Welcome, rain!

I woke up this morning abound 6 AM to a torrential downpour. Most of the Bay is getting rain right now. That doesn't mean that the drought is over, though! I'm only showing an inch of rain in the garden, and we're still way below our monthly average; not to mention, we still haven't made up for the dry winter we had. We're still experiencing a shortfall in supply due to the extremely low levels of water and increased demand, so it's still just as important as ever to watch our water usage!

If you're brave though, you can make use of this downpour to gather some water in buckets for washing your car if it's gotten kind of dirty in the last month or two (I know mine has- stupid glossy white paint showing every stupid speck and scratch!). I've got a few buckets under the downspouts and the rainbarrel is already full, so we're kickin' it conservation style over at Casa Su Blakington. I'll probably have enough water saved up to was the car and water the garden for a few weeks, at least until the rainy season starts off.

Sorry about the break (I know nobody reads this, but if someone does come looking, they'll wonder why so inactive), but I'll start adding some more links and what-have-you later this week. The semester is almost over and every class except Public Speaking is at least one week behind, so we're double-timing it through a lot of material, as well as prepping for finals. In fact, my agenda today consists almost entirely of school work- if time permits, I might go do something, but with this weather, I'll probably just work on school stuff all day and not have to worry about it this weekend. Stay tuned, and I'll have some more stuff up this week!

Phase IV Water Restrictions

Well, one day after my speech about water conservation, in which I mentioned that we were under a Phase III water shortage, SWFWMD has voted to move to a Phase IV (critical) water shortage, the most severe shortage ever experienced in the Tampa Bay area.

Water resources are now officially at a critically low level; as this article at Bay News 9 mentions, the Hillsborough River, which supplies most of the drinking water for the city of Tampa, is so low that in many places one can walk across the river without going more than knee-deep in water. River flows for all of the major rivers in the Tampa Bay region (Hillsborough River, Alafia River, Peace River, Anclote River, etc), on a scale from 0 to 100 (0 being worst), are hovering around the 2nd percentile. Some lakes in the area (Lake Tarpon, for example) are two feet below their lowest previously recorded levels. Right now Lake Tarpon is less than 8 feet deep in areas where it should be almost 20 feet.

With wildfires breaking out all over Central Florida, and drought conditions likely to worsen (April is historically the month with the lowest rainfall- only about 1.5"), the water shortage is only going to get worse until the rains start in May/June. Even then, it will take months for surface water levels to get back to normal, and the reservoir still has a great deal of repair to undergo before it can be used to store water.

The new water restrictions include outright bans on:
* Ornamental fountains/outdoor water features
* Residential pressure washing
* Car washing
* Campfires and controlled burns

...and a reduction in the amount of time you can water your lawn- down from thirty minutes maximum to twenty minutes maximum. Remember to adjust your sprinklers, fines in every affected county are over $100 for a first offense ($188 in Pinellas!).

Welcome SPC 1060 Classmates!

For those of you who are visiting today from my Public Speaking class (SPC 1060) with Mr. Repici, thank you for visiting this blog. I will, throughout the day today, and over the course of the next few days, be adding some more content. Feel free to use the "subscribe to this blog" link to get email alerts on new posts or add the feed to your preferred feed reader.

For those of you who don't use a feed reader, may I suggest you sign up for a Google Reader account- you can index all your favorite websites' RSS feeds into a single web-based reader you can access from anywhere.

Now, if you came here wondering what you can do for free to help save water, I will be posting a blog update later today with details on just that- stay tuned!


Also, everyone who gave speeches today- Good job guys! I particularly liked the speeches about...
* downloading music online (I have a 240 GB music collection of both live and studio tracks)
* working in restaraunts (though I learned some... different "life lessons" than you did, LOL)
* adopting animals (my nearly 4' green iguana was a skinny, starved little 7" rescue lizard with MBD. :D)
* older drivers (I drive pretty... leisurely, but old people can REALLY drive me nuts with their creeping pace!)
* Sugar gliders (cute, fuzzy, curious little marsupials are just interesting- awesome visual aid too)
* College football playoffs (I always thought the bowl games WERE playoffs... but I'm a geek, so I guess some confusion about sports is allowed.)
* Planning your route before you leave home (I used to be terrible at this, until I got lost in Indiana a few years ago- now I ALWAYS know where I'm going! Fool me once, etc...)

