Water managers say watering restrictions not likely to end soon

The last time residents in the Tampa Bay area could water their lawns twice a week two years were left in George Bush's final term, the region's unemployment was 3.9 percent and the median price of a house in Tampa was $259,000.

Unless nature gets a lot more generous with rainfall, a return to twice weekly watering isn't likely to happen soon.

The Southwest Florida Water Management cut lawn watering with potable water in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties to once a week in January 2007 in response to a drought that crept up unnoticed in 2005 and dug in its claws a year later.

The water management district will consider changing its watering restrictions at its meeting Sept. 29. District scientists will begin crafting a recommendation later this month.

But a lot argues against returning to twice weekly watering.

Rainfall in the Tampa Bay region is 7 to 9 inches below normal for the past year. The flow in rivers is fluctuating when it should rise. Lakes are a foot lower than the lowest point they should be in September and the aquifer is about a 53 on a scale of 1-100.

Those are all factors the district considers when deciding whether to loosen water restrictions, said Granville Kinsman, head of hydrologic data for the water management district.

None point to a quick return to more frequent sprinkling.

Then there's the calendar. The dry season is about a month away and lasts until early June.

"You know as soon as you hit October water levels are going to drop," said Robyn Felix, spokeswoman for the district.

Kinsman estimates it would take 14 inches of rain on top of what we normally get to bring lakes back to even the low end of their range.

That means more than 26 inches between now and the end of 2009, or 34 inches by the end of March.

The district rules require looking at rainfall over the past 12 months and six months, river flow for the past eight weeks and the aquifer level when deciding about water restrictions, Felix said.

In addition, long range outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center and the U.S. Drought Monitor are examined, she said.

The level of lakes is also a major factor because lakes are the last to recover from drought conditions.

Kinsman said flow in the Hillsborough and Alafia are a special concern now. The region's water supplier relies heavily on the rivers during the summer to provide water and fill its reservoir that's tapped in the dry months.

Flows in the two rivers have fluctuated widely this summer when they should remain steady or rise. After a few weeks of low rainfall in August, river flows plummeted to about a third of where they are now.

"The fact they can vary that much based on a moderate variation in rain shows if things dry out, they're going to drop like a rock," Kinsman said.

There is also the general uncertainty of nature. The summer's rainfall hasn't followed the typical pattern. Forecasts from the prediction center don't always pan out.

The outlook for the next three months is for Florida to get above average rainfall, mainly because of an El Niño that occurs when water across a vast stretch of the tropical Pacific Ocean warms a few degrees above normal.

During an El Niño, Florida gets above normal rain in the winter and spring that may drag the region out of drought, but it's too early to tell how much impact the current El Niño will have on our weather.
Predictions call for the current El Niño to last through the winter.

"The El Niño is sort of our hope," Kinsman said.