Early Tuesday morning, Paul Hirst received a call with “unprecedented” news: Twenty-five million gallons of water had been drained from one of the Benchland Irrigation Water District’s reservoirs overnight, leaving it empty for the first time anyone working there can remember.
• No weekend watering from 8 a.m. Saturdays to 8 a.m. Mondays • No weekday watering from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. • No secondary water for new landscaping for the rest of the season In Riverton, city officials are also trying to get ahead of overwatering and are asking residents and businesses to cut their culinary and secondary water by 25 percent.
“So we’re just asking everybody to do their part voluntarily right now with the hope that people will cut back a little bit.” If Farmington residents continued their pre-restriction usage rate, district officials estimate, the water supply would dry up by Sept. 1.
There’s no indication that the canals in Riverton will dry up, Saxton said, so the reduction is voluntary for now.
That’s an average of 683 gallons per household of culinary water and 2,952 gallons of secondary water — and it’s unsustainable.
“We need to get comfortable with brown spots in lawns,” Saxton said.
At this time of year, where it’s hot and dry, the brown spots are going to be a reality.” Riverton has cutting back on watering its 473 acres of parks and other green space.
One of the biggest challenges Riverton and the Benchland Irrigation Water District in Farmington face in fighting overuse is that their secondary water sources aren’t metered.
“That doesn’t mean it should be unlimited,” Saxton said.
“And we just want to encourage everybody to be responsible neighbors, to be responsible citizens and to really only use what they need.” But in Farmington, water district officials are realizing that relying on their residents to play by the rules might not be enough, and they’re considering metering — a process that would cost about $1,000 per connection to install meters, along with additional costs to hire employees to read them and bill customers.