As Connecticut approaches its fourth month under a drought advisory, officials are reviewing potential tweaks to the state’s 13-year-old drought preparedness plan.
The update work began before the state issued a drought advisory on June 27, and last month asking residents and businesses to voluntarily reduce water consumption by 10 percent.
Some of the biggest proposed changes in the draft plan include:
- Allowing state officials to issue drought declarations for specific regions of the state;
- A new cautionary drought stage called “heightened awareness” would warn public officials of worsening conditions pointing to a potential drought;
- Required responses from various entities and agencies according to specific drought stages — ranging from heightened awareness to “extreme drought” — would be streamlined and revised.
A PDF of the full draft plan can be viewed here.
The Connecticut State Water Planning Council last week established a docket within the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) to gather and organize comments on the draft update prepared by an internal work group within the WPC, which has members from the Department of Public Health, Office of Policy and Management, Department of Energy & Environmental Protection and PURA.
