Cape Coral freshwater canals start to fill back up

CAPE CORAL, Fla. The city’s freshwater canals have begun to rebound from a drought that left them perilously dry.

The rising levels are tough to detect with the naked eye, but data from the city shows the canals have started to fill up. They were on track to hit record low levels amid a severe drought, but that drought has been downgraded from severe to moderate for part of the city, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center.

The city is now pumping some 17 million gallons of water a day from a mining pit in Charlotte County, though that extra water isn’t taken into account in the city’s data.

A once-weekly lawn watering restriction remains in place, and the city catches 100 to 150 violators a day, a code enforcement official said.

One of those violators was caught with his sprinklers running seven hours after they were supposed to shut off. He was spared punishment after an official observed him correcting the issue with his sprinkler time, and the homeowner said it was all an accident.

“Yeah. I tried to comply and I just screwed it up,” homeowner Ralph Stenson said.