Julian Water District Urges Conservation

There may be gold in them thar Julian hills, but there isn’t much water--in the hills or anywhere else.

About 75 residents and merchants attended an emergency meeting Wednesday called by the Julian Community Service District to discuss a severe water shortage plaguing the community. Officials of the water district, which supplies downtown Julian, urged strong conservation measures, particularly by merchants.

District officials discussed plans to drill a new well as soon as possible and to bring in portable toilets to be used instead of the public restrooms with flush toilets.

Although the mountain community has experienced water shortages in past years, the lack of adequate rainfall for the third consecutive season has heightened the problem.

“The severity of the problem is new, but we’ve been made aware of the necessity of water conservation,” said Hank Garfield, managing editor of the Julian News. “It’s new to actually run out of water. There are some residential users who ran out of water Wednesday.”

However, Garfield said Julian’s business people have been practicing conservation measures for more than a year now. They have stopped hosing down the sidewalks in front of their businesses, and restaurant employees serve water only on request, he said.

Despite the the water district’s actions, many hotel and restaurant workers have not been asked to drastically alter their consumption.

“We’re using less water where we can, but at this point we haven’t cut back,” said Richard Scalzo, manager of the Julian Cafe. “The water department notified us that there was a problem with the water being low, and we’re trying to conserve.”