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The Town's Water and Sewer Advisory Committee (citizen committee) working with Town <br />officials has conceived a strategy that it believes could reduce utility rates for all classes of <br />ratepayers. Specifically it believes that an increase in water consumption and sales <br />sufficient to restore or even exceed that lost by the closing of the Flint Fabrics plant would <br />lessen the need to charge the current high utility rates. With stabilized fixed costs (already <br />incurred capital costs for plant expansion, reservoir, etc.) and less significant incremental <br />costs (power, treatment chemicals, maintenance) applied to a higher quantity of sales, <br />rates could decline somewhat. Some increase in consumption will be achieved as the <br />Town moves to serve new development' Waterstone, Churton Grove and others. The <br />Town also proposes to relax the restrictions on water consumption during dry periods to <br />take advantage of its additional water supply, the cost of which has already been factored <br />into its rate structure. <br />Coordination /Modification of County and Town Water Conservation /Drought <br />Ordinances <br />When comparing dates of adoption or approval, the County and Town water conservation/ <br />drought ordinances predate the Eno River Capacity Use Agreement by more than two <br />years. The Capacity Use Agreement limits how much water can be withdrawn from the <br />Eno, based on water levels — and quantity of water remaining in storage — at Lake Orange. <br />The water conservation /drought ordinances limit how individual water consumers/ <br />customers can actually use water, based on water levels at Lake Orange. The primary <br />theory behind the ordinances is that a prohibition on non- or less- essential water - <br />consuming activities such as watering lawns and washing cars will lessen the demand on <br />the Eno system. Consequently, water for essential uses, primarily those uses involving <br />direct human consumption, bathing, etc., will be conserved and thus available for a longer <br />period of time. Accordingly, the ordinances work by first establishing a level or stage of <br />voluntary reduction of non - essential water uses and then establishing stages of mandatory <br />reductions which are increasing restrictive on non - essential and finally less- essential water <br />uses. Ultimately, the water conservation /drought ordinances raise (but do not describe or <br />legislate the procedures and practices) the specter of water rationing. <br />Historically, the County and Hillsborough water conservation /drought ordinances have <br />been nearly identical, calling for similar restrictions on water use at the same water levels <br />at Lake Orange. However, in February 2002, the Town amended its water use ordinance <br />to reflect the availability of water supplies to the Town from its West Fork Reservoir. The <br />specific change was to delay going into mandatory restrictions from the Level III condition <br />at Lake Orange (Level 1 =full, Level 11 =24" below full, Level III =37" below full, Level IV =70" <br />below full) to the Level IV condition. Orange County's ordinance was not changed and did <br />not remain consistent with the terms of the Town ordinance. <br />Since the time of Hillsborough's ordinance change, there has been only the period of the <br />2002 drought in which the differences in the County and Town could have caused serious <br />confusion and conflict (neither Capacity Use or Drought ordinance restrictions had to be <br />implemented during the normally dry months of 2003). During the short period in 2002 <br />ri raft <br />