The city will decide whether to extend the conservation period early next week.
This comes after production from the city’s water treatment plants has exceeded 90% of the system’s capacity multiple times over the past two weeks. Restricting the use of water for lawn and landscape irrigation, city officials said in a July 14 news release, is critical to keeping water safe and to avoid boil-water notices.
“We need every one of our water customers to immediately stop outdoor watering, at least through [July 17],” Georgetown Mayor Josh Schroeder said in the release. “Conserving water this weekend is critical to giving our systems enough time to recover, so we can lift these temporary restrictions, but we won’t know for sure until [July 17].”
In addition to Georgetown water customers turning off all irrigation systems immediately, city officials are contacting developers, homeowners associations and high water users directly to inform them of the temporary restrictions. While Georgetown’s splash pads and irrigation systems will be turned off, city-maintained pools will remain open.
Meanwhile, the city of Round Rock has asked water customers west of I-35 to voluntarily decrease their use of water through July 18, and the city of Leander is limiting outdoor watering to handheld only.
“While irrigation is the bulk of the issue, we also have not been receiving the full, contracted amount of treated water from the city of Leander,” Georgetown City Manager David Morgan said. “Between conservation and some additional capacity coming online this weekend, we are hopeful we will not have to extend Stage 4 restrictions beyond [July 17].”
Single-family households who violate Stage 3 of the DCP could be fined $150-$300 for the first incident with the penalty increasing for each subsequent violation. The citywide mandate is part of increasing efforts from officials to conserve water.
Updates to the drought contingency plan stages will be posted on social media pages. For more information, visit https://water.georgetown.org.
