The drought eased. Why did Rockport ban outdoor watering?

Rockport's total ban on outdoor water use took effect Sept. 18, eight days after the state eased the drought rating for the region that includes Cape Ann. Some residents have asked why the town went the other way.

The short answer is that the two decisions measure different things. The state rates the weather and water across a whole region. Rockport's ban is about how much water is left in its own reservoirs, and those were lower than a year ago.

The short version

• The state's latest declaration, Sept. 10, puts the Northeast region at Level 1, a mild drought, down from Level 3, critical, this summer. The region covers all of Essex, Middlesex and Suffolk counties.
• Rockport's two reservoirs were 58.6% full in the week of Sept. 20 to 26, compared with 67.3% the same week last year. Carlson's Quarry alone held about 13.1 million gallons less than a year earlier.
• Those percentages overstate the good water left. A 2008 town study says water quality in Carlson's Quarry declines once it drops below the 70 foot mark. By our estimate from town figures, only about 6.5 million gallons remain above that line.
• Rain over the past year near Rockport ran about 63% of normal. The winter and spring months that usually refill reservoirs were the driest, at about 37% of normal.
• Rules differ because each water system is different. Essex runs on wells, Manchester on a pond and wells, and Gloucester on six reservoirs. Towns can be stricter than the state requires.
• The town has not published the reservoir level that would end the ban. Its water committee meets Wednesday and the state drought task force meets Thursday. We will update this story with the results.

Two measures, two different questions

When the state declares a drought level, it is answering a regional question: how dry has it been across a large area over several months? A state task force looks at rainfall, streams, groundwater and other measures for each of eight regions. Its Sept. 10 declaration moved the Northeast region to Level 1 after a wet July, saying rainfall from June through August was near or above normal across much of the state. It also said "longer-term rainfall deficits remain."

The state does not rate individual water systems. Its declaration tells residents to "check with their local water systems in case more stringent water restrictions are in place," because "many systems may have other more severe local conditions."

Rockport's ban answers a local question: how much water is in Cape Pond and Carlson's Quarry, and how fast is it going down? In its notice, the Department of Public Works said the ban was needed "to proactively protect the Carlson Quarry and Flat Ledge Quarry Watersheds," because "both quarries are at levels lower than expected."

Rockport is not the only place where the two measures split. In Cambridge, also in the Northeast region, the water department said in a Sept. 22 notice that its main reservoir, Hobbs Brook, "remains well below normal levels" even after the downgrade. Cambridge Day reported the reservoir was at about 20% of capacity.

Is Rockport worse off?

Compared with itself a year ago, yes. The town's weekly table for Sept. 20 to 26 shows the whole system at 58.6% of its 195 million gallon capacity, down from 67.3% the same week in 2025. At the town's planning figure of 680,000 gallons a day, that is about 168 days of storage, compared with about 193 days a year ago.

Almost all of the drop is at Carlson's Quarry, the deep former granite quarry off Quarry Road that feeds the town's newer treatment plant. It was 57.1% full, down from 72.5% a year earlier, a loss of about 13.1 million gallons. Cape Pond, the larger reservoir off Main Street, was 59.8% full, down from 63.2%. Flat Ledge Quarry, which the DPW named in its notice, is pumped into Carlson's Quarry to top it up.

What does 57% full really mean?

Less than it sounds, and the town's own records show why.

The town reports Carlson's Quarry as a share of 85 million gallons. A 2008 water supply study prepared for the town's Watershed Protection Committee says the quarry's top 90 feet is "technically available for use," but "when the water level drops to 70 feet, the aesthetic quality of the water decreases." The water between those two levels, the study says, is 43 million gallons.

If the town's 85 million gallons counts the full 90 feet, about 42 million gallons sit below the 70 foot mark. The Sept. 20 to 26 reading of about 48.5 million gallons would then leave roughly 6.5 million gallons above it, about 15% of the quarry's best water. That is our estimate from the town's numbers, not a town figure. The DPW does not publish the quarry's water level in feet or how it turns that level into gallons, so we cannot check it. The same caution applies to the town's "days of storage" count, which treats every gallon in both reservoirs as usable.

Lower water is not unusable. The study says its quality declines, which makes it harder to treat, and Flat Ledge Quarry can be pumped in to top Carlson's Quarry up. Cape Pond, which the same study puts at about 110 million gallons of usable storage, held about 65.8 million gallons.

Compared with its neighbors, there is no way to tell. Rockport is the only Cape Ann system that posts its reservoir levels online. Gloucester, Manchester and Ipswich do not post theirs, and Essex draws only from wells.

The record has gaps. The town replaces its table every week and keeps no archive online, so the readings below are every one we could find, including two copies saved by the Internet Archive. They show the system at 86.9% in September 2023, a wet year, and as low as 56.5% in December 2024, after the drought that began in August 2024.

Are neighboring towns restricting water?

Some are, and the rules range from nothing to everything. Gloucester allows hand watering only, after 5 p.m. and before 9 a.m. Essex asks residents to conserve but says plainly its request "is not a water ban." Manchester-by-the-Sea's Select Board voted Sept. 21 to lift its ban. Ipswich lifted its outdoor ban Aug. 10 and kept hand watering from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Switch the map below between the state's layer and the local one. On the state layer every town is the same color. On the local layer, they are not.

