After a Rainy March, Gwinnett Relaxes Watering Restrictions
Gwinnett County today revised its watering restrictions to allow hand watering as permitted by state guidelines, but held off on making changes to its policy for watering of professionally installed landscaping.
As you may remember, in mid-February, the county revised the watering restrictions it had put in place in December to allow filling of swimming pools. It also modified its rules regarding watering of professionally installed landscaping to allow watering on 10 days within 30 days of installation if a sign was posted and the homeowner had completed an online course. The county’s guidelines were set to expire on March 31st.
In March, the county commission delegated the authority for managing watering restrictions during the drought to county administrator Jock Connell. He decided today to relax the restrictions on hand watering to those allowed by the state. That means you can use a hose with a hand-activated nozzle to water your plants for up to 25 minutes three days per week, on an odd-even schedule. People with even numbered addresses can water on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, while people with odd numbered addressed can water on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. All watering must be done between midnight and 8 AM. Food gardens can be watered anytime, and the you are not allowed to use your 25 minute window to wash your car.
For the moment the county is keeping the restrictions on watering professionally installed landscaping in place, although Connell told me that that policy may be revised in a month, depending on how much rain falls in April. The new policy takes effect today.
Given the predictions for an extremely dry winter, North Georgia has had much more rain than expected, except for January. For March, Atlanta recorded 5.17 inches of rain, a quarter inch less than normal. Gainesville had 5.25 inches of rainfall, 87% of normal, and Athens had 3.48 inches of rain, or an 1.5 inches less than normal.
On the temperature side, Atlanta averaged 54 degrees, or .3 degrees cooler than normal. Here in Lawrenceville, the mean temperature in April was 53.1, also cooler than normal.
The rainfall outlook for April looks good. There’s at least a chance of rain through Saturday night, and the Weather Service is predicting an above average chance of rainfall and above average temperatures from the 7th through the 15th. For the month as a whole, April should have above normal temperatures and normal rainfall in North Georgia.
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April 1st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
[...] to the almost-normal rainfall we received in March, Gwinnett County has decided to relax hand watering restrictions to match the guidelines put out by the state of Georgia. Specifically (as posted on the LWB): [...]