{"id":179822,"date":"2026-03-05T21:29:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/179822\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T21:29:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:29:25","slug":"tampa-bays-main-source-of-drinking-water-says-local-rivers-are-drying-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/179822\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay\u2019s main source of drinking water says local rivers are drying up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">RIVERVIEW, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; In the wake of the current drought, the utility that supplies drinking water to most of Tampa Bay says it will make a \u201cmajor regional water supply announcement\u201d Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Tampa Bay Water says water levels are so low on the Alafia River, the nonprofit utility cannot draw water for its customers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Tampa Bay Water, a nonprofit, special district of the State of Florida, provides water to governments including Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties and the cities of New Port Richey, St. Petersburg and Tampa. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cDue to persistent severe drought conditions, water from rivers is no longer available as a source for our drinking water supply,\u201d the utility said in a news release. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to its website, Tampa Bay Water takes water is skimmed from the Alafia River, Hillsborough River and the Tampa Bypass Canal. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Surplus water is stored in the 15.5-billion gallon C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir to supply the water treatment plant during dry times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Tampa Bay Water says it will ask the public to help by redoubling conservation efforts. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cTwo years ago, during our last significant drought, the community reduced water demand significantly, demonstrating that collective action works,\u201d the release said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WWSB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RIVERVIEW, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; In the wake of the current drought, the utility that supplies drinking water to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[85035,9952,891,525,8755,20806,135,137,136,4103],"class_list":{"0":"post-179822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-alafia","9":"tag-bay","10":"tag-conservation","11":"tag-drought","12":"tag-river","13":"tag-shortage","14":"tag-tampa","15":"tag-tampa-headlines","16":"tag-tampa-news","17":"tag-water"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179822","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=179822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}