St. Cloud Warns Water Usage Creeping Up, Asks People to Keep Conserving During Drought

(KNSI) – St. Cloud is asking residents to continue to conserve water because the small amount of rain has done little to ease the drought in the last couple of days.

St. Cloud put out information and asked people to conserve water voluntarily.

The Department of Natural Resources issued a warning earlier this month, and the next steps would be putting in place restrictions.

St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis gave his weekly update and said most people responded when the city asked people to conserve water usage.

“A number of people have, we’ve actually saw that demand go down for a period of time, but it’s starting to go back up.”

Kleis says the city uses about 14 million gallons of water a day compared to around 10 million gallons of water a couple of weeks ago when the voluntary conservation request went out.

The DNR wants St. Cloud to use around 10 million gallons of water a day and could put restrictions in place if water usage remains high.

“One of the most significant things you can do is reduce the watering of your of your yard to once a week or or twice but reduce that amount. That’s what’s increasing that demand.”

Usually, St. Cloud can use up to 24 million gallons of water a day.

Kleis says there is no need to reduce drinking water levels.

St. Cloud gets its water from the Mississippi River, which is at its lowest level since 1988.