Want to keep a pretty green lawn this summer, drought be darned? Gwinnett County might have a solution for you — albeit a costly, inconvenient and impractical one.

The county will now allow trained and certified tank truck drivers to load up highly treated wastewater and drive it to Gwinnett homes or businesses to water landscaping and for few a few other limited purposes— regardless of how bad the drought gets.

Current Gwinnett County restrictions forbid homeowners from outdoor irrigation using drinking water unless they've had new landscaping professionally installed within the last 30 days. The restrictions limit those users to 10 days of watering in that month.

And while homeowners could technically fill up a tanker truck of their own, or hire a company to water their lawns using the water, such a strategy would be cost prohibitive, said Bradley Griffin, vice president of Dacula-based Russell Landscape Group.

The typical lawn needs between as much as 1 inch of water a week in the summer, he said.

It would take more than 13,000 gallons to deliver that much water to a half-acre lot, according to various extension service fact sheets. That's nearly 15 truck loads for the company's small tank trucks.

While the water is free, the time and gas expense involved would make such a watering strategy very costly. He declined to guess how costly.

Instead, Griffin said the new program will make it easier for his company, as well as other landscapers, to keep new landscaping thriving during the first few weeks after planting.

Drought restrictions include administrative hurdles for landscapers and residents whose lawns are receiving post-installation watering. Both must register with the state and post signs indicating the water is authorized under a state exemption.

Under the reuse program, landscape crews can just drive out and water plants — as often and as much as is needed, Griffin said.

"It's a win-win for us," he said.

The water in question is highly treated wastewater that's already piped to two Gwinnett golf courses, a county park, a Duluth city park and the Mall of Georgia. All told, those facilities used 209 million gallons of the water last year, said Irish Horsey, reclaimed water manager for the county.

Although the water is not quite treated to the same standard as drinking water, it is indistinguishable to the naked eye from tap water and perfectly safe for use watering landscape plants, she said.

But it's not considered fit for consumption, use in swimming pools or for watering edible plants, according to state guidelines.

The state guidelines for the water reuse program limit its use to landscape irrigation, street sweeping, dust control, sewer cleaning, herbicide and pesticide application and concrete plants. It also can't be trucked outside the county, according to Horsey.

Anyone who wants to make use of the water in Gwinnett must go through an online training program, pay a $100 annual fee and a $25 fee for each truck they intend to use to haul the water, Horsey said.

So far, no one has applied, but Horsey said she expects interest to increase as the weather, and the planting season, warms up.

Gwinnett is the first county in Georgia to recieve a permit for trucking the water from the state, said Kevin Chambers of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.

Other jurisdictions have applied for approval, but he said he did not have access to who those jurisdictions are or the status of their applications.