I can’t remember the last time my town of Merrimack did not have some sort of water use restriction. Every year, regardless of the precipitation, even in heavy years, we are told to limit water use in the summer.
Related: Remember That Drought Thing We Had That Was the End of the World?
At the same time, the town continues to add more housing and more people who will use even more water. I’m no expert, but when you advertise a resource as scarce for close to a decade, dropping new housing or apartment buildings on top of that year after year makes no sense.
We need you to limit your “recreational” water use to 5 am to 8 am every other day (odd/even), and we’d like to celebrate adding a few hundred new families to make that problem worse.
Brilliant.
And that’s what they did and continue to do.
Affordable apartments, new homes, hundreds of taps and flush toilets and showers, and bath times that were not here last year when we had water restrictions. And don’t get me wrong. New home construction, a sign of growth, is a beautiful thing. We like welcoming new people to the community. New businesses too. We just don’t have any water. At least that’s the message from the town every damn summer for as long as I can remember.
Did anyone mention that during the sales pitch? Yeah, we’ve had to institute water-use restrictions for as long as my college-age kids have been alive, but no need to worry. You’ll love living in your new [insert name of dwelling here].
Given that this century has seen record amounts of precipitation historically – despite the occasional media obsession with the odd drought – we still see restrictions. There is a problem with the availability of water even when it rains more than not.
Would it make sense to put the brakes on adding more mouths to drink, or are we just yanking some chain because you got us used to it and didn’t feel like ever letting go?
Kind of like this COVID mask-distancing thing. Well, now that they have accepted it, let’s keep them doing it.
You have to admit it all seems a bit suspicious.
Note: NH’s annual avg precipitation (100 yr avg) is about 43-44″ inches per year. Six weeks into the second half of the year we are at 20.68″, which is below the annual average by about 20% or 5 inches.
For Reference
Nationally, we are still very wet with a positive trend line (chart updated through 2022).
Regionally we are around the mean with a positive trend line (chart updated through 2022).
Statewide we are below the mean with a positive trend line (chart updated through 2022).
