Reduce watering to avoid limit of one day per week

Water use exceeds 90 percent capacity of treatment plants

Water use from irrigation is leading to record demand on the water treatment system. Water production has exceeded 90 percent of plant capacity on multiple days in the past week.

The City of Georgetown is asking water customers to reduce demand by using the Seasonal Adjust setting on their irrigation system controllers, if they have an irrigation system. Reducing usage to 90 percent with the Seasonal Adjust setting will decrease watering run times on the system without a significant effect on lawns and landscapes.

If water use continues to exceed 90 percent of plant capacity and is not reduced, then the City will enact Stage 2 of the Drought Contingency Plan, which limits watering to one day per week. During the summer months, 75 percent of the water produced each day by water treatment plants is used for lawn and landscape irrigation.

“At the current level of water use for irrigation, we begin to put at risk our higher priority service of indoor use and fire-fighting supply,” Director of Water Utilities Glenn Dishong said. “It is imperative that customers voluntarily reduce irrigation demand using the seasonal adjust settings on their controllers. A simple reduction of 10 percent will be imperceptible in terms of impact on the landscape, but will yield significant results on total daily water demand for the entire system.”

Violations of the irrigation schedule may result in administrative charges on customer bills.

In addition to watering only on their scheduled day, water customers should make sure they are not watering from noon to 7 p.m., and never watering on Mondays.

Find more programming your controller how-to videos, the watering schedule, and more at water.georgetown.org.