Mount Lemmon Community Center bathrooms closed due to water restrictions
TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) — The bathrooms at the Mount Lemmon Community Center are closed until further notice due to water restrictions.
The community is under strict water restrictions, which impact how much water residents and businesses can use, and now one business is seeing those effects.
For more than a decade, the Zimmerman family has owned the Sawmill Run Restaurant on Mount Lemmon. With the new Stage 3 water restrictions, Jenni Zimmerman, daughter of Robert Zimmerman who built Sawmill, said it is difficult to run the business as she normally does.
The Sawmill has now closed its restaurant for its usual weekend breakfasts and will be closed on Mondays until further notice.
“We’re shortening our employees’ hours, which means we’re not going to be making as much money as we typically do to pay all the bills that we have to pay, which stinks,” said Zimmerman.
Following the Stage 3 water curtailment, which limits water usage to 2,400 gallons per month, Pima County temporarily closed the community center bathrooms and installed two porta-potties as a replacement.
Those at Sawmill said that many of the issues they see are because of the restrictions, they also said that the community center shutting down its bathrooms has not helped.
“Normally with the bathrooms being open, we don’t see too many customers trying to come in just to use the restroom, but just this past weekend, we had probably double the amount of people we normally do,” said Sawmill Run head chief Nickolas Avarm.
Zimmerman and Avarm said that the two porta-potties are simply not enough to replace the bathrooms.
In a statement to 13 Newsews, Pima County Parks & Recreation said:
“Parks and Recreation was notified on Thursday, 24 July, by the Mount Lemmon Domestic Water Improvement District of a Stage 3 water curtailment, which limits water usage to 2,400 gallons per month (80 gallons per day). This water restriction impacts the public restrooms at the Mount Lemmon Community Center, which is a Pima County-owned property assigned to PR.
In the spirit of partnership and water conservation, PR installed two (2) porta-potties (1 ADA accessible and 1 normal) and one (1) hand-washing station on July 31 at the Mount Lemmon Community Center and temporarily closed the men’s/women’s restrooms. Weekly cleaning is provided by the contracted company.
Over the next couple of weeks, PR will assess usage and determine if additional resources are required. We are constrained to how many units we can place there.
From what I’m being told, there are two additional restrooms at the end of Summerhaven at the Marshall Gulch trailhead and picnic area, approximately 1 mile from the community center.”
For now, business owners like the Zimmermans said they’re trying to save water the best they can while keeping their business afloat.
“As of right now, it is what it is,” said Avarm. “We’re just trying to do the best to get through it and hope we get some rain soon.”
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