As temps rise, officials sound alarm for LIers to conserve water

Long Islanders are urged not to water their lawns during early morning hours with water districts reporting record or near-record usage during the first heat wave of the season.

The Suffolk County Water Authority, which serves 1.2 million residents, hit its all-time-high water pumping figure of 545,726-gallons-per-minute at 5:35 a.m. Monday, the agency said in a news release. The previous record was 542,610 gallons-per-minute set in July 2016.

“We need people to get this message loud and clear — change your watering habits today and help to ensure there is a sufficient water supply for everyone,” water authority CEO Jeffrey Szabo said in a statement.

A sufficient supply is needed for the pressure to fight fires and the flow to treat hospital patients, Szabo said.

Water usage typically peaks in summer as residents refill evaporating pools and water lawns and gardens. Long Island is also experiencing an unusually dry summer, with just 1.56 inches of rain falling at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip in June, much less than the average 4.27 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

The Long Island Water Conference, which represents water providers, recommends that residents shorten watering time by five minutes, check their irrigation system for leaks and install a smart controller that shuts off the system when rain is in the forecast.

The Suffolk County Water Authority is stressing that customers with automatic irrigation systems not run those systems between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. and that they water their lawns no more than every other day. Officials noted that residents may not realize the system is under the greatest stress during the early morning hours when many people have timed their sprinklers to run.

Szabo said the water authority is targeting that message to its East End customers, who are some of the heaviest users. Usage in Southold Town, for example, was up nearly 40% in June over the previous year and up about 35% in Southampton Village during that time, said Joe Pokorny, the authority’s deputy CEO for operations.

The Water Authority of Western Nassau, which serves 120,000 people, is near its daily pumping record of 18.33 million gallons set in 2019, said Superintendent Mick Tierney. The daily average that year was 10.59 million gallons, an uptick due to the same factors cited by the Suffolk County Water Authority, he said.

Six of its 24 wells are not operating as they undergo upgrades to treat the contaminants 1,4 Dioxane and perfluorinated compounds, further stressing the operation, Tierney said.

“We’re certainly taxing our system,” he said. “We’re on the border of hitting our peak.”

Nassau County law prohibits watering between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and calls for homes with odd street numbers to water on odd days of the month, and vice versa.

Smaller water suppliers are also asking users to adopt conservation methods.

Earlier this month, Riverhead Town mandated watering on odd/even days for residents of the Riverhead Water District.

“Water is so cheap that people just use it and they don’t pay attention to it,” said Riverhead Water District Superintendent Frank Mancini. “The whole industry has to work together and push conservation.”

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.