From creek to cup: Auburn finds new water source after dealing with drought restrictions

On a beautiful spring morning in Auburn, alongside muddy Longs Creek on the north side of town, Water Manager Alan Slater points to a flask containing a water sample.

“You can see how all those particles, those are what clumped together and then settled out. And we're removing that from the water,” he said.

Slater points to a rapid sand filter – a tractor trailer-sized filtration system that turns the muddy creek water into something clean enough to be piped to the community’s water treatment plant.

“That's the WesTech rapid sand filter. And you see the big hose here that's kind of got a little drip of water that's coming from a pump out of the creek. So we're pumping out of the creek through that at a rate of 400 gallons a minute," he said. "And it goes through that rapid sand filter, through flocculation and coagulation, sedimentation, and then out the back end is our finished water."

Pulling and filtering water from the creek is a new way to access more water for Auburn, a city of about 3,500, found 70 miles southeast of Lincoln. Auburn previously got its water from 10 wells connected to its water treatment plant. But five years of drought following the flood year of 2019 convinced officials they had to make a change.

“When you tell your community that, ‘Hey, we're in a water crisis and we're in a stage three water watch, and you can't water your yard, you can't water your garden, and no washing of your cars, the only thing is just essential uses,’ it brings hardship and very much so, I mean, you got people that, especially in garden season, they want to grow a garden,” Slater explained.

So, Slater said, Auburn started looking around the surrounding Nemaha County area for a place to drill another well.

“We weren't able to really get enough water feasible for a well to put millions of dollars, or a million dollars into a well and only get 60 gallons a minute. And so this source of water here is a creek that's provided by spring water called Longs Creek, and we can get probably 1,000 gallons a minute or more. I mean, it flows more than that, but during dry times, it was still 450 gallons a minute.”

So far, Slater estimated the project has cost about $800,000, paid for by an increase of about $10 a month on residents’ water bills. He said Auburn’s ability to tap a nearby stream for that amount is unusual, because electricity and a pipeline to the treatment plant were already in place for a nearby industrial park.

But the need is far from unusual, said Brian Gongol, chair of the Nebraska section of the American Water Works Association.

“A lot of communities are in the situation of looking to diversify their sources for a variety of reasons, whether it's that they're dealing with increasing demand or they're dealing with unreliable water supplies because of things like drought, or whether it's because they're dealing with issues like emerging contaminants,” Gongol said.

And while Auburn’s effort to diversify its supply is a relatively small project, Gongol said larger communities are doing similar things.

“It's really representative of the same kind of thing that happens in a lot of communities. Omaha has multiple different sources that they've turned to in order to provide an ongoing supply. Lincoln is going through their project right now – they're calling it Water 2.0 – where they're working on a big, long-term project to draw water from far away in order to supply a growing metropolitan area. Those aren't the only cases, but they are two very high-profile ones,” he said.

Omaha gets water from the Missouri and Platte rivers and from wells; Lincoln gets water from wells under the Platte and is building a pipeline to bring water from the Missouri. All told, 558 public water systems in the state use groundwater and 25 use surface water, with 13 using both, according to the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy, and Environment.

Back on top of the water filtration unit at Long Creek, Slater gestures to a series of chambers where the muddy creek water is passed through sand and treated with chemicals to make the contaminants stick together and be separated so clean water comes out the end.

“This is the finished water. You can see how clear it is right there. That's what we're after, is that clear water,” he said.

That’s what a lot of communities are after. The Nebraska Department of Water, Environment and Energy says drought restrictions are determined locally, and the state doesn’t track how many communities have water restrictions in place. Whatever it is, that number could rise as the latest drought tightens its grip on the state. But Gongol said he thinks water officials will be ready.

“This is not the first time we've encountered drought situations, and it won't be the last, either. They work together collaboratively to make something good happen for the community, to give them a second source of water that is something that will be sustainable,” Gongol said.

Thirsty Nebraskans can hope that proves true.