At the City Council Meeting in Clemson, SC
I can finally wash in Clemson, SC again.
Last July the city of Clemson place mandatory water use bans that said no water could be used to clean concrete or put on any structure unless it was on fire. (no kidding). It made no difference if you were a licensed pressure washing contractor or not. With such a strong water restrictions a lot of people outside of Clemson that were not under the same water use constraints felt compelled to conserve where they could and pressure washing was looked upon (wrongly) as a high use of water and the phone immediately quit ringing.
The water uses bans were inconsistent in the Upstate of South Carolina. It seems Clemson a long time ago voted in an ordinance that banned certain water uses that would automatically kick in when Lake Hartwell got down to a certain level. The problem was Clemson gets its water from the Anderson Regional Water Authority which supplies water to something like fourteen different municipalities. Even though all the water was coming from the same lake and even the same water intake structure the laws governing the water restrictions were all over the place. While Clemson put in place water use bans in July, Anderson didn’t put in place such bans until December. With winter rains the bans in Anderson lasted only about two weeks while Clemson kept their water bans until April 6, 2009
Recent rains have brought the lake level up. Even though the lake is still below full pool it has improved greatly over last year’s levels. With homes being able to be cleaned in more and more areas of the Upstate Clemson still had their restrictions in place until last night. This was causing confusion all over the area about just who could do what and when with the use of water.
At the City Council meeting I went to last night Clemson voted unanimously to pretty much adopt the water restriction rules set forth in Anderson, SC. One rule I particularly liked that Anderson had was that if a contractor was licensed at the time a water restriction was put into place they could continue to operate. I hope Clemson picks up on that as well, but at the very least now the entire area will be more consistent and water use bans will not be put in place until the lake gets to a more reasonable low level.
Also since the lake level has improved so much it is now above the level which set in Clemson’s water restrictions last July and as of last night the while they are still asking for voluntary conservation, all mandatory restrictions have been lifted as by another unanimous vote.
As the motion was voted on and passed the mayor looked at me and give me a big thumbs up.
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