Drought watch for Long Island due to sparse rainfall, state officials say

After three months of little rain, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has placed Long Island under a drought watch.

Under the watch, which Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday, the state does not restrict water use but encourages residents to conserve water voluntarily. The watch was triggered by low precipitation, stream flow and groundwater levels, according to a news release from Hochul’s office.

"Even with some recent rain, it wasn’t enough to reduce the dry conditions we’ve seen most of the summer this year," Hochul said in a statement. "In order to prevent a more severe shortage should conditions worsen, we could see local water restrictions in the Long Island, Adirondack, and Great Lakes regions of the state."

The National Weather Service normally measures more than 11 inches of rain at Islip from June 1 to Aug. 31, according to the agency's historical data, which dates back to 1963 in Islip. Since June 1, the NWS has recorded just over 8 inches of rain at Islip.

Public and private water authorities on Long Island have been pleading with residents throughout the summer to ease up on their taps, especially those connected to lawn sprinklers.

Liberty New York Water, which provides water to Bellmore, Lynbrook, Oceanside and other southern hamlets in Nassau County, has asked homeowners in various hamlets to water their lawns 15 minutes at a time during overnight hours on even-numbered days if they have an even-number street address, or odd-numbered days for like addresses, according to its website

"There is a finite supply of water in the aquifers on Long Island, and since they are only recharged from rainfall, dry spells require additional water conservation measures," Deborah Franco, president of Liberty New York Water, said in a statement emailed Friday via a spokesperson to Newsday.

The Suffolk County Water Authority declared a Stage 1 Water Alert on July 23 and has similarly asked residents to adhere to an evens-and-odds schedule for watering lawns, Newsday has reported. For a few days earlier this month, the utility asked homeowners to stop watering their lawns all together.

The state’s drought watch declaration is "certainly significant," said Dan Dubois, the Suffolk County Water Authority's director of communications, but it does not change the utility’s request that customers cut back.

"We can see people responding and the demand going down a little bit, which has very much helped as we try to keep pressure throughout the system and ... make sure that there’s enough water and pressure to meet fire demand in case of an emergency," Dubois told Newsday on Friday.

Nassau and Suffolk are two of 20 counties across the state under the drought watch, the lowest of four DEC drought advisories that offer guidance to water suppliers. The other areas under watch are in western and northern parts of the state, including of Chautauqua, Niagara and Oswego Counties.

 While lower temperatures through summer’s end should lessen the demand for water, Dubois said it is not clear when the utility’s concerns and calls for conservation will pass.

“Last year, we had an abnormally dry September and October … we were seeing demand levels that looked more like July and August,” Dubois said. “It really depends on what the weather does and how our customers respond to that."