NEWSPRESS
April 05, 2007
A drought like no other
Cape, Lee officials face tough decisions as canals, wells dry up
By Joel Moroney
jmoroney@news-press.com
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070405/NEWS0105/704050364/1075
Cape Coral and Lee County could seek tougher watering restrictions as early as next week as officials scramble to deal with what has become a historic dry season by almost any measurable standard.
Plummeting canal levels in Cape Coral likely will limit lawn watering to once a week within the next several weeks, Public Works Director George Riley said.
Limiting watering between midnight and 7 a.m. could be brought before county commissioners next week to replace current rules, which prohibit twice-a-week watering during daylight hours, said Kurt Harclerode, operations manager for the Lee County Division of Natural Resources. He said increased enforcement and fines also are on the pipeline.
Those paying for a utility company to provide water should continue to get satisfaction at the faucet, but well drillers are laboring under new rules that require deeper wells and unprecedented demand as older, shallower wells run dry.
The South Florida Water Management District is meeting with utility companies and other large water consumers to make sure watering restrictions, put in place voluntarily on this coast after the 2001 drought, are being followed. And water managers are pondering the need for mandatory restrictions for all areas of the district, from Orlando to the Keys.
With no rain in sight, forecasters now predict a late start to the rainy season, which could leave the area dry into June.
"We're looking at a very serious situation, possibly the worst drought we have ever seen," said Rhonda Haag, local director for the water management district, who said the east coast is facing drastic water reductions and the possibility of massive dry wells.
"It's a serious situation and we want to make sure we don't get that serious over here," she said.
Cape Coral
"Even with a full moon and high tide, the canals are too shallow for people to get their boats off lifts and into the canals," said Jack Organo, owner of Bennett Marine Contracting & Construction. "It is all over the Cape ."
Cape irrigation uses wastewater reclaim first but as much as 80 percent of watering needs are quenched with canal waters, where levels are 8 inches below normal and expected to drop another 8 inches in the next couple of weeks.
"We think we will be going to council to recommend one day a week watering in a couple of weeks unless we get some rain none of us knows about," Riley said. "When the canal levels get so low, we have to stop watering it's worse than the drought of 2001 and that was a once-in-a-hundred-year drought."
The Cape has issued 3,309 citations for illegal watering this year.
Still the water continues to disappear.
"The water at my canal is normally 4 to 6 feet deep," said David Schlobohm, 58, a Cape Coral resident with a 28-foot Coastal Cruiser with a boat lift that no longer sets it in the water. "Now it is less than a foot."
Local Drinking Water
District officials are keeping their eye on a trio of aquifers on this coast that provide drinking water to private wells and utility companies. All are reaching historic lows.
The Mid-Hawthorn, which feeds North Fort Myers and Cape Coral , is 90 feet below ground its average low for this time of year is about 50 feet.
The Sandstone aquifer in Lehigh Acres is 35 feet below ground, or about 4 feet below normal.
The Lower Tamiami aquifer in Bonita Springs is at 19 feet below ground, close to its normal average low.
Utility companies drill hundreds of feet deep, but private wells are going dry at a record rate, according to Lee Werst, a county water manager.
A total of 230 wells have gone dry so far this season in the county, compared with 102 at this time last year. Of those, 177 went dry last month.
The county keeps no statistics on the number of private wells but as many as half the estimated 585,000 Lee County residents get water from wells and not from a city or county utility company.
Irrigation Plus owner Alan Rivera is drilling replacement wells as fast as he can. New mandates require 100-foot casings for deeper permanent private wells and take about twice the time, and cost twice as much, as older shallower wells. The only time he can remember being busier was during the record drought in 2001.
"Sometimes they spit air," Rivera said. "But most of the time they will wake up in the morning and have no water coming out of the faucet at all."
Rivera said the new wells are taking the better part of half a day and are likely to cost several thousand dollars more.
Harclerode said conservation is everyone's job from now until rainy season.
"What you are saving now could help you make it through the dry season without a dry well, or keep your neighbor from running out of water," he said. "We need to get the word out that this is a critical time, and we all need to do our part to conserve the resource until the rain comes."
The News-Press staff writer Pete Skiba contributed to this report.