By The Public Communications Office
In this episode of “What’s Up, College Station?” Marketing Coordinator Grace Hallowell and Water Resource Coordinator Jennifer Nations discuss Smart Irrigation Month in July and sensible ways for residents to save money while watering responsibly.
Transcript
Grace Hallowell:
What’s up College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today I’m joined with Ms. Jennifer Nations, our Water Resource Coordinator. Hi Jennifer.
Jennifer Nations:
Hi.
Grace Hallowell:
I am excited you’re back. We’re here to talk about Smart Irrigation Month, which is coming up in July. So let’s start things off with what is Smart Irrigation Month and why is it important?
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah. Smart Irrigation Month is an initiative of the Irrigation Association. July is hot and dry in most parts of the country, so that’s when irrigation is most in demand and when people are focusing on it. The Irrigation Association put the information out there to get people to think about what irrigation means to them, the importance of irrigation to landscapes, residential and municipal, but then also agriculture. Irrigation is a big part of agriculture, which feeds us, so that’s important.
Grace Hallowell:
Right. And yes, the dry months are coming in fast. I know it seemed like we might never get there with how much rain we had this past season, but we’re definitely into the swing of it now. What are some important tips to keep in mind as we are going into the dry season?
Jennifer Nations:
Yes. The important tips for just landscape irrigation, and then we can talk about water demand stuff later. I’m trying to drive home the same message every time I’m asked about it, “sprinklers nixed 10 to 6”. Don’t water between 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Try to only water two days per week, not every day, not every other day. It’s better to water longer, but less often because then you’re going to get your soil good and wet so it can last in between waterings.
Oh, what was my third one? Oh yes, practice cycle and soak, which will also help you do the deep watering. So instead of watering for 30 minutes at a time, break that up into three segments of 10 minutes each.
Grace Hallowell:
So as far as agriculture, what does that entail for irrigation?
Jennifer Nations:
Agriculture is one of the largest uses of irrigation in the country, I think. For us in College Station residential irrigation and single-family water use, that’s our big driver. But, when you look at it on a nationwide basis, a lot of water is used for agriculture. So that’s why the Irrigation Association has their messages in the landscape and the municipal sector. So I follow that. I just peeked at some of the agriculture stuff because I thought, “Well, I hadn’t really thought about that.” That’s important too. There’s a lot of efficiencies that are happening over there, but that’s a totally different landscape for me.
Grace Hallowell:
Different ballgame.
Jennifer Nations:
Yeah.
Grace Hallowell:
Yes. I know we talked about in the previous episode where College Station’s water comes from, but as a reminder, where do we get our water?
Jennifer Nations:
As a reminder, Bryan-College Station and Texas A&M, we’re all getting our water from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, and then also agriculture in the area. Everybody’s using that aquifer. So when everybody’s pumping, then the aquifer will get stressed and there’ll be more draw down in the aquifer, so it can be harder to get that water. We might not get as many gallons per minute as we normally do. So the well pumps are having to work harder. Then we’re having to expend more energy, which goes into our costs of providing water.
So conservation really pays off, not just in a lower water bill for the customer, but it pays off in lower electricity bills and chemical bills and things for the utility.
Grace Hallowell:
That is a good point because conserving water, it does help your bill out, but it also, in the grand scheme of things, helps us reserve our water supply for the future, which can be uncertain. It’s a good idea to prevent disasters from happening before they happen.
Jennifer Nations:
Right.
Grace Hallowell:
Okay, so what else can you tell us?
Jennifer Nations:
Just looking at last summer, it was one for the record books, and I kind of thought, “Well, maybe it was a one off.” We’ve had droughts before. We’ve had high water demand before. Usually it hits us in mid to late July or maybe August. A lot of times we’ll have our peak day in late August after the A&M students have gotten back. So last year in February, we noticed that our water demand that February was higher than the previous February. And then March comes around and that March is higher. I asked around to some other colleagues in other cities and they all noticed the same thing. So I said, “Okay, we’re rolling into a drought.”
