Georgetown Gazette, News
Gov. Brown signs new bills limiting water use
Californians will have to tighten their water belts following Gov. Jerry Brown’s actions on Thursday after he signed two new laws that will require cities and water districts to set permanent water conservation rules for both indoor and outdoor water consumption regardless of how dry or wet we get from year to year.
“In preparation for the next drought and our changing environment, we must use our precious resources wisely,” Brown said in a statement. “We have efficiency goals for energy and cars – and now we have them for water.”
Brown signed SB 606 by Sen. Robert Hertzberg and AB 1668 by Assemblywoman Laura Friedman that require cities, water districts and large agricultural water districts to set strict annual water budgets, potentially facing fines of $1,000 per day if they don’t meet them, and $10,000 a day when there is a drought emergency.
Under the bills, each urban water provider will be required to come up with a target for water use by 2022. Fines for agencies failing to meet their goals can begin in 2027.
The targets will have to be approved by the State Water Resources Control Board and will vary by city and county.
The laws set an initial limit for indoor water use of 55 gallons per-person per-day in 2022, which gradually drops to 50 gallons per-person per-day by 2030. Fifty gallons are considered the minimum needed for health and safety.
How consumers will meet the goals remains unknown. An eight-minute shower, for example, uses about 17 gallons of water, a load of laundry up to 40 and a bathtub can hold 80 to 100 gallons of water.
Standards for residential outdoor use have yet to be determined and will vary depending on regional climates. There will also be a standard for water loss due to leak rates in water system pipes.
Water districts that have already taken steps, such as implementing recycling, could get more leeway in the targets they have to meet.
The Department of Water Resources and State Water Resources Control Board will conduct studies and recommend standards for indoor use by October 2021.
Last year, urban Californians used an average of 90 gallons of water per person per day for indoor and outdoor use combined, down from 109 gallons in 2013, according to the state water board.
Areas using more water were mostly located in Southern California and the Sacramento area, while cities with smaller yards and coastal areas with cooler climates, used less. In the summer at least half of residential water use in most communities goes to watering lawns and landscaping.
In regards to agricultural water suppliers, existing law requires them to prepare and adopt an agricultural water management plan every five years. The new bill will additionally require a plan to include an annual water budget based on the quantification of all inflow and outflow components for the service area of the agricultural water supplier and a drought plan describing the actions of the agricultural water supplier for drought preparedness and management of water supplies and allocations during a drought.
Supporters of the new legislation included business groups such as the Bay Area Council and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, along with water agencies like the Contra Costa Water District, East Bay Municipal Utility District, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Environmentalists supporting the laws included the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
However some environmentalist groups, such as Sierra Club California, said the rules don’t go far enough. Of particular concern was a compromise inserted in the bill that allowed cities and water districts to get 15 percent credit on their water use totals if they produce certain types of recycled water.
Those opposing the bills included some of the state’s major water agencies who argued that Sacramento shouldn’t be telling local government what to do. Among the opponents were the Alameda County Water District, Kern County Water Agency, San Diego County Water Authority and the Zone 7 Water Agency in Livermore.
“Every local water agency supports conservation and has a responsibility to make sure its water users use water efficiently,” said Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, which opposed the bill. “This was never about whether we should be pursuing conservation. It was about how.”
Discussion | 33 comments
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Watt BradshawJune 04, 2018 - 8:56 pm
There is nothing sure in life but death, taxes, and this: wherever environmental zealots get their way, life gets worse.
ReplyMccrank ResidentJune 05, 2018 - 4:14 am
For ideas on how you can drastically cut your municipal water usage by 80% and save hundreds of $$$ a year. Google "Oppose Bracebridge Sewers" for the website.
ReplyBillyJune 05, 2018 - 10:14 am
There is only so much water available. Face it. Water is a finite resource and must be used wisely. This law is a step in the right direction.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 05, 2018 - 6:47 pm
When this law's advocates claim it is just "a step in the right direction" they accidentally let slip their totalitarian environmental vision. If you'd rather not be ushered into utopia by threats of regulation, prosecution, fines, and imprisonment, you should oppose this law.
ReplyJimJune 06, 2018 - 4:40 pm
Did you actually equate saving water with totalitarianism? The aluminum tarrifs are going to impact your hat making.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 07, 2018 - 12:44 am
In actual practice, it's the left that equates saving the environment with totalitarianism. As the new water regulations demonstrate, water poverty is now to be our lot for the good of the collective.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 07, 2018 - 1:20 am
As we see above, if the left's environmental arguments aren't persuasive their fallback position is mockery.
ReplyT.D.June 05, 2018 - 11:54 am
Ask the environment people if their going to quit taking 50 percent of the supply first and sending to the ocean. Then ask if they will approve more storage. Answer will be only silence.
