Rockwall Mayor’s Message: water conservation

I’m sure you are just as thrilled as I was with the recent rainfall. While it certainly helped ease our drought situation, we are still in a drought. Please continue to conserve every drop you can and abide by our conservations efforts.

We dodged a bullet when our water supplier – the North Texas Municipal Water District – recently dropped plans to initiate the Stage 4 drought plan scheduled for implementation on April 1. Those stringent restrictions forbid us to use sprinklers on lawns or landscaping and allowed us to only water foundations and trees by using hoses or drip irrigation.

Stage 4 was cancelled thanks to better long-range forecasts; slightly more water in Lake Lavon; and plans to purchase 60 million gallons of water a day from the City of Dallas. What is so important to me is that all of us have done our part along with other cities in restricting water usage!

Of course, we’re not out of the woods yet – Stage 4 could be implemented in June or August but maybe not at all.

We can do our part by continuing to follow the Stage 3 drought restrictions that are still in effect. They allow us to water every other Saturday based on our addresses. Check the city’s web site for that calendar.

There are several reasons for the restrictions:

• Record heat and the record drought have drained local lakes. Texas recorded its driest 12-month period on record October 2010 through September 2011, when our entire state was designated as experiencing some form of drought – a most exceptional situation.
• Our water supplier gets water from: LakeTexoma; LakeLavon; Lake Chapman; Lake Tawakoni; and Wilson Creek. NTMWD hasn’t used Lake Texoma since 2009 due to the invasion of Zebra Mussels (more about those little creatures below). In November, Lake Lavonwas down 13.21 feet and at 47.33 percent capacity. It’s up quite a bit thanks to recent rains, but still down about 8 feet. Lake Chapman is 10 feet down and at only 42.85 percent capacity, and Lake Tawakoni is down more than 5 feet at 78.7 percent capacity.

Zebra Mussels have had a visible impact due to its ability to stop-up large raw water intakes such as those at municipal drinking water treatment plants. No one seems to be able to get rid of the annoying critters! They attach to submerged hard surfaces and reproduce in large numbers. They colonize extensive portions of large water handling facilities, greatly reducing pumping efficiency and totally clogging pipes. In some large public facilities, there are layers of them up to 2 feet thick.

So, there you have it: drought and Zebra Mussels have created a bad situation that demands we join forces to use less water.

I think it’s important to remember that if our city’s water supply should get dangerously low, we must maintain 1.7 million gallons of water in our water towers for fire protection, which would force the City to shut water supply to all our water customers: Heath, Blackland Water Supply, RCH and Aqua Texas.

Together we can continue meeting (maybe exceeding!) our goal to reduce water usage by at least 10 percent. It’s not a good time to plant new landscaping or grass, and it’s best to delay plans to put in a pool.

So my friends, let’s pray for rain, maybe do a rain dance or two and remember that it’s vitally important to do our part to use less water. Let’s make it a choice to preserve one of our most precious resources.

By Rockwall Mayor David Sweet; edited for publication by Blue Ribbon News.

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