The Orange Water and Sewer Authority board of directors met Thursday night to hold a final public hearing on the proposed Water Conservation Rules and Standards before presenting the document to local towns and the county for approval.
The proposed Conservation Rules and Standards will become an ordinance after approval by Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro officials next week.
All resident comments at the hearing were met with discussion by board members. The members voted to decide upon those issues at a later date.
The board decided to go ahead with its plan of sending the document to local governments today and responding to officials' concerns at a meeting next week.
The Water Conservation Rules and Standards are designed to reduce the rate of increase in overall water use through year-round water conservation. The proposal also addresses the stages of mandatory water restrictions in the case of a water shortage similar to the emergency-level drought last summer.
Under one provision, OWASA would attempt to reduce indoor water waste by encouraging low-flow toilets and low-flow showerheads. It also would try to reduce outdoor water use by limiting irrigation without sacrificing landscape quality and by encouraging more efficient watering practices.
The first draft of the Rules and Standards was released to the public at the end of December. The proposal elicited many responses from the public, which prompted the board to make changes to the proposal.
The proposal presented at the Thursday meeting was the third draft of the Rules and Standards, but it still created objections from some of the community members who attended the meeting.
Mack Clark, an OWASA customer in Chapel Hill, said he was concerned that the current plan for conservation unfairly targets single-family residences because the plan mainly is focused on irrigation regulations.
