And water rates ... up 20%.

Gotta love it (re: rates vs usage).

i haven't needed to water my fescue. it's been doing great without a single drop of water.

I don't believe I have any Fescue left, but I have a green "lawn"! Violets, Chickweed, English Plantain, Nut grass, Switch grass, Mondo and Liriope are all green and apparently extremely drought tolerant!
Rb

I saw a while back where the counties were complaining about reduced revenues due to water conservation. Their solution was to raise rates.

Likewise with gasoline. As people began to cut back on driving, the federal government complained about reduced tax revenues and wanted to raise the gas tax.

If someone has green fescue that has not been watered, I'd like to see photographs. I drive Lawrenceville to Alpharetta every day. The only green lawns have summer turf.

For my wife and I it is maddening that we have worked so hard to reduce water use only to be slapped with a rate increase!

...sizzle...

and the level in Lanier is still low (and falling) with 8 straight months of higher than average rainfall here in Flowery Branch

Higher than average? Not here in Buford. And my 'summer turf' is brown and has huge bare patches. I'll be lucky if I don't have to resod at some point.

Yep, same condition here. Bare patches in all areas that don't get some shade. To keep bermuda (and other plants) healthy, it needs some water when it gets no rain for more than a week. The water restrictions do not allow us to give it the water between the sporatic Tstorms. If we could, I would have sprinkled less than 5 times this year and it would have made a huge difference-to get the plants water when they really need it.
I have checked each and every month since December of last year on the Weather.com web site for Flowery Branch and the totals have exceeded the average. My frustration is that we have the most stringent water restrictions in place, Atlanta metro is still growing, rainfall is close to normal and the lake levels (Lanier and Hartwell) are still dropping. I have not seen any plans to increase the water availability in the near future other than pray for much greater than average rainfall.

I've reduce my water usage by at least 80%. I can't worry about the lawn, but I am sad to see how much my poor Japanese Maples and Viburnums are suffering.
I guess with all the early morning water cheaters out there we've managed only to reduce by a big 20%! This is serious folks

You should try to get the trees some water at least once a week, otherwise they may not make it. We can hand water so even a watering can full every week will help.