ROSWELL, N.M. — The City of Roswell wants to get ahead of any drought situations and increase water reliability, and they have to start with the community.

Through a drought contingency plan survey, they are gathering information on how people use their water.

“We need to find out, first of all, what people think is the water situation and then the task force will take that information and will try to build it into a plan and then match it up with the statistics that we’re sort of talking about, the things we will learn are happening here in Roswell to the actual water aquafer and what we have available,” said Judy Stubbs, chair for the Drought Contingency Task Force.

They want people to think about how much water they are using daily.

“What do we need to do to encourage the fact that Roswell is able to sustain a good water usage plan that I think too many of us and I’m certainly one of them, is a little casual about how I think about turning on the faucet and how long I leave it on and those sort of things,” said Stubbs.

Chantel Longway, a water conservation specialist, says Roswell uses nearly twice as much more water than other cities in the state. She says the goal is to lower water usage to have more reliability.

“We’re hoping if we catch it in the mild stages, we can tell people, hey, it’s getting a little bad out there. Let’s lay back a little bit like the climate has been hot, we haven’t gotten snow, we haven’t gotten rain.”

The survey is just one of two the city will put out. The second will focus on breaking it up into demographics to educate residents.

“From that, those answers we will continue to build a plan for the city and start educating people if there are any misconceptions,” said Stubbs.