Even though there have been some showers and thunderstorms over the Wichita area over the past week, city officials are urging residents to stay with the outdoor watering restrictions that have been in place since August 5th.

Public works director Gary Janzen, speaking at Mayor Lily Wu’s weekly news conference on Thursday, said the response to the drought is a long-term action, and “we’ve got to stay the course, we’ve got to continue conservation.”

The city began stage two of its drought response plan on August 5th, and outdoor watering is limited to one day a week for each quadrant of the city.  Janzen said the volumes from the Hess pump station look promising, and there has been a reduction of 34 percent from late July.  He said the biggest declines are on the weekends, with outdoor watering banned on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  He said it has been a great start but there is a long way to go.

The city has issued 165 warnings about outdoor watering, but no fines have been levied at this time.  Janzen said the purpose of the restrictions is education over enforcement and residents are asked to continue to find ways to conserve water during the drought and into the future.

Janzen said city officials have been asked why Cheney Reservoir hasn’t been dredged to get more water.   He said watershed protection practices have limited sedimentation of the reservoir.   Dredging the lake another three feet in depth would capture another 1.4 months of water use at a cost of $110 million, and that would not be a good return on the investment.   The issue has been lower than normal precipitation in the Cheney watershed basin, and Janzen said if the area gets back to normal precipitation, it would take an estimated three years to fill Cheney Reservoir back to its conservation pool.