Pflugerville residents facing new rules on restrictions, penalties

Pflugerville City Council approved amendments to the city's drought contingency plan, which are intended to increase public awareness on water use and conservation.

The changes, which were approved and became effective June 25, focus on the city's water restrictions and user violations. One amendment will base city water restrictions on measurements at lakes Travis and Buchanan as provided by the Lower Colorado River Authority. Restrictions were formerly based on aquifer levels, but the city no longer uses groundwater from wells.

"While Lake Pflugerville looks full right now, [it] receives its water from the Colorado River downstream of Lady Bird Lake," City Manager Brandon Wade said in a news release. "While we built our lake to provide a buffer in times of drought, we need to conserve the water we currently have available."

In the past, the Pflugerville Municipal Court has cited and heard cases for watering violations implemented under the drought contingency plan, but a second amendment now gives the city's Public Works Department the authority to issue citations. With the administrative change comes new rules in water violation consequences, which now accumulate for 12 months.

Other changes include enforcing annual mandatory Stage 2 water restrictions from March 1–Oct. 31, implementing once-per-week watering restrictions if the city reaches Stage 3 restrictions—considered severe drought conditions—and restricting residents to watering lawns and plants by hand once per week in Stage 4 restrictions, which would involve drought conditions more severe than the state's worst drought on record.

As of July 22, the LCRA lakes stood at 733,010 acre-feet, or at 36 percent full. While the city is currently in Stage 2 restrictions, Stage 3 water restrictions will be imposed if the lakes drop below 700,000 acre-feet, a threshold LCRA projects the lakes might dip below this summer.

To help conserve water, the city itself has set its sprinklers to water only at designated times.

"We're not doing anything different from what we've asked the general public to do," Pflugerville Water Conservation Manager Darrell Winslett said.

Winslett advises residential landscape watering be done during cooler times of the day. While evening restrictions allow watering as early as 7 p.m., the temperature at that time could still be too hot, he said.

The city also has programs in place to help promote water reuse, including offering rainwater collection barrels. Currently the city also reuses processed water from its wastewater treatment plant at the sports fields in Travis County's Northeast Metropolitan Park, and Pflugerville's Public Works Department is looking for other places where reused water could be utilized.

"We're doing a reuse master plan to see where else we can feasibly get that reused water to," Pflugerville Public Works Director James Wills said. "That will help conserve water ... if we can irrigate with that [water]."