Westminster?s building moratorium is still in effect after city and state officials met Monday to work out plans to eliminate the water deficit the county seat would face in a drought.
“I personally wanted to reach a consensus on a possible plan for limited growth and not just zero growth, but we didn?t get that far,” said Westminster Council Member Robert Wack.
Monday?s meeting was the first between city officials and representatives from the Maryland Department of the Environment after the state agency sent a letter to the city last month telling Westminster to halt growth until city officials can secure additional water sources that would satisfy new state guidelines requiring enough water in the event of a record drought.
Mayor Thomas Ferguson said the city and MDE agreed Monday to finalize specifics of plans for the city to secure new sources of water, including a proposed $5 million emergency pipeline from Medford quarry off Route 31 to the city?s reservoir.
City and state planners want to meet again next week.
Jeff Glass, the city?s public works director, asked the state to consider allowing permits for building the pipeline in phases instead of all at once.
Westminster?s water system, which serves 30,000 residents, “is not only inadequate to meet the existing demand during a record drought year but also inadequate during less substantial droughts,” Robert Summers, director of MDE?s Water Management Administration, wrote in a Sept. 21 letter to Ferguson.
Maryland?s record drought occurred from 1964-66, butWestminster attracted the state?s attention more recently in 2002, when the city had to spend $120,000 to truck in water continuously on five or six trucks for several weeks, according to Carroll County?s Hazard Mitigation Plan.