Why do the rules differ?

Three things explain most of it.

The state sets a floor, not a ceiling. Under state water rules changed in 2023, many water systems must limit nonessential outdoor watering whenever the state declares a drought in their region. At Level 1, the usual rule is outdoor watering no more than one day a week, before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m. Cambridge follows that rule now. The exact conditions depend on each system's state registration or permit, and the state's guidance says that when a system holds a permit with its own seasonal limits, "the permit is controlling." Towns can always go further. Rockport's bylaw lets its Public Works Commissioners declare "a state of water supply conservation" when "a shortage of water exists," including a full outdoor watering ban.

Where the water comes from. Wells draw on groundwater, which responds to months of rain and snow. Reservoirs store water and are drawn down every day. Rockport depends on two reservoirs, topped up by Flat Ledge Quarry, the Mill Brook wellfield and a deep bedrock well, according to state records. Essex relies on three wells. Ipswich shows how differently this can play out: in May it banned outdoor watering because of the state declaration while saying its reservoirs were full, then lifted the ban in August.

How close a system runs to its limits. Rockport draws close to what the state allows it to take. In 2023 the town drew 248 million gallons, about 94% of its state limit of 262.8 million gallons a year, according to slides its consultant, Tetra Tech, presented to the Public Works Commissioners in April 2024. It has been above 90% of the limit every year since 2020. The same slides show that 28% of the water the town produced in 2023 was not accounted for by meters or estimated town use, which can include leaks and meter error. Rockport's population roughly doubles in summer, to about 10,000 from about 5,000 in winter, according to the state's water system list.

Did recent rain help?

Not enough yet to show up in the numbers, and the latest town reading predates the storm.

The nor'easter that lingered from Sept. 25 to 29 dropped much more rain south of Boston than on Cape Ann. The volunteer rain gauge about a mile east of Rockport center recorded 1.21 inches in its reports for those days, and 3.24 inches for September as a whole. The town's newest reservoir table covers Sept. 20 to 26, before most of that rain fell. The next one should show whether it raised the reservoirs.

The bigger problem is the past year. At Beverly Municipal Airport, the closest weather station with a long record, rain over the 12 months through September totaled about 63% of normal. July and September were wetter than normal. But from November through April, when reservoirs usually refill, Beverly got about 37% of its normal rain and snow. State officials have made the same point. Groundwater "recovers more slowly than rainfall," Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper said in August, the Boston Globe reported.

What would end the ban?

The town has not said. Its notice says only that it "will continue to monitor reservoir levels and will adjust these restrictions if conditions improve." Neither the notice nor the DPW's drought page names a reservoir level, a date or a rainfall amount that would ease the rules.

Three things are worth watching:

• The weekly reservoir table. The town posts it on its water system page. A steady rise at Carlson's Quarry is the clearest sign of recovery.
• The town's Ad Hoc Water Committee. It meets on Zoom Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 2 p.m. The meeting notice has the link.
• The state's next declaration. The drought task force meets Thursday, Oct. 8, at 9:30 a.m. If the Northeast region returns to normal, the state's own minimum rules would no longer apply, but Rockport's ban is a local decision and could stay.
• Fall and winter rain. Rockport has had restrictions of some kind for much of the past two years. The town's table listed restrictions in December 2024, September 2025 and December 2025, and in March 2025 the town barred all outdoor watering during that year's critical drought.

How much can conservation accomplish?

It buys time. It cannot make it rain. The town's "days of storage" figure is simple arithmetic: water in storage divided by daily use. At today's level, each 10% cut in daily use adds about three weeks or more. The slider below does the same math.

In Manchester this summer, the board's July 20 minutes credit that town's outdoor ban with cutting daily demand from roughly 900,000 gallons to more than 1 million a day down to 500,000 to 600,000 gallons. Manchester is smaller and its system is different, so that is a reference point, not a forecast for Rockport. Rockport does not publish how much of its water goes outdoors.

What we still want to know

• What reservoir level, or other condition, would ease or end the ban?
• What is the water level in Carlson's Quarry in feet, how does the town convert it to gallons, and how much of the 85 million gallons is above the level where water quality declines?
• What rule was in place before Sept. 18?
• How much water is the town producing each day, and how much of it goes outdoors in summer?
• Did the late September rain raise Carlson's Quarry or Cape Pond?
• What is the town doing about the water it cannot account for?

If you work with Rockport's water system or have records that answer these questions, write to [email protected].

How we did this

Cape Ann Current compared the state's drought declarations with Rockport's weekly reservoir table, two archived copies of that table, the town's ban notice and bylaw, its consultant's 2024 water use slides, state water system records, NOAA rainfall data and the posted rules of five other water systems. Each graphic has an "About this comparison" note with its date, source, unit, why we chose the comparison and what data is missing. This story was produced with the help of AI tools and checked against the documents listed below. If you see an error, tell us at [email protected].

Earlier coverage: Cape Ann water rules: Rockport bans outdoor use, Gloucester limits it, Manchester lifts its ban (Sept. 30), the rules town by town; Manchester lifts its outdoor watering ban as drought eases to Level 1 (Sept. 30), the Select Board vote; Cape Ann mostly spared as nor'easter brings 61 mph gust and needed rain (Sept. 30), the storm; weather and tides (Oct. 2), the latest drought status.