A severe drought is tightening its grip on parts of North Florida.<\/p>\n
Tuesday, the St. Johns River Water Management District declared a \u201cmoderate\u201d water shortage for Duval County and parts of Alachua, Baker, Bradford, and Marion Counties.<\/p>\n
Officials are now urging residents, businesses, and farmers to voluntarily reduce water use.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n Duval County is more than 10 inches below average rainfall in some areas. Clay Coarsey, Director of Division of Water Supply Planning and Assessment at the St. Johns River Water Management District said it issued a voluntary shortage order to stretch water supplies before mandatory restrictions are necessary.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons we\u2019ve ordered this voluntary restriction, is to have this period of time stretch as long as possible before we have to go into mandatory restrictions,\u201d Coarsey said. He added that Central Florida has not received its normal rainfall over the past six months.<\/p>\n For some residents, conservation is already part of daily life. Isaiah Kelly said turning off the faucet while brushing teeth saves money and helps everyone. \u201cThat helps every person every day. It helps save on your water bill and it\u2019s more money in your pocket,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n Other families, already impacted by wildfires, are paying close attention to the drought. Sheri Sorrells of Callahan said her household talked about the fire risk and welcomed recent rain. \u201cWe actually talked about that. We couldn\u2019t have a fire the other night. We live in Callahan. We were happy that there is rain today,\u201d she said. She added that her family relies on a well, so local shortages don\u2019t affect them directly.<\/p>\n Wednesday\u2019s drizzle is not enough to replenish declining groundwater levels across North Florida. Officials warn that if dry conditions continue, voluntary restrictions could soon become mandatory.<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A severe drought is tightening its grip on parts of North Florida. Tuesday, the St. Johns River Water…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,34515,7840,34516,16125,73529,639,969,116,118,117,73528,73527,634,38713,9280,73530,24471,7842,73531,51459],"class_list":{"0":"post-152390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action_news","9":"tag-baker","10":"tag-ben_becker","11":"tag-bradford","12":"tag-callahan","13":"tag-clay_corcy","14":"tag-duval_county","15":"tag-jack","16":"tag-jacksonville","17":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","18":"tag-jacksonville-news","19":"tag-jonah","20":"tag-jonah_gavino","21":"tag-local","22":"tag-north_florida","23":"tag-northeast_florida","24":"tag-saint_johns_river_water_management_district","25":"tag-tanika","26":"tag-tanika_hughes","27":"tag-water_management_district","28":"tag-yona_gvino"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}