OK. I’ve seen enough of this now that I no longer can remain silent.

Amarillo utility officials have to do something – please – about those who water the pavement in freezing temperatures.

Some of my neighbors are doing it. They run their lawn-irrigation systems when it’s, oh, 15 degrees out there. The water freezes. It ices the sidewalks over, forcing us to walk in the street to avoid slipping, falling and breaking our necks. The good news, though, is that our street is a quiet place that is two blocks long, with dead ends on both ends.

The bad news is that I keep seeing this activity all over the city, on busy thoroughfares. The worst location of all might be at the corner of Bell Street and Arden Road, where one business’s system sprays water not only onto the sidewalk, but onto the street – making both the pedestrian and motor vehicle rights of way hazardous.

I understand there are other places in the city that are equally hazardous, but that’s the one I see regularly.

The city did launch a pretty effective PR campaign during the summer about ways to curb water use. I think one of the public service announcements said something about how the pavement doesn’t grow.

The PSAs have stopped airing because we aren’t using as much water now that winter is upon us.

But I did check the city’s precipitation levels recently and discovered we are about to finish the year with roughly half the normal precipitation; “normal” is about 20 inches annually, but we’ve gotten only about 11 inches with slightly more than a week left in 2012. We’re still in a drought and it’s returning to the hideous levels of 2011, when Amarillo set an all-time precipitation record low for the year.

No one at City Hall is sounding any alarms, at least not publicly.

Perhaps it’s time, though, to launch another PR campaign advising residents and business owners of the folly – not to mention the hazard – of watering excessively when the temperatures turn sidewalks and streets into sheets of ice.