Water restricted

More than 150 homeowners, business owners and concerned citizens voiced their opinions on the effectiveness of current City of Austin water conservation strategies at a community workshop held by Austin Water Jan. 19 at 625 E.10th St.

Austin has been under stage two water restrictions since September of last year, and current trends lead to expectations of stage three restrictions by this summer, according to Austin Water officials.

Under stage two restrictions, landscape watering is limited to once per week with the operation of irrigation systems limited to use before 10 a.m. and after 7 p.m. and home car washing is similarly regulated to certain times during the day. Restrictions also extend to restaurants which are prohibited from serving water, unless it is specifically requested by patrons. Other restrictions prohibit ornamental outdoor fountains and charity car washes.

To determine the validity of these measures, participants at the workshop broke into small groups and voted on whether or not they believed that current mandates for certain stages were too lenient or too strict. Participants were also tasked with determining at what stage of drought they would prohibit that activity.

According to officials, the opinions that were expressed came as no surprise.

"We heard a lot of feedback we expected," Water Conservation Division Manager and workshop leader Drema Gross said. "This exercise was about gauging the relative importance of those concerns and about businesses and how we could save water."

Gross said the data collected from the workshop would be analyzed and used to help with future decision making.

"What we're going to do is collect it all first, and in order to know if it will make a difference, we need to see whether there were any avenues or agreements in certain areas," she said. "We could bring that back to the next public workshop and et the public know what our colleagues said."

Brittany Guy, who attended the meeting with her high school AP government class, said she learned just how complicated the business of conservation can be.

"There are a lot of economic implications," Guy said. "I talked to a lot of business owners who were concerned about restrictions that could cause their company to lose a lot of revenue."

Also weighing in on the workshop's influence was Glen Coleman of Banyon Water.

"I think the best thing about today's meeting is that you saw groups of people forced to make priority decisions about at what point you should curtail use of specific items," Coleman said. "What I saw is that different people at the table were able to educate each other about different items ... I think it changed the thinking of some people."

Former Water Conservation Task Force member Margot Fark said she feels positive about the workshop's role in getting people to think about the water restrictions. However, Fark also pointed out the limitations of the process.

She said the discussion was channeled within the existing water restrictions and didn't allow for other brainstorming possibilities which might reveal alternative solutions.

"I think we're going to have to get tougher," Fark said, "because people are not yet used to thinking about the fact that water is precious and limited and wasting water is not acceptable."