Weekend storm leaves Santa Cruz short of water

The storm last weekend created a problem in Santa Cruz — not too much water, but too little. City officials said rain damaged its major water source, the Newell Creek pipeline, causing a short-term water shortage.

The pipeline cracked early Monday morning, letting out 1,500 gallons of water per minute. While it’s being patched, the city is asking residents to cut back on their water use for at least a week.

“The regular demand, at least on Sunday, … was 5.9 million gallons a day. And those sources, North Coast Source and our ground water source, make about four million gallons a day,” said Rosemary Menard with Santa Cruz Water Department.

Almost two million gallons short after the pipeline leak. City officials said aging infrastructure combined with the weekend storm were to blame.

“We think the saturation of the soil in the area where the pipe is probably resulted in some sort of ground shifting that dislocated the pipe in some fashion,” Menard said.

The repair work could take a week or more.

“We expect to have 50 feet of the road in Henry Cowell Park, called ‘pipeline road’, that we will have to excavate in order to expose the broken section and really understand what’s going on,” Menard said.

Without its main water source, the city is asking people to cut back by 30 percent for the next week, and Rafik Abelian, who runs the Cold Stone Creamery on Pacific Street, said he’s already doing it.

“We used to wash dishes just on demand, and now we collect them, and we basically use one tank. And around the stone, we used to have water running all day long, we limited that only to rush hours,” Abelian said.

Abelian said the water shortage this week won’t be a problem for his business.

“With the weather being on the cold and rainy side, we are a little bit slower than usual, business wise. So I don’t think there will be any issue with us reducing our usage,” Abelian said.

After more than five years of drought, residents have lots of ideas.

“Even saving rain water, when it does rain to water the plants, using recyclable water bottle, not washing your car as much, taking fast showers, drinking all the water that you consume on a daily basis and not being thrown away,” said Eddy Mendoza.

The city does have more water on reserve, but it’s kept for fighting fires. The Water Development Office said it will continue to notify residents and businesses about the shortage on Tuesday.