Most Pasco Cities Not Writing Tickets For Water Use

Months after Pasco County officials began ticketing people for watering their lawns on the wrong day, Dade City officials have yet to write their first ticket.
The same is true in Zephyrhills, St. Leo, San Antonio and Port Richey.
As state water regulators set tighter limit on how the region's dwindling water supply can be used, they rely on local governments to enforce those rules. So far, however, local municipalities largely have fallen behind on enforcement.
More than six months after the Southwest Florida Water Management District's ordered governments to write tickets for first-time watering violations, Dade City Police Chief Ray Velboom said his department is now considering issuing verbal warnings to first-time offenders.
"If we see a flagrant violation, we're going to deal with it," Velboom said today. "We're going to take it on a case-by-case basis and maybe people will stop."
City Attorney Karla Owens said she was never told Swiftmud required tickets for first-time offenders. But she also noted that city officials see few people watering their lawns in the first place.
"We've been going around and warning people, but to my knowledge we haven't had a huge problem with it," Owens said.
With its own water supply, Dade City is exempt from the Phase 4 water-use limits Swiftmud put in place today. Those rules shorten to four hours the weekly lawn watering allowed with potable water, ban decorative fountains and by-hand car washing and limit pressure-washing.
Phase 4 rules apply to Pasco County, New Port Richey, Port Richey and Aloha Utilities.
Phase 4 exemptions also apply to Zephyrhills and San Antonio, said Swiftmud spokeswoman Robyn Felix.
But even under Phase 3 rules, Swiftmud expects more aggressive enforcement from local governments, Felix said.
Swiftmud is willing to work with those governments to step up enforcement by offering training and other help. Should conditions continue to worsen, the agency could restrict how much water cities can draw from their wells, she said.
For some municipalities, enforcing watering rules comes down to a matter of staffing.
The tiny St. Leo, for example, has a single full-time employee: Town Clerk Joan Miller.
There are no code enforcement officers to patrol the streets looking for people watering the lawns at noon or washing their cars in their driveways. There are no town police officers to patrol for scofflaws. There are no town ordinances outlining fines for watering violations.
Like San Antonio, its equally short-handed neighbor to the west, St. Leo officials depend on the Pasco County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement. Sheriff's spokesman Kevin Doll said this week enforcing watering restrictions is not a high priority.
"We're too busy to be driving around looking for people illegally watering," Doll said. "We're too busy with other, more serious calls."
County officials, who have written more than 1,000 watering tickets since last fall in unincorporated areas, don't enforce restrictions within the boundaries of St. Leo or other municipalities. That leaves the 2,300 residents of San Antonio and St. Leo largely on their honor to obey watering restrictions.
"Swiftmud has said this is the way it is, but they haven't given communities any money to do it," Miller said Friday.
Felix said Swiftmud is focusing most of its attention on the governments that get water from Tampa Bay Water, which has turned almost exclusively to groundwater pumping now that its reservoir in south Hillsborough County is dry.
At this point, New Port Richey is the lone Pasco municipality issuing tickets to residents who flout watering limits. Ticketing writing began in earnest in February and accelerated last month, according to figures supplied by city code enforcement officials.
As a member government of Tampa Bay Water, the three-county utility that provides water the much of the region, New Port Richey is bound to enforce watering restrictions, Mayor Scott McPherson said.
As of today, the city turned off its decorative fountain in Orange Lake and raised the thermostat at City Hall, McPherson said.
"While we can't increase our code enforcement staff, we're being more creative with the resources we have," McPherson said.
City officials have discussed a total ban on lawn watering, but haven't taken any action that way, McPherson.
"At this point, we're going to keep an eye on the situation," McPherson said.
Zephyrhills, by comparison, will consider an ordinance at its next meeting enforcing Phase 4 limitations for its water customers, City Manager Steve Spina said.
Felix said her agency would like to see greater enforcement by local governments as a way of limiting wasteful water use.
"We know that people are much more likely to follow the water restrictions if they know the local government's out enforcing them," Felix said.