Let It Flow...
Now that the summer heat is here, water utilities across the country worry about the “D” word – drought! Thanks to some great planning in the 1970s by the three major water providers in the region, the Washington Aqueduct, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, and Fairfax Water, we have a secret weapon to fight drought. The secret weapon is the Jennings Randolph Reservoir. The reservoir was built in 1981 on the Potomac’s North Branch in western Maryland and West Virginia. It stores more than 13 billion gallons of water as a “savings account” against severe drought conditions. Coordination of the reservoir’s use for water supply purposes is managed by the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB). Generally, water supply withdrawals from the Potomac are a tiny fraction of the river’s flow. The average flow of the river is about seven billion gallons per day. The average summer demand of the region’s water utilities is about 500 million gallons per day. Although our water supply is designed to meet demands in a drought, water can be released from the Jennings Randolph Reservoir to replenish the supply in the Potomac River if a serious drought threatens the region. Water released from the reservoir flows about 225 miles down the Potomac and takes about nine days to reach our area. A regional agreement ensures that area water utilities share equitably the additional water resources from the Jennings Randolph Reservoir.