EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah — Tuesday night, the city notified nearly 1,200 homes to avoid outdoor watering as demand outpaces the city's ability to fill water tanks in the area.
According to communications manager Tyler Maffitt, the notified residents were all located north of State Route 73.
“We've been watching a trend here of the water tanks dwindling in their capacity,” he said. “What we wanted to do was alert residents that if they were watering their lawns to just refrain for a short period to see what the recovery trend was.”
The city was hoping it would just be for hours, but after checking data this morning, they had to proclaim to homeowners they might need to hold off for longer.
“If the water availability in the tanks reduces to a sufficient degree, our ability to fight wildfires is impacted, and if it gets even more drastic, [residents’] ability to receive water out of their taps could potentially be impacted,” he said. “We don't want to see that, and so by reducing our lawn and outdoor irrigation and Eagle Mountain through the weekend to zero, we are hopeful that that those are not possibilities. We know it's hot, but hopefully with some community cooperation we can achieve some of the goals and outcomes we're looking forward to ensure that those tanks are really topped off and are able to provide quality service.”
City officials have the option to enforce against lawn watering if the water levels get low enough to be a concern, which would mean homeowners could receive a citation for watering their lawns this weekend.
