Stage Two Water Restrictions Go Into Effect Today

The new AISD Diane Gorzycki Middle School in southwest Austin will begin the school year on a green note. By later this week, Austin lawns might be a little brown. Falling lake levels have prompted the LCRA to demand additional water conservation steps from their wholesale customers. Beginning today, August 24th, and until further notice, Austin will begin enforcing stage two water conservation regulations.

Homeowners using city water will be restricted to automatic or hose-end sprinkler watering once a week (odd addresses on Saturday, even on Sunday). The allowable times are slightly different between automatic and manual sprinklers, so please see the full details in the city code regulations (Section 6-4). Watering between 10:00 a.m. and 7 p.m. any day or not on your designated water day could cost up to $500 per incident. Tickets, not warnings, will be issued to the party responsible for the water bill.

Ten to fifteen temporary workers will patrol for violations. A water department staffer must write any ticket and he or she must witness the illegal watering and obtain a signature. When asked how the amount of the fine would be determined (statue says "up to $500"), Austin Water Utility spokesperson Jill Mayfield responded: "The fines can range up to $500 for each instance."

To be fair to AISD, heavy watering for new grass is often necessary. The on-site construction supervisor at the school claimed that the water came from retention ponds (which appeared empty at the time). Yet scraping away the hardy little blue stem, red grama and muhly grasses to add bermuda seems like a practice Austin may no longer be able to afford. Bermuda needs between two inches a month (to survive) to twice that (or more) to thrive. With about 12 inches of rain so far this year, surviving means another 325,851 gallons of water per acre. The math for Zilker Park’s 46 acres (which uses Tifway 419 bermuda) yielded numbers between 14M and 74M gallons for a year like 2009. PARD spokesperson Victor Ovalle estimated that the annual water usage will be around 30M gallons per year for Zilker's Great Lawn. This number could vary depending on soil depth, temperatures and foot traffic. The Zilker water comes from a direct tap of Lady Bird Lake and counts toward the city's maximum annual draw of 325,000 acre-feet per year.

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By Thinman in News on August 24, 2009 11:07 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Marion Cleary

@seth

agreed

Jake

325,000 acre-feet is just under 106 billion gallons.

Thinman: Thanks for the article. The restriction on restaurants serving unrequested water you seem to question in your comment, though, makes sense to me. That "eventually" between when it's poured down the drain and when it makes it back to the Colorado could be a significant delay, passing through the wastewater system, and we're having a drought right now (this afternoon's rain excepted). We're much better off not taking that water out of the reservoir in the first place. Recycling is more efficient than dumping, but conservation is more efficient than recycling.

Thinman

Seth,

Thanks. You are correct.

There are also restrictions on car washing, differences in times between automatic and hose end sprinklers, and water at restaurants that I find somewhat arbitrary. If someone leaves a full cup of water at a restaurant, it just gets poured down the drain and eventually goes back into the Colorado river. How is that saving water? The point seems to be more water awareness than water saving.

thinman