HUMBOLDT — Beginning Friday Humboldt residents will be restricted in use of water for outdoors.
At the behest of the Kansas Water Office, council members approved a resolution at a special meeting Monday night outlining the restrictions, brought about by the ongoing drought and low flow in the Neosho River.
Watering of lawns and flowers may be done between 9 p.m. and 10 a.m. on even-days for residents with even-numbered street addresses and on odd-numbered days for those with odd-numbered addresses. Washing vehicles also will be affected.
Outdoor watering may be done with hand-held hoses or buckets, no sprinklers or soaker hoses.
The golf course will be restricted to watering tee boxes only; greens are sand. Private swimming pools may be refilled once a week and only after sunset.
John Hodgden, water plant supervisor, told council members a water watch had been in effect since June, when rainfall began to subside.
The restrictions are part of a water warning, he added, and is the second step taken when water concerns arise.
“Next is the emergency stage, when we would start looking for alternative sources of water,” Hodgden said. “Hopefully people will go by the stage two warning restrictions and cut back during peak usage,” during daylight hours.
Humboldt’s plant processes and sells about 3 million gallons of water a week.
Water for processing is drawn from a reservoir in the river created by a dam at the west edge of town. When runoff shuts off, as it has for several weeks because of the dry spell, water is released daily from John Redmond Reservoir, a flood control complex and reservoir north of Burlington, fed by the Neosho and Cottonwood rivers. That keeps the Neosho flowing at least at a trickle.
Hodgden said last word from the Corps of Engineers, which controls water released from Redmond, was the reservoir was at 62 percent of normal.
