D.O.P.-T.

Today's mail brought a postcard from the city declaring that we are only supposed to water our yards between 6 pm and 9 am on three specific days a week depending on address. I had remembered the last drought emergency regulations, which I'd continued to observe, as being two days a week, and the card doesn't mention a time limit; I find the city now has an informational page on water restrictions linked from its main page (I had looked for it a couple of months ago and not found it), which has the same 15 minutes limit for each sprinkler position that I had remembered, and the same reference to the time of day regulations being in force during "Daylight Savings" time. Those regulations have an exception for hand watering, which I will keep right on doing daily but during permitted watering hours; I use a watering can for that, so use far less water than the bucket and hand-held hose watering they mention. Luckily the schedule for our address coincides with when I've been doing the front yard, so I don't have to flip it and the back yard, just hope nobody reports me for the days I water in the rear. I'm setting a hose sprinkler up manually, so even though I run it in each position for 10 minutes rather than 15 unless it's been over 90, I don't have time to do both ends of the house in the same evening before dusk makes it impossible to see where the edge of the water is falling. The net effect is they are encouraging me to water with the sprinkler half again as much as I am doing. I doubt they'll get much water use reduction, unless they crack down on the few commercial buildings that have sprinklers set to run daily, and the landscapers and other labourers who have carried right on hosing down concrete.

I also note the city declared the drought emergency on July 27 but appears to have instituted/informed people of the weekly scheduling rules only on August 30. Probably assume we're all streaming their meetings.