Save water as summer demand peaks on Long Island

Waste not, want not is the summertime caution from Long Island’s water districts this very hot time of year. With demand high to cool off, the Suffolk County Water Authority and other water districts in Nassau are urging customers to adopt alternate days for watering your lawn and gardens.

It’s an easy way to avoid wasting water, our abundant but most precious natural resource. It’s a voluntary conservation measure well worth following for the rest of the summer. And you should do so, not because of any imminent water crisis, but because it’s the right thing for the future.

Long Island is blessed with between 65 trillion and 120 trillion gallons of water in aquifers deep below the ground that feed water to homes and businesses. It's our only source of water. That's unlike many other parts of the nation, where conditions have forced the building of aboveground reservoirs, giant dams, or even desalination plants that convert salt water into fresh drinking water.

An alternate-day watering approach is necessary because the underground pipes are near their peak capacity in July, with nearly five times the amount of water flow compared to wintertime, according to Suffolk County Water Authority chairman Charles Lefkowitz.

With such a high demand, it’s important to reduce the amount of water wasted with excessive irrigation and sprinklers to ensure that water is always available for fighting fires and that water pressure isn’t affected, say experts.

This month, Suffolk water officials issued a “moderate drought warning” and urged an odd/even alternate-day watering schedule. Nassau has several smaller water districts around the county, and they are following similar conservation measures this time of year. Both Suffolk and Nassau ask residents to avoid sprinkling lawns and vegetation from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

This alternate-day schedule permits odd-numbered houses on your block to water on odd-numbered calendar days, and even-numbered houses to water on even days. Officials say this reduced watering won’t affect the quality of your lawn and will save tens of thousands of gallons of water for each homeowner during the course of the summer.

Overall, Suffolk says, 70% of the more than 70 billion gallons of high-quality drinking water pumped all year goes toward lawn sprinklers and other irrigation systems. Unfortunately, up to half of that water is wasted because of unnecessary irrigation practices, such as watering when it's raining out or using the sprinklers every day.

Many Long Islanders love their lawns and shrubbery. There is no need to say goodbye to the pool, or running under a hose on those hot and sweaty dog days of summer. If we take care not to waste water and use it wisely, Long Islanders will be in the green with plenty of fresh water for many generations to come.