By Marianne Lincoln

How much water do you use when you wash your hands? How much when you brush your teeth? Laundry, showers, and flushing the commode all take water too. The average person uses 80 to 100 gallons a day. Multiply that by the houses in your neighborhood and the houses in your community.

Growth in numbers of people living in our area explains the giant water towers on the hill nearby and the gigantic pipes that are being places under Spanaway Loop Road to get your drains connected to the sewage treatment plant. The newest water tower on Yakima Avenue built for Parkland Light and Water holds 300,000 gallons. It is the largest ever built by the contractor, T Bailey.

These enormous containers take the water into and out of your homes. All that water in Parkland, Spanaway, Frederickson, Lakewood, and South Hill is from the Chambers Clover Watershed, called WRIA12 by the Department of Ecology (WRIA Water Resource Inventory Area) is from one source – rain. It is all ground water fed by precipitation. None of it comes from mountains or glaciers.

Weather matters; if it doesn’t rain, the aquifer below us doesn’t get replenished. In a recent story on TVW, Caroline Mellor, drought lead at the Washington State Department of Ecology weighed in on the weather issues. Tom Tebb, the former director of the Office of Columbia River, Washington Department of Ecology was also interviewed. Here is the link to that story https://tvw.org/2025/04/inside-olympia-water-and-drought-tom-tebb-and-caroline-mellor/ These experts are warning that “both eastern and western Washington face growing threats to long-term water security.”

Those annoying flow restrictors on your shower are not going to be enough if we do not get sufficient rain and the number of people in the area continues to grow at the current pace.

Last Friday, Seniors at Pacific Lutheran University’s Environmental Sciences 350 Class displayed their final projects after studying the Clover Creek watershed. They invited members of the Chambers Clover Watershed Council (CCWC) to see them on display and chat with the students. Of course, the students were also invited to upcoming events by the council and to participate in the next Zoom meeting on May 21, at 3:30 pm, as Council members talk about the watershed issues in real time.

Conversations are being conducted throught the county on water use, distribution and ways to conserve. The Tehaleh development in Bonney Lake has a water treatment plant the includes purple water pipes as well as fresh water and gray water. Purple water is water that has been treated and can be reused on certain things like watering gardens, flushing toilets, and industrial uses where drinking water quality is not necessary. Thurston County’s treatment plant using recycled water also. Pierce County is considering it for future sewage projects as it returns water to the aquifer rather that pumping treated fresh water into the saltwater of Puget Sound.

Lakewood water has placed pipes to transport water to South Hill, Summit and Spanaway, whose own well no longer produce enough for the population. Water system managers are hard to find. Spanaway Water will be trying to hire one soon. Water systems like Ashford, Burnett, Clear Lake, East Gig Harbor, Elbe, Kapowsin, Elkhorn, and Kopachuck Ridge Estates could not find candidates to run for their water system position and the Auditor had to open a special filing period this week. Water is a unique and complicated business. Future students may want to consider this as a profession in need.

You and I increasingly need to be aware of the changes that need to be made to be sure drinking water is available into the future for us all. We also need to be sure it does not become controlled, overpriced, or denied to those who cannot afford it. We all need water. There are water saving ideas on this government website, if it still exists by the time I publish. https://www.ready.gov/drought

And FYI, I drink filtered tap water from a Contigo water container, not bottled water. How do you do your part?