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At Monday night’s City Council meeting, public works director Judith Mueller made the alarming statement that, should current trends continue, the reservoirs will be completely empty in 80-100 days. That’s as early as the first week in December or as late as Christmas. Reservoirs are currently at 57% and dropping. This despite the outdoor water restrictions currently in place. Proposed solutions include forcing restaurants to close on Sunday, having the city collect human waste (I swear I’m not making that up), and raising the cost of monthly water bills after 600 gallons per month by 50%. Council may declare an emergency session in a matter of days to enact new restrictions. There is still no major rainfall in the forecast. Elizabeth Nelson has the story in Tuesday’s Progress. 09/18 Update: Today’s Progress reports that car washes have been ordered to close down indefinitely, fines have been put into place, and the cost of water has risen.

After the faint promise of rain failed to materialize this week, even further restrictions are going into place all over Central Virginia to attempt to conserve water. Charlottesville schools are turning off the sinks in bathrooms and raising the building temperature. Albemarle restrictions have moved into phase two, shutting down car washes, watering of athletic fields, increasing the cost of water and putting harsher fines into place. The Albemarle Service Authority may meet again as early as Tuesday to discuss phase three restrictions. Orange, who already has the strictest regulations in the area (three-minute shower limits, no A/C in schools, paper plates in restaurants) is making swift progress on repairing their water-intake site. Peter Savodnik has a story in the Progress detailing the penalties in Albemarle and Charlottesville for violating water-usage regulations, the harshest being Charlottesville’s one-year jail sentence for three-time violators. In an oddly schizophrenic pair of lead editorials, The Cavalier Daily declares that UVa’s water restrictions have no teeth, because they won’t “hit [students] where it counts: the wallet,” and then laments that the new water pricing is really going to hit students in the wallet. In an e-mail to all UVa faculty, staff and students on Thursday, UVa’s Vice President for Management and Budget indicates that the university will work to conserve energy via “serious steps” in order to cut down on the UVa power plant’s water usage. Water levels in the reservoirs are at 56.4%, and continue to drop by 0.6% every day. 09/20 Update: Also, The Hook reports that The Moormans River has ceased to exist.

Henry Weinschenk, owner of Express Car Wash, sent out a press release this afternoon announcing that his business will remain open without running afoul of drought laws. His company received much criticism after saying last week that they intend to stay open in spite of the laws prohibiting car washes from running. Weinschenk says that they have switched to an entirely “dry-wash” based system, using a cleaning product called “Spotless” in a process developed by Express Car Wash as a result of the water restrictions. Keep reading to see the press release.

EXPRESS CAR WASH STILL OPEN, LEGALLY!

Charlottesville, VA. — After receiving a citation last Friday for still “wet-washing” some cars at customers” request, Express Car Wash went all “Dry-Wash” as of Saturday morning. The process was developed by Express Car Wash as an answer to the draconian water restrictions (100%), which were suddenly imposed on them on September 17, 2002; despite the fact that all carwashes in Albemarle and Charlottesville together only use 1/3 of 1% of the water supply.

Within days of the imposition of the ban, Express Car Wash started to experiment on their own cars with various non-traditional methods. Finally they settled for a process they christened “Dry-Wash” based on a product they have used for touchup purposes all along for more than 12 years. It is called “Spotless” and is manufactured by ZEP, one of the largest manufacturers of cleaners for industrial, commercial and institutional use in the U.S.

“Spotless” main active ingredient is Butyl Glycol, an oxygenated solvent that has been manufactured since the thirties and extensively tested all along. It is recommended for automotive cleaning, inside and out, including rubber and vinyl surfaces. Each car is sprayed with a mist consisting of approximately 2 oz. of “Spotless” diluted with 3 quarts of bottled water. This is followed up with a complete rubbing down with clean towels.

“The results of the process are quite satisfactory, at least for cars that have not been extremely neglected before,” said Henry F. Weinschenk, General Partner of Express Car Wash of Charlottesville. “Cars with caked-on mud cannot be processed with this system at this time,” he added.

Finally Weinschenk said, “To produce the mist we use stainless steel tanks which can be pressurized with compressed air. We have removed some of our equipment in the tunnel to allow our people to apply the mist there, while the cars ride on the conveyor. The work process is not yet optimized, but it is already obvious to us that the labor content of each car washed will increase by at least 35 to 50%.”

The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is working on a “doomsday” plan for what to do if and when our water supply runs out, says Carlos Santos in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It involves a variety of methods of making water available, including pumping water up from the bottom of the reservoir to the higher-up intake pipes, drilling wells, and extracting water from Chris Greene Lake. Says the RWSA director, “the three primary focuses for water will be the health and safety of the citizens, fire protection, and keeping hospitals and emergency services open.” What does everybody on cvillenews.com think we should do come doomsday? Where will we get water from? How will we function?

A small group of restaurant owners have formed a group, called “Project H2O,” to self-regulate restaurants’ water usage. Members of the coalition met on Wednesday and created a plan to cut back on water consumption, in hopes to avoid a car-wash-style shutdown being ordered by the city. The group agreed to serve only bottled water, swapping out sinks for hand sanitizer in customer bathrooms, using disposable tableware and using paper napkins, although restaurants are complying at different levels, depending on their capabilities. Restaurants represented at the meeting included Mudhouse, C&O, Fleurie, Rapture, Oxo, Mono Loco, The Ivy Inn, Wild Greens, Starr Hill, Escafe and Orbit. Elizabeth Nelson has the story in today’s Progress.

According to the Water Emergency page on the Albemarle County Service Authority’s website, reservoir supplies have increased from 53.1.% of capacity to 53.9% of capacity. Given that an average of 1.5 inches of rain fell across the area yesterday, we can calculate that a 1% gain in the reservoirs requires approximately 1.9 inches of rain. Therefore, we would require just over 30.5 inches of rain in order to reach 70% capacity, at which point restrictions would be cut back. Good news from ACSA, as reported in the Progress, is that area water usage has dropped from an August average of 13.2M per day, to 10.4M throughout most of September, and is now down to 7.8M as a result of the most recent water restrictions.