"The many bright, sunny days since spring have proven dark and dreary for local businesses, as a lack of rain and Lexington's ability to keep up with the demand for water could spell a torrent of trouble.
"We've already started reducing our temporary staff," said Stephen Hillenmeyer, owner of Hillenmeyer Landscape Services, who can employ as many as 200 people during peak times. "We probably would have made cuts in July when we would have probably started our normal slow down, which would maybe eliminate 10 to 15 percent of our labor staff. But we've already done that. So we're a month ahead of time in terms of that, and we'll probably have another 10 to 15 percent over the next couple of weeks if things don't change."
To compensate the commercial, residential and equine properties that his company maintains — as well as to keep his staff employed — Hillenmeyer said he offers a swap in services, because lawns don't need to be mowed weekly if they only see rain a few times a month.
The company does its best to "offer an alternative to be able to continue (offering) a service for our customer, which provides (the company) revenue," Hillenmeyer said.
About 60 percent of his employees come to the company through a federal program called H2B, which places legal Hispanic workers in seasonal employment in the United States while allowing them to return home during their off season. But during a time like this when Hillenmeyer needs to let workers go, it isn't as easy as laying off employees; all H2B workers are given severance from the company and have their expenses paid to return to their home country.
To keep from temporary layoffs or shutdowns, companies like Hillenmeyer's and the Toyota Georgetown plant have started finding new ways to make water work for them.
"We're involved in water in this area because we understand that it's a very precious commodity around here, and we get into these kinds of situations," said Jeff Klocke, manager of Environmental Engineering and Energy Management at Toyota's Georgetown manufacturing facility. "We already started to look at it even before the weather people were talking about severe or moderate drought."
The drought of 1999 saw the plant utilize numerous temporary solutions to avoid a slowdown in production including suspending onsite fire training, pre-delivery carwashes and reducing the water pressure coming into the plant, Toyota spokesman Rick Hesterberg told Business Lexington for a story in April of last year. Since that drought, Hesterberg and Klocke said the plant has cut back water usage by nearly one third, reducing per vehicle water usage from 1,165 gallons in 2000 to just below 700 so far in this fiscal year, beginning in April.
"What we've found in the past is there are stopgap things that we can do; it's not long-term things because it starts to become detrimental to the overall operation, but there are things we can do that are stopgap, short-term measures," Klocke said this month.
The plant has started partially treating and sending an average of three million gallons of recycled plant waste water, rain water (when there is any), air conditioner drainage and water pumped out of the plant's basement to a treatment facility in Georgetown and has long since stopped watering its lawn.
No matter how dry any summer is, Kentucky American Water can run at capacity as long as 70 million gallons a day is available for treatment from the Kentucky River. As of mid-June, the river was flowing at a rate of 194 million gallons a day, even before a sustained rainfall on June 19, according to Kentucky River Authority member William Grier.
During the drought of record in 1930, the river was still running at acceptable rates even for Lexington's current population at this time in the year, but by mid-September, only six million gallons a day were flowing, Grier said, which would cause a massive crisis if seen today.
During the drought of 1999 — which couldn't hold a candle to the 1930 dry spell — carwashes, nurseries and golf courses were forced to shutdown, Kentucky American's Director of Engineering, Linda Bridwell, told Business Lexington last year.
In 1999, customers saw voluntary and mandatory water restrictions for four months starting in June and put Kentucky American on the brink of water rationing, Bridwell said last year. Rationing, the last of six steps in a water shortage response plan, would have limited personal use to 40 gallons a day, a one-person household to 55 gallons, along with restrictions to nonresidential customers and a change in scale for the cost of water.
The effects of a drought on par with 1999 would be amplified today, according to Bridwell, as Kentucky American added roughly 15,000 customers between 1999 and 2006 without adding supply.
Susan Lancho, communications and corporate social responsibility manager for Kentucky American Water said her company would like to render this discussion moot and has plans to do so as soon as a new treatment facility and pipeline are approved to be built on the Kentucky River in Owen County.
When asked if Lexington still would be faced with this problem were the Owen County plant online today, she said this month: "No, no, we wouldn't have this issue, because we would have more water available," which is a sentiment echoed by Grier, a longtime advocate of increasing local water supply.
If approved by the Public Service Commission, Kentucky American plans on beginning construction of the scaleable 20 million gallon-a-day plant in the fall, with hopes of completion in 2010.
The Urban-County Council will meet on July 10th with officials from the Louisville Water Company to discuss the prospect of a pipeline bringing treated water to Lexington from the Ohio River. Council member Linda Gorton, who voted for a resolution in 1999 telling Kentucky American to give up on the idea of a pipeline from the Ohio and look toward a regional, Kentucky River solution to the water supply issue, is the one who requested the meeting with Louisville Water. She made the request after being approached by constituents with fears that a new plant will mean higher water prices.
Lancho said the fact that the Owen County plant will supply the region and not just Fayette County will keep the costs down, possibly lower than the cost of bringing a pipeline from Louisville to Lexington. On top of that, Lancho said, the Federal Highway Administration has twice denied Kentucky American's request to build along Gorton's suggested route of Interstate 64 for safety reasons, and a change in the plans now would set back completion of any project at least a year.