Residents of Francis and nearby Woodland Hills are prohibited from watering outdoors right now. At the time of this report, the city hasn’t announced when the restriction will be lifted.
City Councilmember Clint Summers said the issue isn’t a lack of water.
“It's important that the people know that it's not a water supply issue,” he said. “It's getting it to where it needs to go and keeping up with, honestly, overuse.”
Francis has two water pumps that usually draw water from wells into the city’s tanks. Summers said one of the pumps failed Sunday night.
“It shut off as if the tanks were full and just never came back on,” he said.
That led the city to push out an emergency alert around noon the next day, reiterating the prohibition on outdoor watering and asking for general water conservation. It also meant the restrictions wouldn’t be lifted July 19, as the city had hoped.
Summers said the company who sold the city the pump is investigating the exact cause of the failure on Sunday night.
He says the company monitors tank levels regularly and notified the city the pumps were not keeping up with water consumption July 13, when the city posted a message on Facebook notifying residents not to water outdoors.
Residents have expressed frustration at the way the city notified them. One resident KPCW spoke with, who preferred not to be named, said she didn’t get the emergency alert Monday, but her 12-year-old daughter did.
“I have yet to receive an email or a text,” the resident said. “It's, you know, Facebook posts that are very vague and not very specific.”
Even though the city says the current council and mayor haven’t approved any new developments since they’ve been in office, residents see new development going on around them.
“The one right around the corner from from us just started a month and a half ago—the big commercial development,” the resident said. “There's a lot going on.”
Numerous Facebook comments echo concerns about development, but Mayor Jermie Forman replied, saying those developers are paying for a new well and tank currently under construction which could double the city’s water supply.
The pump that failed Sunday became operational again Tuesday morning.
Summers said there isn’t a new date set to lift the watering restrictions. He said the city will likely wait a couple of days to make sure the tanks are filling up again.
There are penalties for violating the outdoor watering ban, but the Francis resident KPCW spoke to said she didn’t know about them. She’d heard many of her neighbors say they’ll keep watering despite the city’s restrictions.
“I mean, I spot-watered a little bit, just because I think I'm still abiding by the rules, just trying to keep it alive,” she said.
City employees have said residents’ first violation will incur a warning, but the second violation carries a $25 fine and the third a $250 fine.
