Weather and equipment issues raising concerns for two Baldwin County water systems

FAIRHOPE, Ala. (WALA) – The City of Fairhope has mandated its water customers to restrict water usage due to equipment failures associated with high usage. In the meantime, Riviera Utilities is asking its water customers to voluntarily conserve water. They say the system is also being pushed close to capacity.

The City of Fairhope is now in Phase III of its Water Conservation Ordinance. A pump failure at one of its well sites took that well offline, depriving the system of more than a million gallons of water a day. Because of this, daily usage is pushed close to capacity and more mandates have come in.

“For customers, it means you can’t irrigate your lawn. You can’t wash your cars. It means if you have a pool, you have to fill it on alternate days based on an odd or even address … but those are some of the major things,” Fairhope Mayor Sherry Sullivan said. “Irrigation is what most people will be really upset about.”

Sullivan said the city can trace excess water use directly to irrigation during a particularly dry and hot August. Late last week, Fairhope residents were already asked to voluntarily conserve water by just watering overnight. This, after daily usage rates topped nine million gallons for a week running, with some days exceeding 9.5 million.

If the city hadn’t added an additional well in the past year, Sullivan said he would have already asked Daphne to send water.

“We’d be in pretty serious trouble if it was this time last year,” Sullivan said.

During this critical time, while the city waits for a new pump to arrive, the Fairhope Splash Pad has been closed and city water trucks are being filled from irrigation wells.

Meanwhile, Riviera Utilities water customers in southern Baldwin County are being asked to track their water usage as well. Extreme heat and lack of rain also affect his system.

“You know, with the high temperatures and no rain, we started seeing a lot of usage yesterday and it kind of peaked. Hopefully if it rains, the temperatures drop, you know the usage will start to drop,” explained Director of Operations for Riviera Utilities, James Wallace.

Riviera serves about 12,000 water customers and said usage peaked on Monday, August 12, 2024 at 2.5 million gallons of their three million gallon capacity.

Fairhope remains the only system under a mandatory restriction, and while it’s frustrating for some, others said they’ll just go with it.

“I don’t worry too much about it. It’s water off a duck’s back. We’re going to deal with it,” Fairhope resident Rob Rubinoff said. “If we want to get uptight about things like that … they’re doing their best. I think they will try to do their best job and deal with it. Some things are just out of our control.”

While Fairhope waits for a new pump, customers may notice discolored water and low pressure during peak periods, especially in the south part of town. A temporary pump should be installed by the end of the week which will bring the system back up to speed while they wait for a new pump to be delivered and installed.

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