Without rain, canals get lower water levels. That’s the case every year in Florida. This year in 2020, our rainfall has been lower then ever!! As a result, our canals are nearly empty!
At Garden Patio Villas in Margate, Florida, when we have near empty canals, we have lawn problems! We use a water pump that pulls from this canal. Once the canal got too low, it started to suck in mud. This is the reason our sprinklers were turned off.
Once the sprinklers were turned off, we called South Florida Water Manageme (SFWM) They handle Florida’s canals. They responded and said the South Florida’s water canals are all unusually low at this time due to the dry season. Lake Okeechobee is lower then usual.
Dry season usually ends at the end of April or possibly in May. Once the canals have more water from raining, we can turn the pump back on to water the lawn. SFWM also asks everyone to use water sparingly. Please consider this throughout your days. We are not the only ones experiencing this problem. The lawns are bad. We can see the fish nests out of the water! So sad because they died!
We do hope this is resolved shortly. There are other options for watering our lawn but it would cost a lot to build a well. As we wait for rain, we hope our grass will survive this drought.
These are some pictures taken from Garden Patio Villa’s backyard and next to Margate Executive Golf Course. Fortunately for the golf course, they have a small basin built with water to water their lawn. Other HOA’s have a lot more water in their area of the canal.
We believe since the canal next to us is at the end of the line, it is emptier then other canals. We post these pictures to remember how bad it got this year in 2020. Hopefully it will rain soon and this will be a memory of how bad the water problem was in the canal.