The 1.6 million customers of the North Texas Municipal Water District will be asked to limit sprinkler use to once every two weeks beginning Nov. 1 as lawns grow dormant even as the district’s need to save water grows from the ongoing Texas drought.
The district’s board of directors approved the new limits Thursday afternoon, an adjustment called for under the ongoing Stage 3 water restrictions in the NTMWD’s water conservation and drought plan.
NTMWD customers followed the same “once-every-two-weeks as needed” restrictions through much of the summer, when demand is at its highest. In some cities, summer water use was down 20 to 30 percent, officials said.
“Our cities and customers did a tremendous job reducing landscape watering during the hot summer months,” said Tom Kula, the water district’s executive director. “Now, as we move into the cooler fall and winter months, lawns and other landscaping require less water.”
But drought remains a concern.
The National Weather Service dates the current drought to Oct. 1, 2010. Occasional rains have eased the impact on agriculture but haven’t provided nearly enough runoff to fill area lakes. In its latest update, the weather service office in Fort Worth said the Dallas-Fort Worth area and counties to the west deal with some of the worst drought conditions in the state.
A swath of “exceptional drought,” the most severe category, stretches from just west of Dallas to beyond Breckenridge in Stephens County and Graham in Young County. Areas of extreme drought cover much of Collin and Denton counties, and every corner of the D-FW area deals with at least severe drought, according to the latest Drought Monitor report, released Thursday.
The NTMWD’s area north and east of Dallas has been particularly hard hit. Water levels remain very low for the district’s major reservoirs — 12.53 feet below conservation level at Lavon, 11.59 feet low at Jim Chapman and 11.3 feet low at Tawakoni. Both Lavon and Chapman are below 50 percent of capacity.
Water levels are higher at Lake Texoma, which supplies about 25 percent of the district’s water. But water from Texoma is salty enough that it must be mixed with “sweeter” water from other lakes at a 4:1 ratio. If levels fall much lower at Lavon and Chapman, it would limit how much water is available to make the Texoma water palatable.
The best way to limit water usage, Kula said, is to turn off sprinkler systems and operate them only on manual settings. Several websites, including Texas A&M Agrilife Extension’s WaterMyYard.org,, provide detailed information on how much water the grass and landscaping need.
“Water lawns only if needed to supplement natural rainfall,” Kula said.
The water restrictions will remain in place through March 31, the district said.
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