This week’s hot weather has prompted city hall to issue a reminder about the bylaw governing outdoor water use.
If your house number is odd, you can only water your lawn and garden on odd-numbered days.
Public utilities manager Scott Tam says the same thing goes for even-numbered houses: you can only use water outside on even-numbered days.
“This is just a way to monitor water consumption through the city,” Tam outlines. “Our water plant produces X amount of litres a day and we just want to make sure that we never get to a scenario where we’re too short to meet local demand.”
That’s especially critical in an emergency like a major fire in town.
The same odd-even rule applies to filling your swimming pool.
“We don’t want to see individuals filling the pool and then just empty it on a regular basis, instead of treating it with proper chemicals,” says Tam. “We just want to make sure that hey, there is a bylaw, we just want to make sure not everybody’s filling the pool at the same time.”
If consumption does get too high, city hall could invoke its right to restrict water use to anyone with a permit from the CAO.