Water Woes are Everywhere

 

Meteorologists blame the dry weather on a persistent dome of high pressure that settled over the eastern U.S. for the winter. The high pressure kept us mostly dry, while diverting the winter storm track to our west and north, over the Great Lakes and into New England.

Some places are flooding regularly which isn’t good. But golf course and landscape industry professionals on the east coast are joining their peers in California in facing water shortages as Maryland deals with drought and Florida’s demand for reclaimed water is outpacing supplies, which is also not good.

In Maryland, areas of the state are facing the driest start to a year in the history of 138 years of recordkeeping in Baltimore. Little snow fell this year, and streams in parts of the state are flowing at record or near-record lows for this time of year. According to the federal Drought Monitor Map, 52 percent of Maryland, including all of the urban corridor from Baltimore to Washington, D.C, is in moderate drought.

Meanwhile in the Tampa area, new water restrictions – the toughest in the state of Florida—went into effect on April 3. Reclaimed water is exempt from the restrictions, but only a handful of neighborhoods in South Tampa are connected to the city’s reclaimed-water system. The demand for reclaimed water is affecting both commercial and residential users.

In 2002, municipal well systems in Western Maryland ran short or failed, and Baltimore’s reservoirs fell to a record-low 41 percent of capacity. The city tapped the Susquehanna River to augment dwindling supplies. Parts of the state were touched again by drought in 2006, and yet again from the summer of 2007 through the spring of 2008.

With the drought worsening and water restrictions getting tougher, Tampa Florida residents are looking to reclaimed water as a way to conserve water and keep their lawns green. But unless they live in South Tampa, they’ll have to wait because only a handful of the city’s neighborhoods are hooked up to the system, and expansion of reclaimed-water distribution lines to other areas are years away.

City officials say the demand for reclaimed water from residential customers has risen dramatically since March 19, when the city council approved new watering restrictions. The new rules, the toughest in the state, go into effect April 3 and will allow only hand-watering of lawns one day a week. Reclaimed-water users are exempt from the rules.