CLEARFIELD, Utah — There's something you probably didn't see while driving through Clearfield on Wednesday: Sprinklers watering lawns.
That's because on Tuesday, the city asked people not to water outside and to conserve where they can. It's not that there's not enough water, but they aren't able to pull it quickly enough for regular city use, especially during the summertime.
"Our water pumps experienced an electrical malfunction. This meant that our pumps could not draw water from the aquifer to fill our tanks up overnight," explained Shaundra Rushton with the city.
Wednesday afternoon, the city said its tanks were improving and asked residents to reduce outdoor watering by half until further notice. They added, however, that the damage was greater than expected, and while one pump will be operational by Thursday night, full repairs could take a week or longer.
Bob Greer has lived in his home in Clearfield since 1986, with a lawn and garden he's proud of. But he tries to be efficient with water..
"Reducing the yard, move that back, put in trees that take the least amount of water," he said. "But I like to have it."
The city is working on a fix of the issue, which comes during peak sprinkler season, and they're thankful that residents are helping.
"What the community has done has helped us, it's bought the city time to fix the issue so that people can still have water in their homes while we repair the damage," Rushton said.
In case of an emergency over the Fourth of July holiday, there's enough water for crews to respond and react, but despite the city saying the issue will be completely repaired in a week, Greer worries if it isn't.
"You might get restricted on indoor use of water, then what do you do?" he asked.
Greer hopes that even when the current issue is repaired that more people will work to conserve water to help everyone in the community.
"Water your lawn, water flowers," Greer said, "but know what the water requirements are for those plants."
