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Getting Serious

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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: March 28, 2009

Drought has gripped much of Florida for the last three years. If you are brave enough, take a look at the Keetch-Byram Drought Index map on the Florida Division of Forestry Web site, at http://flame.fl-dof.com/fire_weather/KBDI/index.ht.... With the exception of the western half of the Panhandle, its colors, which denote the level of soil dryness, range from orange, which is pretty arid, to pink, which is one notch below "forget about it." As of Friday Pasco County was brick red, thanks to a mean KBDI number of 657. On the KBDI 800 marks the driest conditions possible. Pasco's neighbor to the north, Hernando County, was pink as of yesterday, at a KBDI mean of 702. A few counties are in the mid-700 range.

If that's not enough bad news, Tampa Bay Water, the regional wholesale drinking water provider of which Pasco County and New Port Richey are member-customers, has pretty much exhausted its surface water supply. Thanks to the lack of rain, the Hillsborough and Alafia rivers and the Tampa Bypass Canal are so low Tampa Bay Water has stopped drawing water from them. Its 15-billion-gallon reservoir in southern Hillsborough County is nearly empty. This is forcing the utility to increase pumping from its big well fields in Hillsborough and Pasco. Tampa Bay Water in recent years had been reducing well field pumping because of the ecological damage it was doing.

So far, Pasco County has not followed fellow Tampa Bay Water member Tampa in totally banning the use of sprinklers for lawn irrigation. It is, however, ramping up enforcement of its once-a-week sprinkling restrictions, deploying a small army of utility workers and code enforcement officers to cite violators and more than quadrupled the first-time fine for not following the rules.

To reduce the wildfire danger, the Southwest Florida Water Management District has suspended its controlled burn program, banned camp fires and is telling people with off-road vehicles to keep on established trails and out of areas covered by dried vegetation.

The rainy season usually doesn't get under way until late June or early July. So things are getting serious indeed. Pasco County residents need to act accordingly.

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