On August 1st, the Town of Paonia imposed new water restrictions — but not because of a water shortage.
“The reason we’re doing this is we’re finally starting work on our water capital improvement plan, phase one,” said Town Administrator Stefen Wynn.
The first step is relining the town’s two-million-gallon finished water tank. “While we’re doing that, we have to take it completely offline,” Wynn said. “So that’s the tank that has all of our finished drinking water.”
A temporary tank with about 725,000 gallons of capacity is being used during construction. “Our plant can keep up. We have plenty of water coming through,” Wynn said. “What we don’t want wanna do is run our plant continuously 24-7.”
To reduce demand, the town has implemented alternating-day irrigation rules: “Those with odd-numbered addresses water on odd-numbered calendar days, and those with even numbered addresses water on even numbered days. On the 31st, no watering is allowed.”
Wynn said, “Right now we don’t think there’s going to be a need to go into further restrictions.”
However, the town will enforce the rules. “If people refuse or continue to violate those fines can be up to $250 per offense and then repeat violations may have their water service disconnected,” Wynn said. “We just want people to recognize that, hey, we need to cut back on our water consumption a little bit while we’re doing this important work.”
The full timeline for lifting restrictions is unclear. “It’d be wonderful if it only took four weeks. I don’t anticipate that happening,” Wynn said. “I think this project is going to continue through the winter, through the rest of this irrigation season.”
