CEDAR PARK, Texas — The City of Cedar Park has announced its transition to Stage 3 of its Water Contingency Plan.
The new watering schedule goes into effect for residents immediately. All properties, commercial or residential, can only water once a week and no watering is allowed on Mondays or Fridays. Customers can only water before 10 a.m. and after 7 p.m. on their designated watering day.
Cedar Park is one of the several Central Texas communities under water restrictions right now. Most of those restrictions center around discretionary water use.
"Watering landscapes and pools and that sort of thing – you know, people even use pressure washers to wash off their sidewalks or their driveways – those are all discretionary uses of water. And that discretionary water use is one of the few things that we can actually control," said John Hoffman with the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA).
Hoffman explained that as population booms and drought persists in the region, there is no water to be wasted.
"Decisions that individual homeowners make are more and more critical because you don't have to wait for somebody to tell you that you shouldn't," Hoffman said. "We have enough water in Central Texas even though our supplies are stressed, but we just don't have enough water to waste, and our culture really needs to change, to reflect better the semi-arid region that that we live in."