So going into last summer we knew that we were going to be in a drought, but then water use really went up really fast. That was six weeks straight, a million gallons of water every hour of every day. So it was 24 million gallons a day or more for six weeks straight, and we’ve never seen that. I’ve been with the city for 25 years. We’ve had bad droughts. The last bad drought was in 2011, and then another one in 2015, and another in 2019. The most significant of those was 2011. Last year’s demand was just unprecedented.
Well, we’re looking at trends right now, and we see that on June 11th we used about 11 and a half million gallons per day, and that’s totally fine. We can just rock on forever with that. But yesterday we did for late June, now we’re up to 21 million gallons per day.
Grace Hallowell:
Wow. A big jump.
Jennifer Nations:
So it’s just about doubled in just two weeks. This is where we were at last June. So I’m kind of sounding the alarm right now.
I don’t want people to panic and think we’re going to run out of water, but I want people to start paying attention to what they’re doing. If your neighbor is watering every single day or every other day… I hate confrontation, so this is a hard conversation to have, but this is the time where we need to. Just dropping it in conversation like, “Oh, my lawn looks really great and I’m only watering two days per week. What’s your secret, Janet?” or something. Then Janet might say, “Gosh, my lawn doesn’t look as good as yours, and I’m watering four times a week.” We need to get people aware of how much water their irrigation system uses, and also aware of how much water their landscape actually needs, because most of the time people put too much water out.
Grace Hallowell:
Another thing that the city can do is a free irrigation checkup.
Jennifer Nations:
Exactly.
Grace Hallowell:
What does that all entail if you call and schedule a free irrigation checkup?
Jennifer Nations:
That’s a great question. Sometimes people will call me out if they have a problem with their system. They say, “I’ve got one zone that won’t come on, can you come fix it?” I do not do repairs. I only diagnose. And if you’re in another city or if you’re out in the county, I can’t help you.
The customer that I think that benefits the most is the person who just has no idea how their sprinkler system works. I talked to somebody recently who they knew that their system was supposed to come on at 5:00 a.m., but it was still coming on at 7:00 a.m. I said, “Well, what are your start times?” And they said, “Well, yeah, I’ve got these four start times for every zone.” They didn’t understand. They thought that they had to tell their system to come on for every single zone, every area of their yard. So what they ended up doing was they were watering four times as much as they actually intended to. So I said, “No, no, no. Let’s back up,” and I helped them out of that.
Another person was trying to do the cycle and soak method, but when I looked at their controller, I saw, again, they had the multiple start times, but they had multiple watering days and they were watering far more often than they intended to.
Grace Hallowell:
Right. What else can you share about water, not necessarily about Smart Irrigation Month, but just some tips to conserve your water in your home?
Jennifer Nations:
Tips to conserve your water in your home:
Definitely, just find out where your water shutoff valve is in your front yard. Learn to read your water meter. We bill in thousands of gallons, and we read from left to right. So the 1, 2, 3, 4, that fourth number from the right, that’s your thousands of gallons. It’s important for people to understand that so that they know when they get their water bill, “Well, there’s no way I use that much water.” Well, yeah, you did.
Toilets often can be a big culprit. I’ve seen, I think, three instances now where the customer got a bill close to a hundred thousand gallons of water. They said, “There’s no way.” Yes, if the flapper is open, and the water is just passing by, it definitely can use that much.
People can also go to BV WaterSmart at tamu.edu and sign up for free weekly watering advice from there. That keeps track of rain fall. If we didn’t get rain, then it will tell you, “Run your rotor zones for this long. Run your spray zones for this long.” And just follow that. It’ll tell you to water two days per week, not four. It doesn’t have crazy long run times. And if people follow that advice, then they end up having pretty good looking landscapes without having a huge water bill.
Grace Hallowell:
This is a lot of information we’re sharing today, so if people have questions or want to learn more, where can they find out more?
Jennifer Nations:
They can go to cstx.gov/water.
Grace Hallowell:
Well, thank you so much for joining me again, Jennifer.
Jennifer Nations:
Thanks for having me.
Grace Hallowell:
You’re welcome.
Jennifer Nations:
Yes, it’s always fun when we get to talk about water. And that’s What’s Up.
This was fun.
Grace Hallowell:
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