Drought Impacting MSU Outdoor Athletics from MWSU Campus Watch on Vimeo.

The city of Wichita Falls has been feeling the heat from the tough drought restrictions. Kyle Owen, associate vice president for facility services, said those restrictions have forced the university to change some of its procedures.

The most obvious change is through irrigation or the lack of it, Owen said, adding that the campus is no longer using city water to irrigate any of the landscaping. The only irrigation the campus does is use well water for the athletic fields.

Wichita County officials said once the combined lake levels at Lake Arrowhead and Lake Kickapoo hit a combined 25 percent, the city of Wichita Falls would go into Stage 5 drought restrictions,  restrictions that could pose a problem for MSU athletic fields.

Owen said, even though the campus is using well water on the athletic fields, athletics doesn’t use as much as much water  as it could if the university had unlimited funds. There’s a safety aspect that’s probably being sacrificed whether we like it or not, Owen said.

Wichita Falls Mayor Glenn Barham said the city is already looking into what a dire situation may look like based on data from previous years.

Worst case scenario, like the 100 days of 100-degree temperatures during the summer of 2011 , we have sufficient water to see us through mid-2016, Barham said.

Well water is used to water the practice fields on campus, but the sand-based football field takes much more water to remain saturated than the softball or soccer fields. Owen said he’s had to look into other options in the event that restrictions get tighter.

“When we were deciding whether or not to try and spend the money for the well water harvesting for the football fields, I looked into the amount of water it would take to keep those alive if we trucked it in. It was like 9,000 gallons every 12 hours. That’s assuming the city would sell it to us,” Owen said.

Barham said the city is looking into several different ways to bring water to the area.

“The city has gotten to the point to where we have to try everything that is feasible. We have to think outside the box and do things in hopes that it will provide us some relief,” Barham said.

Wichita Falls director of public works Russell Schreiber said the city is anticipating Stage 5 drought restrictions to take effect in the coming months.

“We anticipate or project that to happen likely around the first of May under current climatic condition. If we get some rain this month that could get pushed back, but right now it looks like the first of May,” Schreiber said.

With current drought conditions, city and university officials said they’re willing to look into out-of-the-box ideas to conserve water.

“We want to make sure we’ve kicked over every rock at this point, in this stage of the drought,” Schreiber said.