New Jersey is under a drought watch. Here’s how to save water.

Across South Jersey, many lawns have already turned brown, and the lack of rain in our area has many plants and farms in desperate need of water.
“Without any rain, we’ve had to run our sprinklers a lot. The grass is drying up pretty quick,” said Linda Riehl. “It’s requiring us to pay a lot more for our water bill.”
We’ve seen no rain so far in October. Now, a drought watch has been declared in New Jersey and the Department of Environmental Protection is strongly urging people and businesses to voluntarily conserve water.
“The last drought watch we were in was in 2022 and then prior to that, the last severe drought we had was in 2002,” said Dan Keashen, Camden County Spokesperson. 
“We should always be conserving water to a certain degree, but it’s more important now than ever. If we move from a drought watch to a drought situation there may be water restrictions,” said Keashen. 
At this point, a moderate drought extends across all of South Jersey with areas of severe drought over much of the Atlantic, Burlington, and Ocean counties. That severe drought has also begun to spread into Camden, Gloucester, and Cumberland counties.
The lack of rainfall since early September coupled with warmer-than-average temperatures in the past two months has created the worst drought conditions in the Garden State since August 2022 when a drought watch went into effect through December 2022. 
It has been 22 years since a drought warning was issued for New Jersey and that lasted nearly a year between March 2002 and January 2003.
“I would definitely say this is as dry as it’s been in a long time,” said Chuck Platt, who owns Platt’s Farm Market in Clarksboro.
At the farm, a small pond used for irrigation to water plants is much lower than normal.
“There’s an overflow pipe and the overflow pipe hasn’t had water in it for a good two months,” Platt said.
In recent weeks, Platt said he’s struggled to keep everything on his farm watered, but the upside right now plants are starting to shut down ahead of winter. Platt advises homeowners to water their plants so they survive, but he says you can do that while still conserving.
“Water by hand and keep the water directed at the base of the plant and not use sprinklers where a lot of water is going to be lost to evaporation,” he said.
The NJDEP said the persistent dry weather continues to stress the state’s water supplies.
New Jersey American Water tells CBS News Philadelphia there are no restrictions in place for customers at this time. Vice President of Operations Ben Morris said in a statement:
The NJDEP said if conditions do not improve, mandatory restrictions could go into place, but we are not there yet.
Extended forecast models hint that the current stretch of dry weather may continue into late October possibly reaching a record length of days without rain.
The dry conditions coupled with extremely low humidity have also prompted an elevated fire danger this weekend. Residents are asked to avoid the use of outdoor flames.
Here’s what the New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection recommends residents to do to conserve water this season: