Cautionary notices went out Tuesday evening through the city’s Facebook and Twitter sites.

“Things are getting better but it’s going to take time, at least the next couple of days,” Kyle said, and emphasized the advisory was a precaution only and standard policy for anytime a system loses pressure and water is reintroduced into the system.

Residents in south Saratoga Springs experienced low water pressure Tuesday in the city’s culinary water system.

Water pressure should be better by Wednesday, said Owen Jackson, city spokesman.

The city located a booster pump for the upper water tanks in the south that shut off early Tuesday morning. A switched-off pump caused culinary water levels to drop below normal.

According to a city Facebook post, Saratoga Springs has stopped supplementing the irrigation water with culinary water while the tank levels are being restored.

Officials say neighborhoods west of Redwood Road and south of Stillwater Drive will have lower secondary water pressure Tuesday evening, but the secondary water pressure should be restored by Wednesday.

“The lower elevation tanks were OK, but the higher tanks weren’t,” Jackson said. “The secondary irrigation water will be affected in the south because of the culinary issues there.”

According to the Facebook notice, water samples are being tested and city staff will receive the results in 24 hours.

While those who have lost water pressure have expressed angst about being asked to conserve water when they have none or very little, Kyle cautioned that it’s not the “have nots” who are the concern.

It’s those who see no problem with the water pressure in the lower areas of the community.

“One of the issues is not everyone is affected by it,” he said. “If everybody in the city was doing [water conservation] it would go a long way to helping the tanks back up.”

Secondary water is a separate and ongoing issue in Saratoga Springs. The city’s entire east side is bordered by Utah Lake and the Jordan River, but the problem is getting the supply to its residents.

There have been complaints before about the city’s water infrastructure. Tuesday’s water issues sparked another round of angry social media posts.

“Un-freaking-believable,” Cali Goff posted Tuesday morning on Facebook. “In the meantime, I’ll just forget about showering today and say a prayer that our toilets can manage to flush. Stop. Building.”

Some residents say the problem has existed for years and isn’t just a different well or pump down.

“Well here’s a surprise ….” Eric Bresee posted with biting sarcasm. The north Saratoga Springs resident had issues with his water pressure in late May.

“We’ve lived here for just over nine years and I don’t remember the last summer where we didn’t have some sort of water issue,” Bresee said three weeks ago after the well that feeds south Saratoga Springs failed.

Help is on the way, according to Jackson.

The city is working on long-term, as well as short-term, solutions to the water pressure issue for residents, including diverting water directly from Utah Lake, Jackson said.

“We have some secondary irrigation water projects coming online next year,” Jackson said. “We have accelerated them to improve the service to the south of the city.”

Those projects are being funded via revenues and bond proceeds.

Saratoga Springs has obtained a temporary water purchasing contract with Central Utah Water Conservancy District.

According to Jackson, the intent is to provide an additional water source until fall.

The additional water will help Saratoga Springs meet its water demands. CUWCD began water delivery Tuesday.

In addition, the city has been able to put secondary water infrastructure projects on the fast track to provide additional water sooner.

At an estimated cost of $3 million, a secondary water pump project in the south end of the city will be installed to directly pump water from Utah Lake. The project is scheduled for completion before the 2017 irrigation season begins, Jackson said.

A $1.8 million project will install an additional water source in the north and is also projected for completion for the 2017 irrigation season.

“We appreciate residents’ patience and conservation as we’ve worked to implement these additional measures,” Jackson said in the city’s Facebook update.

“We’ve had staff out there every morning counting the number of people irrigating during those times,” Ryan Williams, assistant director of the Water and Light Department, said in reference to the hours of 4 to 6 a.m., when water pressure in the area is dropping below 20 pounds per square inch. “It seems to be that roughly 200 systems is kind of, for whatever reason, the threshold for what can be sustained.”

On June 15, a voluntary irrigation schedule was released for Thornbrook and other nearby subdivisions, including Bradbury Estates, Creek’s Edge, Steeplechase and Wyndham Ridge, according to previous Missourian coverage.

But after nearly a week on the irrigation schedule, there has been little improvement, Williams said. He said that over 600 homes in the area are affected by the advisory.

There are about 500 irrigation systems in the neighborhood.

Few residents have been following the irrigation schedule, Williams said, so Water and Light is looking to find a way to better communicate with residents and encourage them to avoid irrigating at the same time.

Thornbrook resident Julie Ryan said she was initially following the voluntary irrigation schedule but has since shut her sprinkler system off. She said some of her neighbors have done the same, hoping it would help lift the advisory.

Ryan said she’s been using bottled water rather than boiling water from the tap.

Fifth Ward Councilwoman Laura Nauser represents the area and lives in the Thornbrook neighborhood. She has been following the irrigation schedule and encouraging her neighbors to do so as well.

“It’s a temporary fix to get us through the summer,” Nauser said.

Both Ryan and Nauser said that while no solution has been found, Water and Light has been good about keeping them updated on the problem.

“They’ve been very good,” Nauser said. “They’ve certainly kept me informed of all of the issues.”

Is it just irrigation?

Ryan has lived in the neighborhood for over six years. She said Thornbrook has never had this irrigation problem before, even during the severe drought of 2012.

She wonders whether recent construction in the area or the construction of the Beulah Ralph Elementary School could also be contributing to the low water pressure.

“My concern right now is that the focus remains on it being primarily an irrigation issue, and the longer this goes on it doesn’t truly seem to be an irrigation issue from what we can tell as residents,” Ryan said.

Williams said he doesn’t believe the new school has been using any water yet. He also doesn’t believe the nearby home construction is the problem.

“This is kind of a unique situation for us, we haven’t really seen this anywhere on our system before that the irrigation demand would be so high to cause pressure problems within such a localized area,” Williams said.

Nauser said that the water pressure problems match with the days people irrigate.

“It is Monday, Wednesday, Friday when most of these people have these problems, so that is a typical watering pattern,” Nauser said.

Ryan, however, remains skeptical.