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Beginning Tuesday, Aug. 28, lawns and
shrubs will get drier as the City of
Raleigh tries to maintain the area’s
water supply in Falls Lake.
The city – which owns the
water systems in Wake Forest, Rolesville,
Garner, Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon
– will initiate the tighter Stage 1
water conservation rules because the
level of Falls Lake has fallen by more
than 4 feet below its normal level of
251.5 feet and the water supply
remaining was 62 percent Wednesday.
Forecasts show little hope of
badly-needed rain in the near future. A
persistent high pressure system
continues to hover over the area,
contributing to extremely high
temperatures and blocking any tropical
systems.
Also, even though there has
been mandatory conservation since this
spring, with lawn irrigation limited to
three days a week, the 400,000 users in
the Raleigh system have been using
record amounts of water, about 77
million gallons a day.
Beginning Tuesday, outdoor
watering by irrigation systems will be
limited to one day a week within
specified hours and people may only wash
their cars at home on Saturdays and
Sundays.
Specifically:
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Irrigation systems can be used
between midnight and 10 a.m. on
Tuesday for odd-numbered addresses
or Wednesday for even-numbered
addresses.
-
Hoses connected to sprinklers can be
used from 6 to 10 a.m. and from 6 to
10 p.m. again on Tuesday for
odd-numbered addresses and Wednesday
for even-numbered addresses.
-
Watering by hand with a hose can be
done the same days as sprinklers and
on Saturday for odd-numbered
addresses and Sunday for
even-numbered addresses.
-
Vehicles can be washed only on
Saturdays and Sundays, but
commercial car washes may operate
seven days a week.
The fines for violating the
new rules are stiff: $200 for the first
violation, $1,000 for the second and
cut-off of water service for the third.
The city and the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers have not yet released
the water from Beaverdam, an impoundment
high up Falls Lake. Beaverdam is at
248.9 feet above mean sea level,
dwindling but still higher than Falls,
which was at 247.29 feet, unofficially,
early Wednesday.
The state has banned all
outdoor burning and applies to all
existing burn permits. Aside from a few
counties on the coast that are rated as
abnormally dry, the rest of the state is
in drought: extreme drought in the
western mountains, severe across the
broad middle of the state including Wake
County, and moderate at the borders and
near the coast.
We need 15 to 25 inches of
rain before December to begin recovering
from the drought, but meteorologists say
the chances of that are one in six. |
