Mandatory water conservation restrictions in McAllen have now been lifted.
The McAllen Public Utility announced that as of Wednesday, Stage 2 water restrictions had been lifted, allowing residents to revert back to voluntary water conservation efforts.
The MPU had implemented Stage 2 water restrictions in August under the Water Conservation and Drought Contingency Plan which was triggered by the combined water level at the Falcon International Reservoir and the Amistad Reservoir dipping below 25%.
Now, the MPU estimates the water levels are now at about 34% and should be hitting 35% next week, according to MPU General Manager Mark Vega.
“We didn’t want to do it until it was substantially higher than 25% because we didn’t want to say we’re off conservation, be at 30% and then not have any rains and three months later, turn around and say we’re back on conservation,” Vega said of lifting the Stage 2 restrictions. “We wanted to get at least that 10% gap above 25% so now we’re pretty comfortable in that it won’t happen sometime very soon; God forbid that we go back on conservation.”
He said the MPU won’t receive an update on the water levels for another two weeks from the designated watermaster from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, so they won’t know for certain what this weeks’ levels are until Feb. 10.
As of Jan. 21, though, Vega said the water level at the Amistad reservoir was at 45% while the level at Falcon was at 18%.
“They’re always measured in tandem, they’re always measured as a network because that’s how they work,” Vega said. “Amistad releases water to Falcon and Falcon kind of controls what’s released down to the Valley.”
One of them is typically higher than the other, Vega added, depending on from where the inflow comes into the river.
Despite just having come out of mandatory water restrictions, Vega said the MPU doesn’t like to preach conservation to their customers.
“There are billions, literally billions of gallons of water that flow through the Rio Grande all the way to the coast every day,” Vega said. “That’s water that’s unused and so there’s plenty of water. We just tell citizens ‘be smart about how you use it.’”
He said if people have leaks in their irrigation systems such as sprinkler heads that are broken or leaking toilet valves, they should, of course, repair those.
But, overall, Vega stressed there was a large amount of water in the reservoirs reserved just for municipalities in the Rio Grande Valley.
“It’s equivalent to almost a year of usage for the whole Valley without any, any rain coming into the reservoirs,” Vega said. “That’s always there in reserve so when you hear 35%, that the reservoir levels are at 35%, that is a tremendous amount of water.”
So the message he’d like to relay to the public is not to restrict water usage but to be smart so as to not waste water.
“That’s our message — don’t waste water,” Vega said. “Be smart in how you use it but it is there to use. That’s what it’s there for.”
