Tampa Bay Water<\/a>, said it’s about 75 percent full.<\/p>\n\u201cWe had a very, very dry September. We only got two inches, which is way below normal. Almost no rain in October and very little in November,\u201d Hogg said.<\/p>\n
Despite last weekend’s rainfall, Tampa Bay Water is urging residents to conserve water, as it began drawing from its reservoir sooner than preferred.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would prefer to not pull water out until the beginning of the year, January, maybe February into the Spring. This year we had to start in October,\u201d Hogg said.<\/p>\n
The reservoir supplies water to Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties. Tampa Bay Water describes the regional reservoir as the area’s savings account and drawing into it early isn’t ideal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout it, in the Spring, we would not have any surface water for our system,\u201d Hogg said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The reservoir holds excess river water so when it doesn’t rain, there’s no surplus, meaning there’s no water to collect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re still down for the year; we have received so far 40 inches of rain, but we’re a little over six and a half inches down,\u201d 10 Tampa Bay News Meteorologist James Hopkins said.<\/p>\n
Hopkins said we need consistent rain to break out of the drought.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe received over the last two days more rain than the past three months combined. But, again, unfortunately, are deficit prior to this weekend’s rainfall was nine inches,\u201d Hopkins said.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay Water said right now the reservoir is in good standing, but the team said as the population continues to grow, it’s considering a second reservoir.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of our feasibility study, we are looking at the Little Manatee River and Bull Frog Creek as another water supply possibility,\u201d Hogg said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Right now, Tampa Bay Water is constructing a 26-mile-long pipe from the Tampa Bay Water regional surface water treatment plant in Brandon to south Hillsborough County.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s expected to bring an additional 65 million gallons of water a day to South Hillsborough.<\/p>\n
This project will take three years to complete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tampa Bay Water official said that over the last three months, we didn’t get enough water, since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-76442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76442","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=76442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}