Cape Coral in danger of extreme drought

An urgent warning for families in Cape Coral: If the city doesn’t get enough rain soon, it will go into extreme drought. Not only does that mean watering restrictions, but major fire danger.

Cape Coral is asking residents to only water their lawns once per week. New people moving in, recovery workers from Hurricane Ian and seasonal residents are all putting a strain on the city’s water usage in the middle of record-breaking heat.

Freshwater canal levels across Cape Coral are extremely low. Without more rainfall, these drought conditions will remain. But the city is doing as much as it can to match the water supply during what it calls the height of the dry season.

“We’re about 30 to 40 days out before you’ll see regular rainfall each day, and we want to conserve what we have,” said Jeff Pearson, Cape Coral utilities director. “We are currently pumping 16 million gallons a day from the reservoir off of US-41 to supplement what would normally be our supply from rainwater or stormwater.”

While rain would be the biggest help, you can help, too. The city is asking homeowners to conserve water where they can, from watering lawns less often to using less water while cleaning.

“We encourage that you use a broom and a dustpan to clean with because it’s very wasteful to do that [with water],” Pearson said. “Also, other people, what other folks can do is make sure your irrigation timers are set correctly and turn on and off when they’re in accordance with the city’s ordinance; that will also help.”