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Council continues debate on proposed amendments to water conservation rules, schedules vote for next meeting
Summary
Councilors reviewed proposed changes to the town's water conservation code, discussed impacts on residential and low-use commercial customers, raised equity concerns for large families, and agreed to take the ordinance up at the next council meeting for a vote.
The Town of Middleburg continued discussion on proposed amendments to its water conservation ordinance, with staff presenting data on potential savings and councilors asking for more time to review the draft code.
Danny Davis, town manager, summarized the proposed changes and data analysis, saying the draft distinguishes between low-use commercial customers and larger commercial accounts and that the town had modeled seasonal consumption. "If water rationing had to be imposed, there is the potential of saving, you know, somewhere around 9,000 gallons per day through those measures if the town were to impose a 10% reduction requirement," Davis said.
Councilors pressed staff on how the ordinance would treat large households and whether the code could provide verifiable exemptions or variances for such households. Davis said the residential side is designed to be flexible and that the draft does not include a specific accommodation process for larger families because such a system would be “much more difficult... to track, verify, apply equitably.” Council members proposed options to revisit equity mechanisms, such as case-by-case review by staff or linking household size to voter registration or other records, but agreed not to adopt those changes tonight.
Staff presented several clarifying figures from their analysis: about 40 commercial accounts used more than 9,000 gallons per billing cycle during spring–summer months in recent years; combining residential and commercial reductions could produce roughly a 10% reduction in daily production, which staff estimated could allow the town's wells to be idle roughly 4–5 hours per day under a worst-case conservation scenario. The draft ordinance also references a new town-code section, cited in discussion as section 113-81.
Council members agreed to postpone the ordinance vote to the next meeting to allow members time to read the new draft section and to let staff consider possible accommodations for large families. No formal vote on the ordinance was taken at this session.
