Although the recent rains have helped replenish water reservoirs across the county to full pool, water officials continue to urge people to conserve water at a time of the year when many add to their landscapes, plant gardens or do more water-related outdoor activities.

Assistant State Climatologist Pam Knox said the drought has disappeared from most of the state ” including Carroll County in the west.

“We have been edging closer to the border between being in a drought and not in a drought, and now we are starting to come out of the drought,” she said.

Although the state climatologists have declared the drought over, the office is not responsible for deciding “drought-level conditions for counties in the state.” Carroll County remains under “Drought Level 4” restrictions ” meaning that outdoor watering can continue only based on an odd/even address system.

According to State Climatologist David Stooksbury, although relief from drought conditions has come from an abnormally wet March, long-term rainfall deficits are still a concern for the state.

Stooksbury said in a released statement that by the middle of April, soil can begin to dry with increased watering of outdoor plants and warming springtime temperatures.

Bowdon Water Plant Superintendant Frank Carlson said rainfall from the past two weeks has left the reservoir about 6 to 8 inches above full pool.

Villa Rica Water Plant Manager Ray Pike said there has been an adequate overflow of reservoirs at Lake Fashion and Cowan’s Lake with the recent rains that have contributed to the city’s full-pool status.

“Now we have the rain, but in a couple of months come June, July and August we might not,” Pike said. “We are hoping we’ll have a better year with the rain than last year. This month we’ve had over five inches of rain at the plant, but that could stop at any time.”

Pike said it is important to continue to conserve water since about 65 percent of the city’s water use in the summer is used outdoors.

“The outlook is for a few more weeks of recharge followed by the normal drying of the soil due to water use and evaporation,” Stooksbury said in a released statement. “May is usually a dry month. Little recharge is expected from May through October, but this is typical for Georgia.”

Expressed interest in water conservation outdoors prompted the Carroll County Extension Office to host a “Water Smart” seminar on Monday. The seminar was put on by University of Georgia professor and horticulturist Gary Wade and attended by a group of about 25 people interested in gardening and landscaping.

Wade said the official term for using outdoor water resources wisely was “Xeriscape” but it is more commonly referred to as being “water smart” when planning outdoor landscaping to maximize water use.

Deciding how to landscape using flowers, shrubs and trees can be planned by the level of water need each variety requires to sustain and thrive in the area. The varieties can be classified into three categories from low to moderate to high water use.

According to Wade, the ideal water-smart landscape would include about 10 percent of the area designated as high water use, 30 percent or less for moderate use and 60 percent or more assigned to low water use plants to maximize water resources.

“The goal is to reduce or minimize the size of the area irrigated and the frequency of irrigation,” Wade said.

For those who love large areas of grass lawns ” particularly fescue ” Wade warned the high irrigation required was not the most efficient use of water in this area. He suggested homeowners try either a hybrid Bermuda grass or replace the existing grass with beds of plants that have low to moderate water requirements.

Wade said some examples of those plants include ornamental grasses, low maintenance shrubs and plants such as Gaura, Dusty Miller, Mexican Zinnia and Black-eyed Susan.

He also suggested gardeners invest in a rain barrel to collect rain water that would otherwise not be conserved, and water between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m to avoid evaporated loss of water.

One more tip that Wade suggested newspaper readers can benefit from was to recycle copies of the paper that did not include color print, which have dyes that could potentially harm the plants, and use the sheets covered with mulch to act as a barrier to protect moisture around the vegetation.

He did, however, joke that readers might want to avoid using the “comics section” since the plants might turn out “funny.”