A heat wave scorching much of Kansas and Missouri is expected to continue through the week, causing one Douglas County water district to ask customers to voluntarily reduce usage.

“Our customers are using water faster than we can refill our storage tanks,” said Scott Schultz, administrator for Douglas County Rural Water District No. 4, which serves an area around Baldwin.

Those customers — about 1,000 households — are being asked to reduce consumption by not watering lawns, washing cars or refilling swimming pools, Schultz said.

Despite two days of temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees, there so far are no concerns about water usage in Lawrence, city officials said.

“We do not foresee any special problems on meeting the demands,” said Chris Stewart, assistant superintendent of utilities.

Nor are there concerns about power problems in Lawrence or anywhere in the area covered by Westar Energy, utility officials said.

But a peak usage record was possible Monday in Westar’s northern district, which includes Lawrence, said Karla Olsen, company spokeswoman. The existing record, set July 18, was for 2,521 megawatts, she said.

In Westar’s south district, which includes Wichita, an average of 2,000 megawatts a day is being used. The daily capacity for Westar’s two districts is 6,000 megawatts. The two district’s usage combined has been about 4,600 megawatts per day.

“As you can see, we’re not even close” to exhausting capacity, Olsen said.

Baldwin on Monday turned on its city power generator as a new record peak usage of 9 megawatts was set in that city, Administrator Jeff Dingman said. The city’s generator is used when necessary to supplement power brought in from outside sources. The generator was in operation from 1:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., he said.

A power outage did occur for a short period of time in north Baldwin, Dingman said. The cause of the outage wasn’t known, he said.

Lawrence residents used an average of 20 million gallons of water a day in July, city records showed. About 23 million gallons of water a day are currently being used, Stewart said. The record is 25.5 million gallons set during a heat wave in 2000.

Temperatures at Lawrence Municipal Airport reached 104 degrees both Sunday and Monday.

“It’s dangerously hot, with heat indices at 110 degrees,” 6News forecaster Ross Janssen said.

Temperatures are expected to continue to rise above 100 degrees today and Wednesday before a slight relief Thursday when the high will be around 95, Janssen said.

Out of more than 160 people seen in the emergency room at Lawrence Memorial Hospital on Sunday and Monday, only one was suffering from a heat-related problem, a spokeswoman said.

Although the hospital can’t release details about a patient, the person treated and released was relatively young, emergency room personnel said.

Customers in Rural Water District No. 4 have been asked to conserve water in previous years and have complied, Schultz said.

“I think we’re OK right now with a voluntary effort,” he said. “If it becomes critical then we will have to impose some mandatory restrictions that are enforceable.”

The district covers an area south of the Wakarusa River, north of U.S. Highway 56 and east of U.S. Highway 59 to the Johnson County line.