Those were just the ones that struck a personal "oh, I can relate" chord with me. Everyone who spoke today (okay, except maybe one guy) was well prepared with good research and visual aids, and delivered good speeches. Can't wait for debates, now, huh?

Xeriscaping

Xeriscaping is, according to Webster's online dictionary, a landscaping method developed especially for arid and semiarid climates that utilizes water-conserving techniques (as the use of drought-tolerant plants, mulch, and efficient irrigation). In Florida, we have to face the reality that water is scarce, and plants that thrive up North do not do well in Florida's hot, dry climate. Miles of endless turfgrass are simply not efficient! An old Florida favorite, St. Augustine Grass, is VERY thirsty, often consuming as much as 1 gallon of water per square foot per day (that's over a 6 million gallons per year for a single neighborhood block!). It also happens to require endless amounts of fertilizer, which is slowly poisoning our local water sources (look at the '87 algae blooms in Lake Tarpon that killed 3/4 of the lake's inhabitants). If you must have turfgrass, check out this Guide to Turfgrass Selection.

The first site I'd recommend checking out is the Florida Friendly Yards and Neighborhoods Program website. They have a Florida-friendly Plant Database as well as a good overview of the Nine Florida Friendly Yards Principles which include Right Plant, Right Place - or making sure you've selected plants appropriate to the sunlight, soil and moisture conditions of a specific site, Mulching, Attracting Wildlife and Reducing Stormwater Runoff - through methods such as swales (those depressions you see in yards near the edge of the property line), rain gardens (swales with appropriate plants) and rainbarrels.

Florida Yards and Neighborhoods also has a compreshensive PDF guide covering most of these topics.

Some tips on saving water around the house

Some general information on household water conservation can be found here: 25 ways to save water, 100 ways to save water (bigger list, some stuff repeated). The two big ones are low-flow showerheads and faucet aerators. Even if you don't have a paltry $10 to spend on a low-flow showerhead (which, I might add, will easily save you that much per year on water), you can get low-flow faucet aerators at most home improvement stores for less than $5 each. They can reduce the water being used by your faucets by half.

In addition, even if you can't install a new low-flow toilet because you're renting, can't afford to right now, or whatever reason, you CAN put an inch or two of gravel or sand at the bottom of a two-liter plastic bottle, fill the bottle with water and stick that in your toilet's tank. You'll be saving a half gallon every time you flush.

Tampa Bay Area Watering Restrictions

WATERING RESTRICTIONS ACROSS THE TAMPA BAY AREA (as of 29 Mar 09)
Here in Florida, we're under a continuing Phase III (Extreme) water shortage alert, and the drought is ongoing. The 15 billion gallon C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir is bone dry, surface water resources are so thoroughly tapped out that we've started pulling water from sinkholes to meet demand, and we haven't even hit the driest month of the year yet (April).

Check you sprinkler systems if you have them and make sure they're configured to the right days/times (or off altogether! Hand watering your landscape saves thousands of gallons of water). Make sure you know what days you're supposed to water on, and remember not to water between 8 AM and 6 PM (5-6 AM is ideal- lowest water demand and plenty of time for the plants to absorb the water before it evaporates under the sun), and never longer than 30 minutes, once per allowed day.

It's also worth noting that lawns are the only things with watering restrictions, check SWFWMD's page for a general overview of what is and isn't restricted. In general though, things like car washing, pressure washing, filling or topping off of pools and the like are restricted to certain days of the week, or not at all. MAKE SURE YOU CHECK BEFORE YOU TURN ON THE HOSE! THE FINES ARE NO JOKE!

WATERING RESTRICTIONS
See restrictions for Pasco
See restrticions for Unincorporated Pinellas (Except St. Pete)
- See restrticions for St. Petersburg
See restrticions for Unincorporated Hillsborough (Except Tampa, Plant City or Temple Terrace)
- See restrticions for Tampa
- See restrticions for Plant City
- See restrticions for Temple Terrace