Southwest Florida so dry that canals, wells, pumps, lawn watering are concerns

As Southwest Florida is gripped by a particularly dry season and residents are urged to conserve water, some municipalities are more affected by the relatively sparse rainfall and low water levels than others, officials say.

As of Friday, the Southwest coast area of the South Florida Water Management District — which includes large parts of Collier and Lee County — received only 5.46 inches of rain, said Randy Smith, a district spokesman. That's only 45 percent of what the area usually would receive during an average dry season, which runs from Nov. 1 through May 31, he said.

"It got less than half the rain that you normally would have," Smith said.

To make matters worse, Southwest Florida's dry spell has parched the area's woods, leaving wildfires with plenty of sun-baked brush to fuel their rage. Two large blazes in Collier torched thousands of acres in March and April and razed eight homes. A 400-acre fire in Lehigh Acres last week also destroyed or damaged structures.

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Though Southwest Florida is "not going to run out of water necessarily," Smith said, the arid conditions and lack of rain take a toll on some of the more shallow water resources.

And Friday, Naples had a record high temperature of 93 degrees that broke the previous high of 91 in 2011.

"Because of the deficit the recharge isn't there," Smith said.

Wells and pumps

For some shallow, residential wells in the area, the water level has dropped below where the pumps reach, which is not something you usually encounter during a regular dry season, he said.

"That kind of speaks to the intensity of this one," Smith said.

Because the water management district, which includes 16 counties, uses about half the water produced on a daily basis for landscape irrigation, Smith said, the "most significant" way to conserve water is to restrict when residents can water their lawns and yards.

On April 13, the water management district's governing board issued a water shortage warning for all of its 16 counties in response to the falling water levels and dry conditions.

"The purpose of this warning is to urge South Florida families to voluntarily conserve more water," Dan O'Keefe, the district's governing board chairman, said in a release. "This effort will help your water supply last through the remainder of the dry season."

Click here to view a drought monitor for the U.S. »

Since 2010, the district's year-round landscape irrigation rule limits watering to two days a week throughout the 16 counties, though some areas have a three-day-a-week provision and some municipalities have elected to pass even more stringent schedules.

"Two was encouraged, but three was an option," Smith said.

Cape Coral

For Cape Coral, the magic number is one.

Because water levels in the city's canal system "have been dropping significantly" this dry season due to a "lack of rainfall," Cape Coral officials moved residents to a mandatory one-day watering schedule to conserve as much water as possible, said Connie Barron, the city's spokeswoman.

"Our concern here is related to our irrigation supply," she said.

The new one-day schedule went into effect April 21, a week after city officials issued a notice of emergency for a stage 1 water shortage.

About 800 of the city's fire hydrants are connected to the irrigation system — a decision that was made decades ago — and draw water from the city's canal system, Barron said. If water levels in the canals drop too far, those hydrants may not work properly, which could have "catastrophic results," she said

"There would not be adequate pressure," Barron said. "That's a big deal."

Once the canal system drops to 500 million gallons of water, "that's when the pumps start shutting down because you can't lower them more," she said. Alhough the canals "got a little bump" from last weekend's rain, the canal system now has only about 700 million gallons of water, Barron said.

Under the previous two-day schedule, as much as 35 million gallons a day were used, with about 17 million coming from the canals, she said. That made scaling back to one day a week an easy call.

"Going to one day was not a difficult decision for the city manager to make," Barron said. "It's probably going to be in place for a while."

The last time the city experienced a dry season like this was when canal system water levels dropped to 610 million gallons around mid-May in 2007, Barron said. In 2011, with a rainy season that started relatively late, the levels were down to 640 million by mid-June, she said.

The city recently negotiated an agreement to draw water from a reservoir owned by Southwest Aggregates Mining in Charlotte County to make up for some of its water needs, Barron said. As much as 17.5 million gallons of water per day could be pumped into the canal system from the reservoir, she said. The city began the test run for the project Friday.

"We're hoping with the one-day schedule and the reservoir project, it could get us through the dry season," Barron said.

Unincorporated Lee 

Unincorporated Lee County, too, has felt the effects of one of the most arid seasons in years.

"It's not unusual," said Kurt Harclerode, operations manager for Lee County Natural Resources. "But this is the first time in several years that we've been going through a dry spell like we are this season."

County officials have received "quite a few" complaints about wells that have gone dry or aren't working as a result of the drought-like conditions, Harclerode said. Although the complaints have involved both wells used for irrigation and those supplying potable water, the latter going dry is much more serious, he said.

"Almost 99 percent of the time, that would be an individual well, like a homeowner," Harclerode said. "These are generally your own well, you're not on a utility. You have a well for all your uses."

So far, Lee has been contacted about 181 wells going dry or not working, Harclerode said. Of those, 149 involved domestic wells, which means "it's their only water source," he said, and 32 were used for irrigation.

"It's probably higher than we've had since we had a significant water shortage," he said.

Lehigh Acres

Of the domestic wells, 83 were in Lehigh Acres.

"So Lehigh has been our main area where we've seen those problems," Harclerode said.

Once the county receives complaints about non-working wells, it works with the water management district and, if needed, starts the permitting process to allow the pump to go deeper or redrill.

Like many other counties in the district, Lee has a year-round two-day watering schedule, which was implemented as an ordinance in 2005.

This dry season, it's especially important to stick to that schedule, Harclerode said. The county is focused on educating the public and, where needed, issuing warnings or even fines to residents who don't comply, he said.

"We're doing some enforcement activities with that," Harclerode said. "It's to help us get through a situation, you know, we'll get into our rainy season, hopefully, in June, but until that time comes, it's important to conserve what we can.

"You know, what you conserve today by not putting it on your lawn could help you or your neighbor have potable drinking water supply until we get into our rainy season."

But while some wells have fallen victim to the dry spell, the county's public utility has not been affected, Harclerode said.

Neither has Collier's.

Collier County

"We're not really having any issues," said Margie Hapke, spokeswoman for Collier County Public Utilities. "We're not having a problem in the well field."

Collier is still on a year-round three-day watering schedule, which has been in place since the early 2000s, she said. The utility uses two water treatment plants that produce drinking water and two wastewater plants that treat wastewater, which is used for irrigation.

"A lot of our water resources are much deeper, much lower," Hapke said. "It's not like the utilities that are using the surface water."

Still, Hapke said, residents should stick to the county's three-day schedule.

"That's the biggest thing that residents can do to help," she said. "And it helps on their utility bill, too."