Dunedin approves voluntary three-day watering schedule

The program calls for the city's reclaimed water service area to be divided into eight zones. Each zone will have set watering hours.

By LEON M. TUCKER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 22, 2003

DUNEDIN -- In an effort to head off a water shortage like the one last year, the city will ask its reclaimed water customers to agree to three months of watering restrictions starting in April.

City commissioners on Thursday approved a motion to start asking residents hooked up to Dunedin's reclaimed water system to participate in a voluntary three-day watering schedule.

"The program has been so successful that the demand for the water during the critical dry months of the year exceeds the supply," said Doug Hutchens, the city's acting director of public works and utilities. "What we're trying to do is accommodate not only existing customers during the dry season but explore the possibility of serving more customers."

An advisory committee last fall was appointed to examine the demands on reclaimed water and, with the city staff's help, to develop a program to ease the strain.

The program calls for the city's reclaimed water service area to be divided into eight zones. Within each zone, customers would be assigned two hours of watering, three days a week.

On those days, the watering times would be before 9 a.m. and after 6 p.m.

Last May, subscribers came within days of having reclaimed service interrupted. But the crisis was managed after homes and businesses were placed on watering schedules that called for customers to cut back usage by watering every other day.

Now, the city's 2,700 reclaimed water customers can expect information on the new plan via letters, door hangers and fliers educating.

"We want people to participate and we're anxious to see the results and measure the performance of the system through the upcoming dry season," said Hutchens about the new plan. "If it works, this may become the norm."

In other action, commissioners postponed naming members to the Inclusive City Committee until the next meeting on March 6.

Commissioners said they wanted more time to come up with a mission for the committee that will be charged with recommending a city street to be named after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

City leaders also decided to make an additional $10,000 available to the Stadium Naming Rights Committee to help their efforts in finding a business interested in the right to name Dunedin Stadium at Grant Field.

As part of its recent contract renewal with the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, the city secured the naming rights and budgeted $25,000 to stage a marketing effort to attract an interested company.

So far the committee of volunteers has spent $2,500 of its first $5,000 advance on, among other things, distributing 14,000 promotional fliers to area companies.

The city hopes to secure a $1-million contract for its stadium over the Jays' 15-year agreement.

-- Leon M. Tucker can be reached at (727) 445-4167 or tucker@sptimes.com .

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