DELPHOS, Ohio (WLIO) - The drought from the summer and fall months in 2025 continues across west-central and northwest Ohio, with no major improvement in sight. As a result, the city of Delphos is asking residents to begin conserving water under Phase 1 protocols.
The Delphos-Gillmor Reservoir, the city’s primary water source, has dropped to 50% of its normal capacity. At full capacity, the reservoir typically holds 438 million gallons of water.
To help prolong the water supply, city officials are urging residents to conserve water by avoiding car washing, taking shorter showers, fixing water leaks immediately, not letting taps run continuously, and only washing dishes and clothing when machines are full.
City officials emphasized that while there is no water emergency at this time, further deterioration of the water supply could lead to the implementation of Phase 2 restrictions.
"I want to stress very first and foremost that this is not an emergency, yet. We are trying to put in protocols now to help us conserve and stretch our water supply so that we can make it to a point where we do get precipitation, we go back to a more normal weather pattern. Phase 2: we're still firming up our plan, going through our own contingency plans, going to check with our attorney, looking at the relevant ORC and just all those things that lead into that decision and what that actually looks like. Our goal, of course, is to not get there. We're hoping that this, you know, by conserving water, we allow ourselves enough time to not actually reach that point," says Adam Haunhorst, Safety Service Director, City of Delphos.
Despite several inches of snow on the ground, Haunhorst said the snowfall is deceptive, noting that its moisture content is nowhere near enough to erase the drought.
"A cubic yard of snow is about 25 gallons of water, so a full dump truck yields you something like 250 gallons of water. As a city, we use about a million a day. While it's substantial water on the ground, it's not as much as it seems," Haunhorst adds.
According to the United States Drought Monitor, Delphos is currently classified under “extreme drought,” the second-highest category, behind only “exceptional drought.”
