Low Water Pressure Has Residents Spouting Mad

About a month ago Melissa Chepuru, who lives on Dickel Road, turned on her shower and got an unpleasant surprise.

Nothing.

"It was just a trickle," she said. "You can't even flush the toilet."

Chepuru, 47, a homemaker, is one of many village residents aggravated about the lack of water pressure in her home.

State, County, Village and New York City officials say that work on the nearby Kensico Dam is partially to blame and the work will likely last through September.

"That is a high hazard dam in Westchester County," said Lori Severino, a spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

In an attempt to mitigate the water pressure issue, Scarsdale leaders have put restrictions on lawn watering in sections of the village.

Water pressure problems happen most often during the morning, which is the peak consumption time said James Macri, water superintendent for the Village.

Mornings are when showers compete with sprinklers, he said. Many automatic sprinklers are timed to water between 1 a.m. and 9 a.m. By the time many are showering before work, there's little water left to go around.

"There are so many people in the Village and they all want to water their lawns early in the morning," he said.

"We just can't keep up with the water usage in the morning."

Macri said areas affected most by the drop in water pressure are those at higher elevations, including residents in the Murray Hill area and along Garden Road.

"When we can't keep up with the water demand the pressure diminishes all over but people in the lower elevations don't notice because there's more pressure," he said.

Macri said that one of the town's two water pump stations is down for repairs. Even though that station was used just as an emergency backup for the past 15 years, he said that it is still part of the problem.

"The pumping capacity we have at our pump station cannot keep up with the demand," he said.

He noted that the dry weather has also added to the problem. Many automatic sprinklers have rain detectors that turn them off. Early last week, when it rained in Scarsdale, there were no water pressure problems because there weren't as many sprinklers running, he said.

He said that with sprinkler regulation, he expects the water pressure problems to drop.

"We don't think it's going to occur if they abide by these regulations because it will regulate how much water people are permitted to use," Macri said.

"It should be a big help over the next few weeks and as people adjust to it, we'll find out."

A spokeswoman for Equinox Gym in Scarsdale said that she has not seen an increase in people coming in to shower.

"People only come in here to work out," she said.

Work on the Kensico Dam has exacerbated water pressure problems in Scarsdale, officials said.

Gina D'Agrosa, Director of the County Water Agency, said that the dam had a capacity of pumping out 54 million gallons of a day, but, because of the maintenance, workers built a diversion pipe that can only push through 31 million gallons of water a day.

While the amount of water taken as a whole hasn't approached the 31 million gallon threshold, the amount of water that can be pushed through per hour has pushed the diversion pipe to capacity, D'Agrosa noted.

"During peak times, early in the morning, we come close to that capacity on an hourly basis," she asserted.

D'Agrosa added that the diversion pipe was also in use last summer, but the wetter weather kept water pressure problems at bay.

"We're not seeing the same weather pattern this year, so we're a little concerned," she said.

Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, said the city was mandated to replace water gates, pipes and power equipment in the dam and repair the structure's façade.

He added that five Westchester towns get water from the Kensico Reservoir, which is part of the New York City water system. He said that all the water from the Catskill and Delaware River watersheds filter through the Kensico Reservoir.

"The Reservoir is critical to the city's water supply," he said.

Although work on the dam doesn't have to be completed until the end of the year, officials initially hoped it would be done by the start of the summer, Sklerov said. The work is now expected to be done by September.

"Work took longer than expected," he said.