If your address ends in an odd number, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, water your lawns, flowers and vegetables on calendar days ending in 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. If your address ends with an even number, 2, 4, 6, 8, 0, water on calendar days ending in 2, 4, 6, 8, 0. Daily watering of freshly laid sod is fine. Discontinue hosing down driveways. Wash your car on the calendar day reserved for your address, but use a bucket instead of a constantly running hose. It's OK to rinse the car clean with a hose. Shut off decorative fountains that do not recycle water. Fountains such as the one at Heartland of America Park use recycled water and do not need to be shut down. Refrain from filling large private swimming pools. Filling backyard pools for toddlers is fine. Cities that buy water from M.U.D. are asked to curtail sewer flushing, lake filling, firefighting drills, street washing and other nonessential uses of water. M.U.D. serves 175,000 customers in Omaha, Bellevue, Bennington, Elkhorn, Ralston, La Vista, Carter Lake, Waterloo and Fort Calhoun. In Papillion, residents should refrain from lawn-watering this weekend. Watering is also banned from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and anytime on Mondays. Otherwise, Papillion residents should follow this watering schedule: Even-numbered addresses should water Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; odd-numbered addresses on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

6.29.02 You may have to get used to those water restrictions by Nancy Gaarder, Omaha World-Herald Two years with water restrictions could stretch into as many as seven for metro area residents if future summers continue on this hot, dry trend. For the second year in a row, the Metropolitan Utilities District has asked customers to voluntarily curb outdoor water use. That means people should water their lawns and gardens only every other day, avoid refilling swimming pools and shut off some fountains. Tom Wurtz, general manager for M.U.D., said it is possible that such voluntary and, he hopes, temporary restrictions will become a routine part of summer life until M.U.D. brings its next water plant on line. The earliest that could happen is 2007. Wurtz also said that mandatory restrictions are possible if conditions do not improve. Worse off than M.U.D. customers are those in Papillion, where watering has been banned on Mondays and anytime between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. A number of rural communities also have restricted water use. Several large Midlands cities also are keeping a close eye on supplies: Nearly each day this week brought record demand in Council Bluffs, which is going day-by-day on whether to start voluntary conservation measures, said John Elliott, water purification manager. In South Sioux City, Neb., where the system is running at 100 percent, it's "nip and tuck," said Dave Olsen, water and wastewater foreman. Residents there may be called upon to voluntarily restrict water use. Lincoln's situation is "cause for concern, but not alarm," said John Miriovsky, superintendent of water production. A number of other cities, such as Kearney and Grand Island, Neb., are better off because they have expanded storage or pumping ability in recent years. Western Nebraska cities such as North Platte and Scottsbluff tap into the massive Ogallala aquifer, so supply generally is not a problem. Still, Scottsbluff water systems supervisor Jack Satur said that demand has increased about 30 percent above normal, which is "a cause for concern." The water table, he said, has dropped a little bit. Wurtz, the M.U.D. general manager, said the metro area's problem is the ability to provide adequate water pressure in west Omaha. "We have plenty of water for indoor use, sanitation and things like that," Wurtz said. Lack of sufficient pressure makes it difficult to tap water from hydrants to fight fires. It also can inconvenience customers. Last year when M.U.D. called for voluntary curbs in water use, customers responded in an overwhelmingly positive manner, Wurtz said. The utility is banking on a similar response this summer. But a troubling difference this year is that water restrictions are coming at the beginning of summer instead of the end. "When you have drier periods in August, people have watered their lawns all summer and have a tendency to say they'll just let them go," Wurtz said. "In June, people are still trying to save their lawns. "That's a concern for us," Wurtz said. "That's why we really need to level off the peak right now. All indications seem to be it could be a long, hot, dry summer ahead of us." If no rain comes, voluntary cutbacks will be the key to avoiding mandatory restrictions, Wurtz said. M.U.D. has one more stage to go through before mandatory restrictions. That would be to ask that everyone refrain from any outdoor watering on the same day. Under the guidelines that take effect today, roughly half of the area's residents could be watering on any day. While M.U.D. has asked people to restrict everything from washing cars to filling pools, the real culprit, Wurtz said, is the growing use of lawn sprinklers. M.U.D.'s highest-use days are Monday, Wednesday and Friday, reflecting the schedule of automated sprinklers. M.U.D. estimated that customers used 205 million gallons on Friday, more than on any day this summer or last. M.U.D.'s current maximum capacity is 225 million gallons. The metro area, which has had only had two good rainy spells in the past seven weeks, has been classified as abnormally dry by the National Drought Mitigation Center. That's one step below first-stage drought. Click here for water conservation tips.

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