If the recent drought continues, the state Department of Natural Resources may increase outdoor watering restrictions across Georgia.

The DNR’s next “level” of restrictions would limit watering only to Saturdays and Sundays, but Fayette County water officials are worried that so many people watering at the same time could put a real strain on the system.

Water System Director Tony Parrott told the county’s water committee Wednesday morning that his staff is pulling together water usage estimates to determine how the system would be affected by a weekend-only watering policy.

“We’re going to try to come up with some idea of what this is going to take out of the system,” Parrott said, noting that most of the outdoor watering in Fayette is for irrigation purposes.

Restricting outdoor watering to the weekends might cause such a water demand that it could lead to temporary outages and the like, Parrott said.

Douglas County decided a weekend-only policy would burden their water system too much — and they decided to go to a total outdoor watering ban, Parrott said.

So far Fayette’s reservoirs have held up during the dry summer period, with Lake Horton in south Fayette being down just two and a half feet and Lake Kedron in Peachtree City, which feeds Lake Peachtree to the south, being down just three feet, Parrott said.

“Our water use has been staying fairly constant,” Parrott said.

Parrott said water customers have been very good about complying with the odd-even watering system that has odd-numbered addresses watering on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, and even-numbered addresses watering on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

All outdoor watering on those days is limited to the hours between midnight and 10 a.m.

Some meteorologists have been referring to the current drought as an event that happens only once every 50 years, Parrott said.

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