Water use soars along with temperature.Byline: Jeff Wright Jeff Wright can refer to:
Hot times in the city mean near-record water use among Eugene Water & Electric Board customers. The utility pumped 63 million gallons of water Monday and predicted a slightly lower volume for Tuesday, EWEB EWEB Eugene Water and Electric Board (Oregon) spokesman Lance Robertson Lance Robertson is an American musician,disc jockey, and actor. Originally from St. Louis, MO, Lance relocated to Los Angeles. Lance became well known in the LA indie rock scene from his band, The Raymakers and while working his day job at Amoeba Records. said. That compares with a typical range between 45 million and 55 million gallons on summer days, he said. The all-time high is 72 million gallons, recorded on July 28, 1998. The increased use is almost entirely the result of outdoor watering as residents strive to quench quench, v to cool a hot object rapidly by plunging it into water or oil. quench to put out, extinguish, or suppress; to cool (as hot metal) by immersing in water. the thirst of their plants and lawns, Robertson said. The extra use doesn't pose a capacity concern, Robertson said. EWEB can pump up to 72 million gallons of water daily from its Hayden Bridge intake on the McKenzie River For rivers name "Mackenzie", see . The McKenzie River is a tributary of the Willamette River, 86 miles (138 km) long, in northwestern Oregon in the United States. It drains part of the Cascade Range east of Eugene into the southernmost end of the Willamette Valley. and recently added a 15 million-gallon storage reservoir nearby, he said. EWEB also has 25 other storage reservoirs with a combined capacity of 78 million gallons. Still, "we don't want to discourage people from using water wisely," Robertson said. One way to do that is to water early in the morning or late at night, when evaporation evaporation, change of a liquid into vapor at any temperature below its boiling point. For example, water, when placed in a shallow open container exposed to air, gradually disappears, evaporating at a rate that depends on the amount of surface exposed, the humidity is slowed. Many residents are already wise to the tip: EWEB recorded 4.5 million gallons of water consumed Tuesday - between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. EWEB customers can trim their monthly utility bill by about $1 for every 1,000 gallons of water saved, Robertson said. The average residential use is 8,800 gallons a month. Water use in Springfield in recent days has hovered between 12 million and 13 million gallons - about what's expected for hot summer days, said Springfield Utility Board spokeswoman Mary Ann Rhodes. SUB's all-time historical peak is 16 million gallons a day, she said. Water use isn't likely to drop much in coming days: The area forecast is for highs in the mid- to upper 80s today, followed by cloudy cloudy (clou´de) 1. murky; turbid; not transparent. 2. marked by indistinct streaks. mornings with highs in the lower 80s on Thursday and Friday. The weekend forecast calls for more sunny days with highs approaching 90. As for rain, well, it's now been more than a month since any has fallen: one-tenth of an inch back on June 21. ET RATE Many residents may not realize that plants and lawns can withstand a short period of heat without needing a lot of additional water. One way to evaluate the need is to determine a lawn's evapotranspiration evapotranspiration Loss of water from the soil both by evaporation from the soil surface and by transpiration from the leaves of the plants growing on it. Factors that affect the rate of evapotranspiration include the amount of solar radiation, atmospheric vapor pressure, , or ET rate, which assesses the amount of water given up to the atmosphere by the average lawn. Information on the ET rate is available at EWEB's Web site - www.eweb.org - and on Saturdays in The Register-Guard. |
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