Water restrictions will likely be lifted Monday

A mandatory water alert in Portales will be lifted Monday if all goes according to plan, said City Manager Tom Howell.

The water restriction, which bans watering lawns, was enacted Thursday because two pumps in one of the city’s well fields were malfunctioning. The decreased production meant the city storage tanks couldn’t be replenished to meet demand.

Howell said Friday evening one well was running again, and the city had parts for the second. However, a third pump was malfunctioning, and city employees needed to go to Lubbock to get the parts to fix it, he said.