City of Georgetown asking residents to reduce watering to avoid one-day-per-week limit

GEORGETOWN, Texas - The City of Georgetown is asking residents to reduce their watering to avoid a one-day-per-week limit.

The city says that water use from irrigation is leading to record demand on the water treatment system, with production exceeding 90 percent of plant capacity on multiple days in the past week.

RELATED: Georgetown enacting water use restrictions beginning July 14

Customers can 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, according to the city.

“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.”

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Violations of the irrigation schedule pictured below may result in administrative charges on customer bills, says the city. 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.

For how-to videos on programming your controller and more, click here.