Zephyrhills Reclaimed Water Shuts Off for Two Weeks Starting Sept. 21

The City of Zephyrhills will shut down its reclaimed water system for about two weeks starting Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, so crews can perform scheduled maintenance on a storage tank. During the shutdown, irrigation systems that draw from the reclaimed water line will not run, and the city says households need to plan for lawns and landscaping to go without their usual supply.

The city has not given an exact date service will resume, only saying normal reclaimed water delivery will come back once the tank work is finished. Officials are directing questions to the Utilities Department, either by email at UtilitiesRFA@ci.zephyrhills.fl.us or by phone at 813-780-0029.

Who this affects

Zephyrhills runs a separate purple-pipe reclaimed water network alongside its drinking water system, and thousands of homes and businesses use it for irrigation instead of drawing on the city's potable supply, which comes from the Floridan Aquifer. Any address on that reclaimed system will lose irrigation water for the length of the shutdown. The city is not asking residents to switch to potable water for irrigation during the outage, so lawns tied to reclaimed lines will simply go without watering until the tank is back online.

Residents who water manually or run drip systems fed by reclaimed lines should expect the same gap. The city has not announced any exception process or temporary alternative supply for the two-week window.

Part of a bigger build-out

The shutdown lands in the middle of a longer push by the city to expand its reclaimed water network. The Zephyr Lakes Reclaim Water Line project, still listed among the city's active utilities work, installed roughly 10,500 feet of 12-inch purple pipe running from 12th Street and County Road 54 East west to Dairy Road, north to Daughtery Road, east to Wire Road and north to Kossik Road. That line was built to bring reclaimed irrigation to the Zephyr Lakes subdivision and to open the door for nearby homes and businesses along the route to tap into cheaper reclaimed water instead of pulling from the aquifer.

The city has said expanding reclaimed water service citywide is meant to ease pressure on the Floridan Aquifer, the source of Zephyrhills' drinking water. A two-week tank shutdown is routine maintenance rather than a sign of trouble with that broader expansion, but it does mean the system needs periodic downtime even as more neighborhoods get added to it.

Residents watching their lawns brown out over the next couple of weeks should hold off on assuming something is wrong with their own irrigation equipment. Anyone with questions about their specific account or service address can reach the Utilities Department directly through the contacts above, and the city says it will provide updates once the tank maintenance wraps up.

Stay with the Zephyrhills Community Website for updates as the reclaimed water system comes back online, and join the conversation in our Community Forum to compare notes with neighbors on how the shutdown is affecting your street. For more on city utility projects and local decisions that affect your water bill, check out our government and politics coverage and our alerts section for the latest city notices.