Water rationing likely to increase this summer

The U.S. Drought Monitor maps are updated every Thursday. It's a quick way to get a visual read on the spread of drought conditions.

You can’t always blame Mother Nature if your community suffers water restrictions this summer. Aging water lines in many of our older cities may not be able to handle the added demand for water for landscape irrigation this summer.

This became clear to residents of Howard County and portions of Anne Arundel County in Maryland this spring. Government officials there are replacing a deteriorating 54-inch water main. Anticipating higher summer demand than their system can meet, they established mandatory “odd/even” water restrictions for the summer. Homes with even-numbered addresses will be allowed to use water for outdoor purposes on even-numbered calendar days and odd-numbered houses on the other days.

In related news, the cities of McKinney, Plano and Richardson, Texas, are the first this season to restrict outdoor water use, responding to pleas for conservation from the North Texas Municipal Water District. Fort Worth, Dallas and some of the other 60 cities in the water district are likely to follow suit in June, according to press reports there. The reason is twofold: strong growth/development and low lake levels.

Meanwhile the Raleigh, NC, city council is considering year-round outdoor water restrictions by limiting irrigation to three days a week. There was some discussion at a recent council meeting about implementing a new pricing structure, charging more as more water is used, to encourage conservation.

Even areas that get plentiful amounts of rain are beginning to ration water for landscape use. Many areas of Florida, from Melbourne on the Atlantic Coast to Cape Coral and the Tampa/St. Petersburg metropolitan area on the Gulf Coast, are under water restrictions of one form or another.

While it’s impossible to predict the next drought and its severity for any particular area, a safe bet is that cities across the nation will become much more concerned about the quantity and quality of their fresh water supplies. Couple this with growing demand for fresh water caused by population growth and development and aging water delivery systems, and the recipe for an ever-growing number of areas rationing water for landscape care is a certainty.