UPDATE: Mandatory water restriction for Lancaster Rural Water District No. 1

UPDATE:  Lancaster Rural Water has issued a mandatory water usage restriction for District 1. 

This includes all the customers of Lancaster Rural No. 1. 

"With the dirty water that was stirred up, we need time to concentrate on the pumps and towers catching back up," says District Manager Jordan Bang. 

Until further notice customers can not use water for outside usage, like watering lawns, shrubs, and filling pools. 

 The towns of Bennet, Roca and Panama have their own towers and are not in the restriction

The water is safe to drink and use inside the home.  

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Dave Hergenrader did not have a good weekend. 

"My neighbor called me while we were on vacation and told us, ‘You’ve got brown water again,’" Hergenrader said. "It’s like, ‘Oh, great!’" 

Hergenrader is just one of around 800 people currently dealing with dark, murky water in their homes and pools. 

Rural Water District No. 1 District Manager Jordon Bang says it’s because of a recent spike in water use in the county. 

He says recent housing developments on the outskirts of town, coupled with the unseasonably hot temperatures, combined to create a sudden demand for water, and that caused sediments that had settled in the system to be pushed out. 

"They’ve been watering non-stop" Bang said. "Some of them have run it from five in the morning until 10 o’clock at night." 

For Hergenrader, who lives near 70th and Saltillo Road, having murky water has been a big frustration. 

"It turns our pool brown," he said. "It turns my wife’s laundry – she washed white clothes one day and they came out brown." 

Hergenrader has lived in the house for over 20 years and says the water gets this way several times a year. 

Bang says that’s normal, and typically occurs with a season increase in demand like it did this time. 

Still, Hergenrader says he’s had to fork out several hundred dollars for filters and bottled water. 

While the water may look unpleasant, Bang says it is safe to drink and cook with, although he doesn’t recommend using it for laundry. 

He says his team has been flushing the system as much as possible, but there’s not much else they can do. 

He says the water should naturally flush out the remaining sediments in the next couple of days.