By Kelley Chambers, Star Local News

Like most Collin County residents, local green thumb Rob Day still prays for rain.

“Of course we are concerned a lot about the water levels here,” said Day, general manager of Home Grown Plants in Farmersville. “To say we aren’t wouldn’t be an accurate statement.”

The nursery’s 45-acre supply of mums, pansies and hearty ferns survived the harsh summer thanks to on-site irrigation and shade covers. But although its crops are flourishing, Day wonders if anyone will be buying them with increased water use restrictions going into effect this fall.

“We are doing good personally, but I’m concerned about the marketplace and how concerned homeowners may impact our sales in a negative way,” said Day. “If things go back to normal soon we’ll be ok.”

With a record-breaking summer behind and above-normal temperatures combined with below-normal rainfall for rest of the year, the North Texas Municipal Water District Board of Directors unanimously agreed last week to go forth with implementing a Stage 3 status for further reducing the county’s water intake.

The new restrictions, which will go into effect Nov. 1, reduce watering to once every two weeks.

The decision comes about a month after it initiated Stage Two of the district’s water conservation plan, which currently limits landscape watering with sprinklers or irrigation systems to no more than twice a week.

NTMWD Executive Director and General Manager Jim Parks said the move to Stage Three status was the result of the region’s inability to achieve its stage two goal — a 5 percent reduction in water use — coupled with the projected dry winter ahead.

If Stage Three doesn’t achieve the 10 percent reduction it is intended to, the water district may enforce rate surcharges for water used at a certain level. Other mandated reductions in deliveries to member cities and customers may also be enforced before moving onto even more stringent demands of a Stage Four, if that type of action is needed, Parks said.

“Most likely these restrictions will remain in tact until we regain our (normal) capacities in the reservoirs we operate from,” Parks said.

Most NTMWD member cities will likely spend the month of October determining how to best align their existing water conservation plans with the district’s new provisions.

McKinney staff has not yet devised its final proposal for how to fall in line with the Stage Three situation. They will examine the NTMWD restrictions and steps the city took several years ago during the last Stage Three ruling for the area, and will bring the detailed proposal before city council on Oct. 4.

Allen Community Services Director Steve Massey said its residents can expect to receive mailers within the next couple of weeks outlining the city’s new watering schedule which falls in line with stage three’s bi-monthly schedule. Massey said he plans on quadrupling the size of Allen’s code enforcement staff to 16 people in order to efficiently respond to reports of inappropriate water use. The move to increased reduction comes as no surprise to him and shouldn’t to most people who have watched and recent weather forecasts.

“We’ve been waiting for (the NTMWD) to do this for some time now–we are in the middle of a severe drought,” Massey said. “My goal is to keep the water in the lake so that in the spring we can go back to watering once a week.”

Plano Assistant City Manager Mark Israelson said city staff will meet with NTMWD officials next week to discuss stage three stipulations and how they compare to what it already have in place.

Plano–like most other district cities–just amended its plan to meet the Stage two status requirements that were implemented last month.

“We understand the goals and the needs of the water district, but we are (also) trying to balance the needs of our citizens and make sure we are trying to help them manage their assets,” Israelson said. “We need every resident to help us achieve our reduction goal in Plano and in all other member cities so we don’t have an issue.”

For those who think cooler temperatures might make way for rainfall, the National Weather Service’s three-month outlook for Collin County reflects a strong likelihood for below-normal precipitation.

“The rain we have seen in the past month–which produced approximately 1.78 inches of rain for our area–certainly wasn’t much at all compared to what we really need,” Meteorologist Jason Dunn with the National Weather Service said. “Several days of constant rain would be optimal for bringing the region out of its drought status for good.”

There is a potential for rain next week that could produce a day or two of rain for Collin County but it is still hard to say exactly how much rain it may yield. Since this summer did not produce the once-a-week, scattered thunderstorms North Texas typically relies on, the same pattern is expected to play out into the winter months, Dunn said.

That, combined with Lake Lavon’s water levels currently being down by 47 percent, poses a dire need for heavy rains to dig the region out of the arid hole it has been in.

“We are getting further and further behind,” Dunn said.

Stage 3 stipulations will remain in effect until March 31 unless conditions allow for the ban to be lifted. If not, watering will go back to once a week after that time. For now, residents will have to accept the fact that their yards may not be as green as they usually are, at least for now.

“In our ’05 and ’06 droughts we modified our (reduction) plan to what we are using now,” Parks said. “We will have to just see what things we will want to change once we come out of this drought. We are constantly looking to make improvements.”