Seattle Public Utilities ends request for limits on water use

The driest part of the year has passed and Seattle Public Utilities no longer needs its 1.5 million customers to conserve water.

Rains in November and early this month refilled Seattle’s reservoirs to the point where there is enough for people and fish “for the foreseeable future,” the utility said in a release.

Those rains include a multiday soaking last week when an atmospheric river drenched much of Western Washington, marking Seattle’s wettest day so far this year, flooding neighborhoods and causing landslides.

Seattle Public Utilities officials asked customers in September to stop watering their lawns, take fewer or shorter showers and fix leaking pipes, toilets and faucets to save water after a dry summer.

Much of the rest of Washington has been plagued by drought this year. State officials declared a drought advisory in early July and later declared a drought emergency across a dozen counties. 

But conditions are improving. In September nearly 10% of the state was in “extreme” drought and more than 43% in “severe” drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Now none of the state is considered to be in extreme drought and less than 2% of the state is in severe drought.

Water storage is back to normal for this time of year in both the Cedar and Tolt watersheds, the release said. 

“Our customers answered the call to voluntarily reduce their water use, and we can’t thank them enough,” said Andrew Lee, the utility’s general manager. 

The utility has asked customers to voluntarily conserve water about six times since the 1980s; it hasn’t imposed mandatory cuts since 1992.

While conditions are improving, climatologists are still predicting a warmer and drier winter than normal as El Niño conditions push warm, tropical air into the Pacific Northwest. At the same time, climate change, caused by burning fossil fuels, will increase the frequency and severity of droughts across the American West.