HEATH, Texas — The City of Heath continues to ask residents to conserve water and is staying with a Stage 2 Restriction level, even though on Monday the city reported that nearly every drop of its daily allotment was used.
Heath, with its water supplied by the North Texas Municipal Water District but piped to Heath through a contract with the City of Rockwall, receives six million gallons of water per day. Stage 2 Restrictions ask residents who are watering with sprinklers or irrigation systems to limit that watering to once per week on a particular day designated by house number. Residents are also restricted from watering between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
A Stage 3 Restriction, which city leaders say is being considered next, would mandate watering only once every two weeks.
The problem in Heath, similar to issues in neighboring McClendon-Chisolm, is that the City of Rockwall is their only current source of water. And, according to the most recent census data, the population in Heath continues to grow by as much as 6% a year.
"Through our contract with the City of Rockwall our allocation is just limited," said Heath City Manager Aretha Adams in an interview last Friday with WFAA. "So if you're adding more people to the pool but taking more water out of it, you know eventually you're going to run into a problem."
As for a long-term solution to that problem, Adams said the city is working with a consultant and actively looking for a second water source. Currently Heath is, in a manner of speaking, at the very end of the spigot.
The North Texas Municipal Water District, with ample supplies from Lake Lavon, Lake Texoma, Lake Tawakoni and more, directly serves multiple cities like Rockwall, Plano, and Wylie -- just to name a few.
Heath is not a "direct" customer and relies on the six million Rockwall said it is able to send.
Adams, who told WFAA's Jobin Panicker on Friday that she shares the community's frustration with the water situation, also said that it may be up to a five-year process to find and connect an additional water source and to install the infrastructure necessary for Heath's growing population.
"This is not something that happened overnight," Adams said. "This is something that is 20 years in the making. So it's going to take a while to get out of it responsibly. And make sure that whatever plan we come up with his sustainable so that 20 years from now we're not having this same conversation all over again."