Scott Neal, Eden Prairie City Manager

It’s dry. It’s hot. And the City’s ability to keep up with the demand for water has almost reached a breaking point.

Over the weekend, the City had to issue a press release asking for an increased level of compliance from Eden Prairie citizens with our current outdoor watering restrictions. These restrictions include no watering between Noon and 5 p.m. any day, and an Even/Odd watering plan the rest of the time. If we can’t get a high enough level of voluntary compliance, sometime this week we are projecting we will need to implement a complete outdoor watering ban.

There are two primary functions of the City’s public water system. One is to provide safe, reliable drinking water to residents and businesses. The second is to provide water for fire fighting. Insuring a sufficient supply of water for keeping our yards nice and green during a drought is not a primary function of our water system. And right now, outdoor lawn watering is beginning to compromise the City’s ability to provide sufficient water for fire fighting. That’s a problem that we cannot ignore.

Our water system is generally able to replenish its water supply overnight, but over the past couple days the City has seen a substantial increase in water use in the early morning hours. This has meant the City has not been able to fully replenish its water supply. We think part of the problem is an increase in the use of computer guided automatic outdoor irrigation systems that are timed to function during the middle of the night. Here’s a heads-up to my loyal blog readers: We are going to increase our enforcement of the outdoor water regulations during the middle of the night to try to reduce this kind of water use infraction. Get ready.

At this time (Monday, July 31) the City does not need to impose a full watering ban, but we are getting very close to making that decision. We will need to impose the full watering ban if we cannot drive water consumption down through a combination of asking politely and issuing more outdoor watering violation tickets. We prefer to do the former to the latter. Let’s hope it works.