setting priorities must be public and it will take a lot of your time. The process must start immediately if it is to be done right. Those non-essential businesses whose water must be cut off need as much lead time as possible, so that they can plan how to continue doing business without being connected to the public water system.

Second, I ask you to begin rolling shut-offs of residential water immediately. Nothing else will convince folks that this is a real crisis and that the City is taking it seriously. Those citizens who are already taking the drought seriously will find some assurance in these strong measures. Those who are not yet concerned will take conservation more seriously because they will experience what it is like to be completely without water. And when we do run out of residential water, people will be better equipped to deal with the situation because they will have already experienced it on a lesser scale. They will have had time to adjust to a different way of life.

Third, I urge you to institute drastic conservation measures. The current proposal of a surcharge after 600 cubic feet per month translates to 20 cubic feet per day, which, using a conversion factor of 7.38 gallons per cubic foot, comes to about 148 gallons per day per household. That is not conservation. That is profligacy. My own family of three has used about 12 gallons per day on average for the past two weeks. Used bathing water goes into the washing machine; washing machine gray water flushes the toilet. The bathroom is crowded with buckets of soapy water. It's not a monument to Martha Stewart. But we are healthy and clean enough, and I wish we had started doing this months or years ago and not merely weeks ago. Not everyone in this community is physically able to carry buckets of gray water to their toilets. And there are many households larger than mine. But this city-wide goal of 148 gallons is twelve times what our family has achieved with very little effort. A goal or 148 gallons will not inspire citizens to cut back on their toilet flushing or their clothes washing. Nor will it convince them to curtail their showering to one or two gallons, once a week.

In sum, I urge you first to set a definite level of reserve capacity in the reservoir that will trigger immediate shut-offs to residences and most businesses so that we may preserve the water for our most essential needs; second, institute rolling cut offs to residences immediately; and third, set a dramatically more stringent conservation goal for the interim. I also suggest that you direct staff to investigate means to collect and treat human waste without a sewer system, while we still have time to create the necessary infrastructure.

I am certain that once citizens realize that this is a true emergency, they will support strong measures. The people of this country have demonstrated that they are capable of genuine sacrifice when they believe their actions are purposeful. The people of Charlottesville will willingly sacrifice their short-term comfort and convenience to assure the long-term health, safety, and economic stability of this community.

Thank you for your attention.

John Wheeler (received electronic mail, October 21, 2002)