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.

7.04.02 As water usage rises, so do rates for M.U.D. customers by Nancy Gaarder, Omaha World-Herald Metro-area residents who have been watering their lawns several times a week could be in for sticker shock when they get their water bills. Some bills could more than double because of the jump in water use. There are two reasons for that, said Roger Burmeister, rate manager for the Metropolitan Utilities District. First, outdoor watering consumes a lot of water. Second, as water usage goes up, so do water rates. Burmeister used one homeowner's bill to illustrate the impact of increased water use. The M.U.D. customer, who lives in a two-person household, has been watering every other day and has about a 5,000-square-foot lawn. The customer's bill last month was $17.52. This month's bill, he estimates, will be about $40, a 125 percent increase. M.U.D. has three rates for residential customers, each based on the amount of water used. The base rate applies to the first 6,700 gallons used. After that, the price jumps 40 percent. After another 15,740 gallons, the rate jumps 40 percent again. How much water are you using? If you have an average-sized yard, considered to be about 5,000 square feet, and you are applying 1.5 inches of water a week, which is the amount recommended by the Douglas County Extension Office, your water use totals about 4,700 gallons of water a week. What this means is that any water used above 22,440 gallons a month costs 80 percent more than water used below 6,700 gallons. The price increases don't apply to the whole bill, just to the amount of water used at each level. M.U.D. ties the cost of water to the amount used as a way of encouraging conservation, said Tom Wurtz, general manager. Even with the increased price, M.U.D.'s rates remain well below other communities', he said. "This will probably help conservation in August," Wurtz said. "Not everyone is complying. It's been a matter of education." Still, voluntary conservation seems to be working, Wurtz said. Although demand hasn't dropped significantly, it hasn't spiked upward, which Wurtz believes would be the case if people weren't helping out. Unless equipment begins to fail, he said, he does not see a need to go to mandatory conservation. And mandatory restrictions are something M.U.D. wants to avoid, he said, in part because the utility is so busy keeping the system running that it doesn't have anyone to send out as enforcers. Scattered rain showers brought some relief to the metro area Wednesday, but not a sufficient amount. Even if more rain comes this weekend, M.U.D. does not plan to lift the level 1 water alert (voluntary odd/even lawn watering), said spokeswoman Mari Matulka. That's because the utility first will need to evaluate long-term demand. Click here for water conservation tips.

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