Liberty Utilities, a private water provider that serves more than 20,000 homes and businesses in parts of Avondale, Glendale, Goodyear and Litchfield Park, has asked customers to voluntarily conserve water as part of a Stage 2 curtailment.

That might not seem like a big deal. We should be voluntarily saving water every day, right?

But no other water providers in metro Phoenix have moved to this higher stage, even with the hot weather and increased demand for water that Liberty says made it necessary.

Why is that?

State law requires all water providers to have plans for how they will handle water shortages.

The requirements and triggers in these four-stage plans vary slightly, depending on the community, though in most, Stage 2 is the point where supplies have begun to diminish.

It’s typically not enough to make taps go dry, which is why most plans call for voluntary conservation at this point.

But it’s the first signal of alarm about a provider’s ability to meet demand without additional water supplies or cutbacks in use.

Liberty — which relies almost exclusively on groundwater — set a Stage 2 curtailment for when its pumping or water storage capacity falls to 80% for at least 48 consecutive........

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