The shrinking of its main reservoir, the swelling demand for its water and the need for drastic conservation measures have put some heat on the North Texas Municipal Water District.

Then come the questions, concerns and criticisms from some of the 1.6 million people who depend on the district for water.

How did the water supply become so stressed? Why this once-a-week watering restriction and maybe tougher cutbacks to come? Has the district, which serves 28 suburban cities and others across seven Dallas-area counties, become overextended, taken on too many customers, failed to adequately plan and secure enough water for an area that's been growing rapidly for years?

"Somebody screwed up, and they should be punished," said Jane Garrison, who says the limits on outdoor watering have wilted her Plano landscape business.

District officials blame an extraordinary lack of rain and surprisingly explosive growth for what they say is a temporary problem. Their planning has taken into account worst-case scenarios, they say, and it's not a factor that most of the district's water supply was established more than 15 years ago.

District and city officials are looking to strengthen and extend the water restrictions to conserve their water supply. They are preparing to dredge Lavon Lake and Lake Chapman to improve access to water in the drying reservoirs. And they may have to resort to rationing.

More customers need more water, and "population is just eating us up," said Jim Parks, the district's executive director. The district will keep meeting its customers' needs, he said, starting with two new supplies the district hopes to be using by 2008.

But for now, the big problem is the drought, Mr. Parks and others say – the lack of rain that has left Lavon and Chapman, two of the district's four water sources, critically low and falling.

No end in sight
Growth is an old story in North Texas, just as drought is a repeat offender. Yet the current version has been unusually brutal.

Dallas Water Utilities hasn't been hit as hard. With its five reservoirs a combined 67 percent full, the Dallas system hasn't put even voluntary provisions of its drought plan into play.

At Lavon Lake, 38 percent full, rainfall has been about 32 inches below normal since December 2004. Last year was the second-driest on record at the lake, with less rain falling than during the 1950s "drought of record."

The latest dry spell hasn't come close in duration to that six-year parching, which set the worst-case standard for water planning. Enough water should have been available for these less dramatic times, but the district's supply is being challenged, officials say, because the current drought so far is rivaling the most intense on record.

"We've been hit harder than we would have been in the '50s," said Mike Rickman, the district's executive assistant.

"It may become the drought of record," Mr. Parks said. "That's what troubles us. We don't know when it will be over."

Created by the Legislature in 1951 to provide water to 10 North Texas cities, the North Texas Municipal Water District now serves 60 cities, water supply corporations and others in Dallas, Collin, Rockwall and four neighboring counties.

Beyond Lavon and Chapman, which also provides water to Irving, the district has state permits to draw water from Lake Texoma and recycle effluent from a wastewater treatment plant near Lavon. Its allotted supply this year totals 98 billion gallons – two-thirds of which had been pumped through August.

About 90 percent of the water was connected before 1990, before the district tried unsuccessfully to buy surplus water in Oklahoma, before Collin and Rockwall became two of the nation's fastest-growing counties.

In the past six years, population has increased by about half a million in the district's service area, which includes eight of the 10 fastest-growing cities in north-central Texas.

"We know we are behind the curve on growth a bit," Mr. Rickman said.

Limit growth?
Some residents have suggested putting the brakes on growth, perhaps with a suspension of building permits, until their water supply can grow. Such matters are left to cities, which in North Texas and elsewhere have been cautious, if not flat opposed, to such moves.

Limit growth? "That's not what we do," Mr. Parks said. "My charge is to respond to the needs of the customers I'm committed to serve with a product."

But he and Mr. Rickman say the district continues to plan and add supplies, as it did this year in signing a 20-year contract to buy additional water from Lake Texoma.

Water sources can take years to develop, they say, and the process is a "balancing act" of demand and justification.

You want to have water when needed, but building reservoirs prematurely would be unnecessarily costly and difficult to get permitted, said Mr. Rickman.

You should have enough water to meet customers' needs without restrictions, said Ms. Garrison, the landscape business owner. "They've taken on more than they can handle," she said.

The district has not grown too far or fast, Mr. Parks said, and "as we develop additional supplies, we'll continue to add customers.

"The presumption is," he said, "you'll be able to develop the supply."

Plans to provide
The latest state water plan, up for adoption next year, predicts the district's supplies won't provide enough water by 2010 and proposes other sources to tap.

The plan calls for more than tripling the supply by 2060 to cover a demand estimated from population projections and past water use during abnormally dry 2000.

The district's two projects planned for 2008 would add 118 million gallons of water per day, more than the water now available from Lavon.

One would collect wastewater in the East Fork of the Trinity River south of Lake Ray Hubbard and pipe it north to Lavon for treatment and reuse. Construction has begun, although the project lacks a state permit and has opposition.

"I'm telling you right now, I will get that permit," Mr. Parks said.

The second, which doesn't need state approval, will deliver water from Lake Tawakoni to Lavon. The district has a contract to buy available water in the East Texas reservoir from the Sabine River Authority for the next 20 years. Construction of a pipeline is under way.

The two projects were in the works before the latest drought.

"We're not reacting to the drought," Mr. Parks said. "We're just trying to survive a drought we can't predict the end of."

And if it persists into 2008, the projects might not be enough to forestall rationing, a district water consultant told officials last week.

The 2008 additions will provide time to develop other sources, district officials say.

Busy preparing
The new projects and latest agreements prove the district hasn't been asleep at the wheel, said Mr. Parks, who is also chairman of the state's water planning group for North Central Texas.

"We will have added more [water] in five years than was added previously in 35 years," he said. "And if somebody will give me a permit, I'll add more."

Other plans:

• The district wants to build a reservoir near Bonham in Fannin County. The damming of Lower Bois d'Arc Creek would yield more water than Lavon Lake and ideally be completed by 2018, officials say.

• The district has requested permits to take additional water, more than now available in Lavon, from Lake Texoma. The target date is 2020 for a project that would pipe water to a new treatment plant north of Lavon.

• Longer-term plans would give the district a share of the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir in East Texas, a project already drawing broad opposition.

• The district has begun discussions with the Sabine River Authority and others about possibly piping water to Lavon Lake from Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas-Louisiana border.

District officials hope conservation efforts can reduce the need for additional supplies by saving more than 4 billion gallons of water by 2010 and 28 billion by 2060. And they would still like to buy water from Oklahoma.

"We're doing everything we can and then some," Mr. Parks said.

"If Lavon was in the same shape it was last year [a mere 7 feet below normal, 10 feet above its current elevation], I wouldn't be in a bind like this."