WATCH: \u2018Dog\u2019 rescued from water in Florida turns out to be coyote pup <\/a><\/p>\nThe region has been under a Modified Phase III Extreme Water Shortage since early April after a prolonged drought led to critically low water supplies. This designation will continue through October 1.<\/p>\n
If board members vote to extend the order, residents across much of Southwest Florida will continue to follow the current watering restrictions.<\/p>\n
Although recent rainfall has helped improve some conditions, officials said the region is still facing a significant water deficit.<\/p>\n
According to SWFWMD, the district remains nearly 13.7 inches below its 12-month average rainfall. Groundwater levels, rivers, lakes, and public water supply reservoirs also remain well below normal for this time of year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty severe,\u201d said Michelle Hopkins, the district\u2019s Regulation Division Director. \u201cWe have several parameters that we monitor. While we have had improvement in many of them, there are several that are still below normal. More importantly, our public supply reservoirs are low.\u201d<\/p>\n
The current restrictions affect residents in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Polk, Manatee, Sarasota, and several surrounding counties.<\/p>\n
Under the emergency order:<\/p>\n
Lawn irrigation is limited to\u00a0one day per week.<\/p>\n
Automatic irrigation is only allowed between\u00a012:01 a.m. and 4 a.m.\u00a0or\u00a08 p.m. and 11:59 p.m., depending on the property\u2019s watering day.<\/p>\n
Residents may still hand-water flower beds, shrubs and other plants any day before\u00a08 a.m.\u00a0or after\u00a06 p.m.<\/p>\n
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For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) \u2014 Watering restrictions across much of Tampa Bay will continue in the coming months. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[72616,135,1526,137,136,21160,21161,39842,66183],"class_list":["post-317902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-swfwmd","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-water-restrictions","tag-water-shortage","tag-water-supplies","tag-watering-restrictions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317902","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=317902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}