Updated Plans for Stage 3 Water Rationing 7/13 Ken Agee

The City announced a revision to their Stage 3 water rationing plan, to help even out the load on their water delivery systems. The previous plan had all residences and businesses watering their lawns on Saturday only. The new plan calls for watering once a week based on that neighborhood’s trash pickup day. For our West Garland Neighborhood Association (north of Forest, south of Buckingham, west of Shiloh all the way to the western City limit line), that day is TUESDAY.

These links have the official City news bulletin:

http://www.ci.garland.tx.us/news/displaynews.asp?NewsID=390&TargetID=23

http://www.ci.garland.tx.us/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=6811

To summarize:

• You can still hand-water at any time. This is also true for operating soaker hoses and drip-irrigation systems.
• Washing down the exterior of a building, driveway, etc is not permitted. Washing your car by hand currently is permitted.
• Operating lawn sprinklers (either hose-end or in-ground systems) can only be operated on the day of trash pickup, and only between the hours of 6 p.m. and 10 a.m.
• There are cases where a variance can be requested by calling 972-205-3210 and explaining your situation.

Aside from the continued drought, Zebra Mussels (an invasive species) have prevented us from using Lake Texoma as an additional source of water again this year. For years, they were able to pump water from the Lake Texoma watershed into the Trinity River watershed (which includes Lake Lavon) but in 2009, the EPA had the pumping stopped because of the Zebra Mussel issue. In response to this crisis, the North Texas Municipal Water District started building a new $300M pipeline and filtration system that will use ozone and clorine to kill the Zebra Mussel’s larvae before it arrives into the local systems. Unfortunately progress is slow, and it’s still not online yet. Latest estimates are for it to be completed sometime in the first quarter of 2014. This new hardware is expected to add 9-14% to our water bills.

On the subject of Zebra Mussels, it is more important than ever that boaters follow precautions for cleaning their boats and equipment when moving from one lake to another. That is still the main cause of the spread of these parasites.