After Fairhope announced customers of its water utility are mandated to stop watering their lawns, many residents were left with questions about the city’s emergency declaration.

The city mobilized Phase 3 of its water conservation ordinance at an emergency council meeting Monday as water usage teetered near 100% of the system’s pumping capacity. Under Phase 3, anyone caught watering their lawn or violating other provisions of the ordinance could be required to appear in municipal court and face a fine of up to $500.

“People just aren’t paying attention,” Fairhope Mayor Sherry Sullivan told the council Monday. “We’ve used all outlets we can for communication, whether it’s through HOA, social media, we’ve been on the TV,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do other than enact this Phase 3.”

AL.com took resident questions to Mayor Sullivan to learn more about the emergency water ordinance and what is going on behind the scenes. Here is the Q&A, lightly edited for brevity and clarity:

1. Why did the city jump from Phase 1 to Phase 3? Could this have been avoided?

Mayor Sullivan: The reason that cannot be avoided is because we need to revamp the ordinance. So the ordinance right now set parameters where if you are seven consecutive days in at 80%, 90%, and 100%. But to be honest, once you’re even at 80% capacity for over seven consecutive days, you’ve almost gone too far.

What we’re seeing is we need to change that because we were at almost 90% to 100% capacity for almost the past two weeks. We had a couple of different days that were kind of an anomaly that we were maybe at like 7.9 million gallons, so starts the clock over, and I’m governed to follow the ordinance, so I couldn’t just jump to the next phase.

But what that did was because we were using so much water and the tanks weren’t having time to recover, it pulled our tank all the way down to what we call ‘in the red.’ So it created tons of pressure issues, and also a lot of people had groundwater (causing some to have brown water come out of their taps).

[Read more: Fast-growing Fairhope invests millions to keep up with water demand]

2. So far this year, 93 single-family building permits have been issued in Fairhope, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. If Fairhope cannot handle the current water demand, why are more housing permits being approved?

Sullivan: It’s not really just about the housing demand though. We can handle the housing demand, because on average, we use about 6 million gallons on a normal day. But the problem is that because of the weather pattern we’re in, the extreme heat that we’re seeing, not to mention the long periods without rain, is what’s causing our issue. And we have continued to ask people to please irrigate overnight, and people are not paying attention to the voluntary order that we put in place.

[Read more: Baldwin County planning commission approves subdivision near Fish River]

3. If housing isn’t a problem, is any of this attributed to population growth?

Sullivan: I’m not gonna say that it has nothing to do with the growth because we haven’t built a well since 2007 or put a water tank in since 2004. So obviously, we should have done a better job preparing infrastructure-wise. But at the end of the day, it’s not just the growth that’s causing this problem. It is also the weather pattern.

4. Is climate change the culprit for the water shortage?

Sullivan: That’s hard for me to say, that it’s climate change. But again, we’ve not seen these kinds of extreme temperatures in, that I’m aware of, several years. I do think the weather pattern is significantly contributing to the issues that we’re having right now.

5. One reader pointed out that Mobile Area Water and Sewer (MAWSS) has supported water infrastructure in parts of Spanish Fort. Why hasn’t Fairhope asked Mobile for help?

Sullivan: We probably wouldn’t ask for help from Mobile, but we probably would ask for help from one of our neighbors — we can do it in interconnection with them.

We just feel like we’re going to recover pretty quickly. We hope to recover pretty quickly. So we said after 48 hours that we’ll reassess, and if we need to do that we know that’s an option.

6. Why are Fairhope Utility customers prohibited to irrigate lawns but allowed to fill pools?

Sullivan: It’s not ‘filling pools.’ If you own a pool, you know that your pool can get below the skimmer and — I don’t have a pool this is just what I’ve been told from the pool companies — it will get below the skimmer level or a certain level of water, and if that happens, then you can burn your pump up if you don’t fill it back up. So that is the issue. It’s not about filling the complete pool.

7. Can you explain why golf courses are permitted to continue irrigating their properties?

Sullivan: The golf courses that we have around here are not irrigating from the city’s water source. Like Quail Creek, for instance, they irrigate from their ponds. Rock Creek has their own well, so they’re not pulling on the city system.

8. How will the mandatory ordinance be enforced?

Sullivan: We have code enforcement out, and we also have water department employees out, and we have the police department out. If they see that you’re irrigating, they will stop at your home, and give you a warning first and foremost. If you continue to do it, then you can be issued fines up to $500 and have to go to municipal court. My intent is to not have to cite anybody.

9. The city has said there are two projects that will be finished in 2024 that will increase the water capacity. Given the current demands are approaching 100% capacity, what are these two projects expected to add?

Sullivan: The one well will add 2 million gallons of water to our system currently, so we’ll be at 11 million gallons. And then the test well that we’ll also put in, we can pull probably another 500,000 gallons from that one. So technically, we could probably increase our water capacity by 2.5 million gallons.

We are already looking at doing a third site that will be another well that will pull 2 to 3 million gallons.

10. What is being done to plan ahead for future growth?

Sullivan: Continuing to add wells, and looking for locations to put another water tank.

The other thing is getting water to where it needs to go. So that’s increasing the size of the lines that you have carrying the water. That’s the line that we’re doing down Fairhope Avenue, the 24-inch ductile water line. We have to upsize a lot of our lines to get the water to where it needs to go. We approved that project, which is already underway.

That’s one of the two projects that will be completed in the first quarter of next year or in the spring of next year. We also just approved another water line on 181. That will increase the size of that pipe to take more water south.