Halifax Water asks residents to voluntarily conserve water

Some welcome rain fell on Lake Major in Nova Scotia on Friday.

Halifax Water is asking residents on the Lake Major system to voluntarily cut back on their water usage because the lake’s level is down by approximately one metre.

Jeff Myrick is a spokesperson for Halifax water.

“It's something that we've been through now in 2016 and 2019 and something that we are working towards fixing in terms of the actual intake in the lake,” Myrick said.

The request to conserve water covers the communities of North Preston, Westphal, Cole Harbour, Dartmouth and Eastern Passage. More than 118,000 customers live in those areas.

CTV meteorologist Kalin Mitchell said the area around Lake Major is about 200 millimetres below the average rainfall and that’s a trend across the region.

“That puts us just about 60 per cent of the normal amount,” Mitchell said. “Agricultural and Agri-Food Canada actually had the Maritime region as a whole in either abnormally dry or moderate drought conditions by the end of October.”

Selby’s Bunker Cafe in Cole Harbour is in the affected area.

“We need water to make coffee so there's only so much we can do,” said owner, Jason Selby.

Selby says they already take some conservation measures.

“When we use our dishwasher, we always make sure that it's full anyway so we try to minimize the amount of wastewater and water usage,” Selby said.

Every little bit helps, but conservation efforts will likely remain until Lake Major sees more rain.

“We need all the rain we can get now to bring the water levels back up to normal,” Myrick said.

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