Drought stage planting ban

Definition

Texas makes each public water supplier write drought stages, and the higher ones can stop new planting.

Why It Matters

Texas makes wholesale and retail public water suppliers and irrigation districts adopt a drought contingency plan. A supplier writes its own stages, and the state's rule sets a floor of three only for a wholesale supplier, so a city's retail plan decides how many it has. The City of Murphy's ordinance adopts the North Texas Municipal Water District model plan, and lets the city manager prohibit hydroseeding, hydromulching and sprigging at stage three, and prohibit irrigating new landscaping with treated water at stage four. Those measures are powers the city may use, not automatic consequences of a stage, so the question is whether it has ordered them. Mowing and maintenance are untouched either way, so what an ordered stage takes is the install half of the book. A book that is mostly maintenance rides a drought out; one that is mostly install loses its season mid-contract. Ask which supplier the accounts sit under, and how often it has ordered a stage in the last ten years.