Tampa Bay Water<\/a>, says the reservoir held about 5.5 billion gallons a month ago.<\/p>\n\u201cRiver flows have really picked up with rain since late August, and our reservoir is currently up to about 11.2 billion gallons, or about 72% full. So the recent rains and river flows have helped us make a significant improvement in reservoir storage,\u201d said Hogg.<\/p>\n
He added even more rain could ease water restrictions.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Swiftmud) looks at their hydrologic indicators, water levels in lakes, wetlands, aquifers, and rivers, and they also look at the public supply systems like ours to see what’s needed,” said Hogg. “They took action in September to extend the water restrictions through the end of March 2027, but if conditions improve, that could be changed.”<\/p>\n
According to Hogg, year-round water conservation practices shouldn\u2019t be an afterthought.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s important that we talk about conservation not just as a response to a drought,” he said. “We’d like for people to think about their landscapes and watering. When you have a watering day, you water on your day only if you need to. It’s not a requirement. It’s just your day that you can water if needed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Tampa Bay Water has a long-term plan they update every five years. It contains population and demand growth projections that help them plan for new water supply projects.<\/p>\n
They also urge residents to continue conserving water to help combat future droughts.<\/p>\n
\u201cUse what you need. Don’t use anything that you don’t need. It helps protect the environment. It saves you money. It puts us in the best position to meet the demand in the future and have fewer of these emergency-type conditions,\u201d said Hogg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a prolonged drought and a spike in rainfall over the past few weeks, the Tampa Bay area…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-427473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427473","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=427473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}