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Not all of The Villages uses reclaimed water

Are you sure ? Do they actually have somebody walk door to door reading water meters once a month ? About 5 years ago at my house in Cary NC they installed a system where they don't have to send anybody to read meters anymore. I have a website I can go to and see my water usage by the hour if I want to. There is about a 3 or 4 hour delay from usage to updating the website. It is actually useful as you can setup alerts when your water usage exceeds x gallons in a day etc.

I have the same question

They come around and read the meters each month.

What they want: Reduced irrigation water use

How they are trying to accomplish this: Tell people they can only water once per week for 2 months

The problem: Hard to enforce. You can send a nasty-gram but the restriction will be over in 2 months. People can reduce their watering to one day a week but increase the runtime. There doesn't appear to be a restriction on the amount of water you actually use.

What will this accomplish: Hard to say but hopefully they will get enough compliance to have an impact.

Well if that's the case they shouldn't be affected by the restriction. Nobody said you could only shower or do laundry once a week.

The issues
 

The soil? our homes are on is sandy clay or clayey sand.

Many people have a professional? who applies liquid fertilizer.
To be a liquid, it is of course water soluble. It is like putting miragrow on a plant-it lasts only two weeks.

You need to improve your soil-ADD ORGANIC MATTER.
A LOT OF ORGANIC MATTER-A LOT OF WORK TO DO.

You want to use LESS fertilizer. Putting down more fertilizer forces the lawn to grow and thus need more water.

You should take a shovel and remove a plug out of your lawn. You will see what YOU have. Most likely yu have half an inch of dark soil that came with the sod that was installed over the sandy clay-quick easy done. Unfortunately your grass has no reason to send roots into the sandy clay so it does not. With PROPER soil preparation your lawn grass roots should be down 6 to 8 inches.

The good news. Grass goes dormant if there is little water.
It will come back to life now that we are entering our rainy
season.

re: METER READING
 

I'm sure there are different systems but, I ask when I see workmen? walking about. Truth be told, I do not like the way these people simply walk onto your property. Not my line of work but if I wanted to rob people I would put on a work uniform knock on the door to see if you are home and clean you out. It is very unusual that you neighbors would even notice.

To the water meter. We have one of those green plastic plates in the lawn. To read the meter, he can read right through the plate-without removing it.

I think they have an electronic reader, so they don't need to open the meter box. They only need to be near it.

I am disappointed that we are ordered to cut back on our already limited lawn watering, while at the same time pretending it's fantastic to just continue building thousands more new houses. All those new places will require MUCH more water for their newly installed sod, to say nothing of all the other requirements for water at each new home. Does anyone else think enough is enough and we should stop our seemingly endless expansion? Or, is it more important to penalize current residents in order to keep the developer's almighty money machine producing? At some point the overbuilding is going to backfire and we'll see property values plummet when we don't have the natural resources to support it. Since the greed will not evaporate, we'll just have to pray for sufficient rains or be content with rock landscaping as seen in developments in desert areas "out West". Enjoy the golf courses while we still have them.

I don't believe that there is a water shortage, or that The Villages needs to slow down on expansion. Where is the evidence? Look at the population density in other parts of the country and the world and compare it to here. I remember the long lines to buy gas in the early 1970's, and they said that the world is running out of oil. In response, Ralph Nader said, "the world is swimming in oil". He was absolutely correct.

Thanks for that additional irrigation information!

A Fellow Marylander

Even the President told me to water between 6-8 pm, I will not do it as you have a good chance to get fungus on your lawn. Then, who will pay to treat the fungus,..they are real pain..keep coming back and expensive to treat.

When someone has a really good/correct answer for this, please re-post it as a recap please.

saw this in the online news

The approved rate structures for the Village Center Service Area, Little Sumter Service Area, the North Sumter County Utility Dependent District, Sumter Water Conservation Authority, and Fenney Water Conservation Authority include an Environmental Protection Rate Surcharge in the event a water shortage is declared by SWFWMD. In accordance with the rate structure, a 10 percent surcharge will be added to water usage beginning June 5 as a result of SWFWMD’s declaration of a Phase III Water Shortage.

I can imagine this conversation taking place.

Beancounter 1 "if we institute watering restrictions, revenues will go down by 10%"

Beancounter 2. "No problem, we will institute a 10% surcharge, call it something like Environmental Protection, yeah, that's the ticket!"

Same problem here...found I was watering at 20% last month...wondering why plants were looking frazzled.

Disconnected the blue wire - no problems anymore.

No, not really, the weeds then take over, i lost a lot of st augustine last year, and the weeds took over, had to resod in many patches, just now looking decent again, and they want me to turn the water off???
I dont have recyled water, so now what am i un affected?? Living here is not as easy i thoulght it would be. Plus it it too GD hot.

Is that the only penalty???...........10% Surcharge??

