We still need to conserve water this summer

Stage 2 of the City of Corinth drought contingency plan has ended: City of Corinth water utility customers are no longer under a mandatory requirement to water no more than twice a week on specific days. At the May 17, 2012 council session City Manager Jim Berzina announced that the City would moving off of stage 2 water restrictions citing, among other reasons, that the City of Dallas had made changes in their water conservation plans, and that the reservoirs are currently at normal, or 'full', level.
The Corinth City Council adopted a drought contingency plan some time ago. This plan empowers the city manager to determine when the city should move to enforce the different stages of the plan. No further council action is required for the city manager to put the city on any stage of the plan. Details can be found in the enacting ordinance and attached contingency plan . The drought contingency plan is a requirement placed on the city by the State of Texas and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

Basically there are four stages to the plan. The first stage describes conservation activities that are voluntary. The second through fourth stages describes mandatory conservation measures. Each of the second through fourth stages is progressively more restrictive on the use of water. The city manager makes the determination to set the city on any given stage of the plan. Typically each stage has four or more criteria that are the basis for activating the stage. Meeting any one of the criteria is a valid basis for the city manager to declare the City of Corinth to operate under the restrictions for reducing water demand.

Most of the water use restrictions revolve around typical outdoor water usage, such as landscape watering, car washing, filling or refilling pools, etc. Most families use around 50-75 gallons of water per day per person for indoor uses, such as drinking, washing clothes and dishes, showering, and use of toilets. Peak usage last year in august reached 400 gallons per person per day, most of which was used for landscape watering. During the summer we use nearly 8 times as much water outside to try and keep lawns green as we do for necessary indoor usage.

The Dallas - Ft Worth - Denton area, and more generally the North Texas Region, continue to experience significant population growth. While overall water supplies and water delivery systems are generally adequate to support the current population for necessary indoor water usage, the prodigious usage for landscape and yard watering from last August (2011) is unsupportable. It is unsupportable at current population levels, and will only get worse with continued population growth in the region. It is essential that we citizens adopt best practices in our yards and gardens on a year round basis to avoid onerous restrictive regulations being enacted.

Keep in mind that the City of Dallas made the twice a week outdoor watering schedule for their customers permanent back in April (2012). Previously, Dallas had this mandatory schedule for outdoor watering only as part of their drought contingency plan. In April 2012 Dallas passed an ordinance that made the twice a week watering schedule standard procedure. Frisco and Plano are still on stage 3 water restrictions (and have been continuously since last summer) due to the loss of water supply from Lake Texoma due to the Zebra Mussel infestation there.

As population increases and the current drought continues or intensifies, expect more cities to enact more stringent outdoor watering regulations.

This is the first in a series of several discussions on water conservation and the drought in the North Texas Region.