The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs Office of Water Resources has issued a drought declaration for the state of Alabama.
Lee County is currently in the advisory drought declaration level, with the Water Works Board of the City of Auburn (AWWB) having enacted a Phase I Drought Watch for its customers on April 21.
Director of Public Affairs David Dorton said that Phase I consists of voluntary water restrictions for Auburn community members.
“The voluntary water restrictions themselves involve not watering your lawn except between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. and only watering your lawn on certain days,” Dorton said.
Auburn community members who receive water from the AWWB and have even numbered home addresses should only water their lawns on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Those with odd numbered home addresses should only water their lawns on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. There should be no lawn watering on Sundays.
Other ways that community members can help limit their water usage are making sure sprinklers are only spraying water on your lawn, trees or bushes and not on sidewalks, streets or driveways, making sure there are no leaks in water related utilities, taking shorter showers, not letting the water from a sink or a hose run unattended and only washing full loads of laundry or dishes.
“In a lot of ways it’s only common sense ways to save water,” Dorton said. “Where we are right now in Phase I, we are going into the heavy usage period of the year and we are trying to avoid getting to a place where we have to do mandatory water restrictions in Phase II.”
Dorton said that this drought is separate from the drought Auburn experienced last year, but that this year’s drought wasn’t helped by the mild winter and early spring weather which encouraged people to start watering their plants earlier than usual.
According to Dorton, it’s too soon to say whether or not the drought will worsen this summer.
“Long term weather predictions are hard to make, but they’re keeping an eye on it,” Dorton said. “If we have a lot of rain and it looks like things are where they need to be as far as water tables and lake levels then they’ll rescind Phase I, but right now we anticipate that Phase I is on for the foreseeable future.”
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