waterdripAbbotsford had nearly 50 mm of rainfall last weekend, which city staff says helped rebuild water levels in Dickson lake.

However acting general manager of regional utilities Phil Blaker told council it’s still not enough to consider lifting the sprinkling ban.

“We’re looking at some warm, actually quite hot weather and dry weather over the next two week period. We will be back into the stage 3 level (in the lake) within a matter of a few days. So we’re recommending that we just stay the course on stage 3 at this point.”

Blaker said it would be confusing for people to bounce back and forth between different water restriction stages, and feel it’s best to keep status quo and re-evaluate at the end of August.

In the meantime because there won’t be any city council meetings in August, staff got council’s permission this week to bring in stage 4 restrictions if Dickson lake’s level drops below a certain point.