I don’t want to sound like Chicken Little, so forgive me if I am pushing an alarm button.

Weather forecasters are telling us the drought that’s gripped the middle of the country is going to continue through this spring and summer. I believe we ought to prepare for some mandatory water-use restrictions.

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2013-03-23/long-range-forecast-shows-regions-drought-continuing

Amarillo utility officials keep telling us we have plenty of water. Yes, the city has been buying water rights left and right in recent years. Canadian River Municipal Water Authority officials recently purchased a lot of groundwater from T. Boone Pickens, so that water is in the bank … so to speak.

However, Mother Nature isn’t playing nice with us, which is something about which we mere mortal human beings are powerless to control. Yes, we had that massive near-record snowfall in February, but the moisture content did next to nothing to stem the drought. The snow melted and we returned almost immediately to what we’ve been seeing throughout the region: lots of sunshine from a cloudless sky.

Should cities such as Amarillo impose drastic measures? No, not yet. But mandatory odd-even lawn watering measures are reasonable restrictions to place on homeowners. The past two summers have seen the promote its “Every Drop Counts” water conservation initiative. The media reports on the amounts of water used daily to call attention to what residents and business owners are consuming; the city set a 60-million-gallon daily limit, only to watch as the city went well beyond that limit on most days.

I’m thinking the time has come for authorities to start getting serious about it and for them to begin imposing reasonable restrictions.

I know that irrigated agriculture is the main consumer of water in the Panhandle. I also know that residential water use comprises a tiny fraction of the groundwater sucked out of the aquifer.

But this drought will be with us until the Almighty himself decides to end it. No one – not even the smartest utility officials on the planet – can know when that will occur. What are we going to do about our water use until then?