I believe the 10% surcharge applies to everyone in those named water districts. Whether you cut usage or not. Call them and ask if you like. They'll probably say the surcharge is to protect the environment or something. The wording is pretty clear that the surcharge is applied to all no matter what your usage is.

in the event a water shortage is declared by SWFWMD. In accordance with the rate structure, a 10 percent surcharge will be added to water usage beginning June 5 as a result of SWFWMD’s declaration of a Phase III Water Shortage.

Snowbirds/Snowflakes that have a"housewatch" company should be able to get them to adjust their irrigation system accordingly. Perhaps we will get sufficient rain this summer but hopefully no severe storms.

Correct me if I have this wrong but the water restrictions for irrigation which does not come from the Aquifer. If there is a surcharge it will be on potable water since that does come from the aquifer. Our irrigation water comes from ponds, run off, potties etc.? Looking at those areas it's pretty evident the water levels are down. Also, if they do a surcharge that isn't a penalty so if someone wanted to continue to water at the existing usage rate and were willing to pay the surcharge there would be no incentive for them to change their usage.

Unless you have a large yard and a high water bill, I really doubt the water police will make you change anything you are doing. I don't even know when my sprinklers go on, I see it sometimes, and I am like, nice, water.

Not potties...............

I believe Lake County is not in the restriction list.

Most have different types of sprinklers throughout the yard that require longer run times (rotors require 2x as much time), so a flat 10 mins per zone may not work. Adjust as necessary if you use the everyday approach. Will they limit the watering on the golf courses as well, I wonder if they are exempt?

I don't understand....if you read the restrictions, it says reclaimed water does not come under the restrictions at all. Our lawn uses non potable water so I believe the limits do not apply here in Lake Deaton.

The root system is shallow anyway because of mostly sand and very little top soil. We're going to try it and see what happens. Certainly our twice-a-week longer watering is not working.

Already happened on the golf courses, as posted on one of the golf course conditions threads.

Watering
 

Did anyone notice a 10% surcharge will be added to our bill as of 6/5???

Perhaps you should read....
 

down to where it states the watering for places that utilize reclaimed water to water your lawn. It might be enlightening.

Apparently the water restriction will be voluntary if you use reclaimed water for irrigation. I think this will apply to most homes in The Villages located south of Route 466.

The actual language is as follows:

Reclaimed Water
Reclaimed water remains subject to voluntary watering hours, unless blended with another water source or restricted by the local government or utility.

Do you know for a fact that there are no restrictions by the local government or utility?

I'm not certain of anything except death and taxes. But, I have looked at the Sumter County website and several of the local jurisdiction websites, and they are pretty consistent to exempt reclaimed water from mandatory water usage.

Yes, I get that. The real question is whether there are other mandates from the local government that require compliance.

Well, if you live in a city or other local jurisdiction, they will need to inform you of their specific rules and mandates. Otherwise, I would think that the county rules will prevail. But, it makes sense that water that is reused without being reprocessed should be available to water your lawn.

Lot of speculation there. Basically, all we know is starting June 5 you can only water 1 day per week. I would not speculate that it doesn't apply to those areas of The Villages where recycled water is being used because we don't know if the local government has mandated, or not, that you can only water one day per week with recycled water.

Hold on. I'm not speculating, and that is not all we know. The source for the water restriction story is the Southwest Florida Water Management District that spells out the restriction rules on their website. They clearly say that restrictions on the use of reclaimed water is voluntary. If anyone has any other information, please share it. But, so far, we have no information from any local government that has changed the restriction rules laid out by the management district.

You posted that the water restriction doesn't apply to those who have reclaimed water for irrigation. This may not be true based on the language I previously posted that clearly states that the government or utility may restrict this. Before posting such a speculation, you might want to find out the whole story since you don't know. What we do know is that a one day a week water limitation is in effect starting June 5 and there was no statement in the paper about it being voluntary.

I really don't understand what you are saying. The article in the paper was very short and left out a large part of the management district rules, which was the entire source for the newspaper article. I was just filling in the details because the article was misleading by leaving out the part of the rules that exempted reclaimed water. I think this is useful information because many people in The Villages are exempt from the watering restrictions because they use reclaimed water for their irrigation. Don't you agree that telling people that they are exempt from the restriction is helpful information? The only reason this subject came up was because the management district set some rules for water restrictions, but their rules exempted reclaimed water, a fact that was omitted from the newspaper article. I didn't speculate on anything. I just presented information that was stated in the management district rules that were not stated in the newspaper article. These are facts, not speculations.

The language is pretty clear. Posted again below:

Reclaimed Water
Reclaimed water remains subject to voluntary watering hours, unless blended with another water source or restricted by the local government or utility.

You don't know whether the local government or utility has restricted the usage of reclaimed water. If they have then the watering restriction is 1 day and is not voluntary. Until that is determined, you cannot say that 1 day per week is voluntary for those on reclaimed water.

You can continue to try to argue against this but the language is clear and we don't know whether the government or utility has issued such a restriction.

So, until a local government or utility tells you otherwise, you can use as much reclaimed water as you like.