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NTMWD to consider scaling back water restrictions
Kelsey Kruzich / Staff photo -- The North Texas Municipal Water district will decide this afternoon whether or not it wants to reduce water restrictions from no more than twice a month to once a week. Lake Lavon, pictured here, is currently a foot above conservation level. As recently as November the reservoir was only at 48 percent capacity.
By Conner Hammett, chammett@starlocalnews.com
Water customers in Collin County and other areas of North Texas could see their water-use restrictions loosened after the North Texas Municipal Water District board of directors takes the issue to a vote tomorrow.
At the special-called meeting, set for 4 p.m., NTMWD staff members will recommend the board scale back Stage 3 Enhanced restrictions, which limit watering to twice a month, to standard Stage 3 restrictions, which limit watering to once a week.
The announcement was made by press release Tuesday afternoon. The day before, city managers for Richardson, Frisco, Plano, Allen and McKinney met with NTMWD Director Jim Parks to tell him they intended to lessen the restrictions on their own on or around Sunday.
Having just experienced the hottest and driest Texas summer on record and a winter rainfall that fell short of normal patterns by half, the picture was grim for the region. But the outlook began to change when experts began to predict the La Nina weather phenomenon responsible for the dry conditions would dissipate in early 2012.
Since December, however, a series of rainstorms has dumped 20 inches of rain at Lake Lavon, the district's primary water source, and 22 inches on Lake Jim Chapman, said NTMWD Spokesperson Denise Hickey at the Texas AgriLife Extension Service's Earth-Kind Drought Management Leadership Conference Tuesday morning.
Now at an elevation of 493 feet, Lavon is not only at full capacity but one foot above the conservation pool. During its lowest point in November, the reservoir was at only 479 feet, or 48 percent capacity, according to the Texas Water Development Board.
Even with the good news, the district still must deal with the fact that Lake Texoma is still offline due to the presence of invasive zebra mussels -- a problem the district is all too aware of, Hickey told attendees of the conference.
"While we've had some good rain, we are not out of the woods," she said. "We need to remind our consumers that we still [don't] have 28 percent of our supply."
The district still has several projects in the works to restore access to Texoma's water resources, including a $270 million pipeline that would take water directly from Texoma to the district's Wylie pump station, a project that is in development and set for a fall 2013 completion date.
Until then, however, residents will have to keep tabs on their usage, Hickey said.
"We will remain in some stage of our drought plan, our emergency plan, until we can get Texoma back online," she said.
In the meantime, the district is ramping up its education efforts by teaming with landscapers and educational organizations such as Texas AgriLife to build a campaign for conservation that will change the way people think about water use in the county.
Several representatives from the landscaping industry were present at the conference to discuss their own efforts to educate the public. Mike Sutterer, vice president of marketing for Scotts Miracle-Gro, spoke on behalf of the Texas Water Smart Coalition, a group of landscapers spurned by the December Stage 4 scare to teach people how they can maintain their landscaping using less water.
Speaking at the conference, Collin County Judge Keith Self said access to water is vitally important to the region if it wishes to continue its unprecedented rate of growth.
"Most of you are going to talk about conservation matters, and that is wonderful. We need to do that," he said. "But we also need to face the facts that people are going to continue to move here to Collin County and North Texas, and when they move here we're going to have a supply of water or they're going to stop coming."
Meanwhile, some nearby residents have complained that the Army Corps of Engineers' plans to release water from Lake Texoma are irresponsible given the severity of the recent drought. Hickey explained that releasing water is necessary for flood control purposes.
"Lavon was constructed for flood control, first and foremost," she said. "[Releasing the water] is to protect the homes, the lives, the farms, the businesses from flooding."
The board meeting will be held at the district's treatment center at 505 E. Brown St. in Wylie. For information, visit www.ntmwd.org.
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