ReplybillyJune 05, 2018 - 12:14 pm
No, the answer will be more aligned with engineering facts: all the best dam sites have already been taken. If you did build another dam, you still have to pump the water to distant locations. We don't want to pay drastically higher tax to finance relatively small water increases for big Ag, and they don't want to pay the actual price of the water. If we stop sending water down our rivers to the ocean, we kill off a major food supply, wreck tourist and sport dependent economies, and permanently remove numerous beneficial species of plants and animals. Not wacky environmentalism; just science and truth.
ReplyTerry KershawJune 05, 2018 - 4:11 pm
Turning California farmland into a wasteland will have its own devastating affect on "numerous beneficial species of plants and animals" too!!
ReplySharJune 08, 2018 - 11:13 am
Billy it is totally untrue there are no dam sites left. And water does not necessarily need pumped. It can gravity flow from higher dam sites. and possibly provide hydroelectric power in the process.Larger water users should be encouraged to install winter catchment structures.
ReplyEric OrwellJune 05, 2018 - 4:52 pm
As if we needed new reasons to leave Commie-fornia. The Seneca Juice campus in Modesto just went up for sale...just like Campbells and Post, our ag industry is rapidly leaving the totalitarian state.
ReplyEric OrwellJune 05, 2018 - 4:59 pm
Lookup "New Water for a Thirsty World". Using deceptive tactics and emotion to end up controlling water supply is about the biggest power grab the elite have ever pulled off...but it looks like they have succeeded here in captured Commie-fornia.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 05, 2018 - 6:26 pm
The best decisions about finite resources are made by millions of individual buyers, sellers, and investors making millions of decisions daily in their own interests - in other words, by what's left of the free market. It is, in fact, their right to do so and that, my fellow citizens, is true economic justice.
ReplyJill LJune 06, 2018 - 1:08 am
Jerry Brown has fallen off the cliff on monumental stupidity. Thi# law cannot be allowed to stand in any way shape or form. If anyone votes to support this, or even says they support it, they need to be kicked out of office and then made to live by this. I hate this state because of morons in Sacramento. Get real guys and build water storage, etc.
ReplyOoortJune 06, 2018 - 9:57 am
Perfectly sums up the policies of the democrats right there. "Let's severely limit your freedom, punish you for overstepping it, but claim it's all for a greater good, while we line our pockets because people are dumb enough to keep voting us into power." If you're voting democrat, you're responsible for the hardships of others, period. If you want to give people a fighting chance to make something better for themselves, quit voting democrat.
ReplySuzy Hayes-TrippJune 06, 2018 - 11:01 am
An ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure. Laws are implemented when some people don't do what is obvious and sensible. Many who tout being conservative, never want to conserve.
ReplyJimJune 06, 2018 - 4:46 pm
In fact nowadays it seems NO conservatives want to conserve.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 07, 2018 - 1:09 am
Not at the point of a gun.
ReplyJimJune 07, 2018 - 3:53 pm
No one is pointing a gun. Kook.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 07, 2018 - 9:57 pm
At the bottom of every stack of regulations there is a gun.
ReplyJimJune 08, 2018 - 12:02 am
No there isn’t. You can’t just go around making stuff up and pretending it’s true because you feel like it. Only the president can do that.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 08, 2018 - 11:06 pm
Nonsense. If you resist the water restrictions long enough and vigorously enough, people with guns will come.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 09, 2018 - 12:24 am
Seriously, I am interested in hearing how anyone who persists in resisting this water law or any law will avoid a warrant for his or her arrest and incarceration. Isn't that what gives the law its punch - the threat of increasing levels of coercion up to and including forcible imprisonment? How do you see enforcement of this water law as being any different?
ReplyJimJune 06, 2018 - 4:52 pm
The biggest waste of water is agriculture in the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley where crops should have never been planted. The Central Valley and Sacramento Valley have plenty of native water for farming. Big Ag in the desert is using our water, and our water infrastructure, built by taxpayers, to subsidize their profits. Either make them pay full price or get rid of them and the rest of our ag, our environment and our residences will be fine.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 09, 2018 - 1:13 am
Here you and I may be closer than one might think. I applaud the idea that farmers should pay the full, unregulated price for water - small farmers and big farmers alike. In fact, I think everyone should pay the unregulated price for water.
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 07, 2018 - 12:53 am
If obvious and sensible are the criteria, then why all the laws? If ordinary people can't be trusted to see things the left's way, then maybe its way is not as obvious as some might like.
ReplyBot WadshawJune 07, 2018 - 7:52 am
Mr. Watt Bradshaw, most of us got over Ayn Rand in high school. By the way, did you know she was an atheist? And favored abortion?
ReplyBrendaJune 07, 2018 - 10:02 am
It has been many years since I have been in high school, but I remember being taught about rain and snow running down into the rivers and into the ocean, evaporating into clouds, then raining and snowing again. The water is all here and continues it annual cycle. Pollution is a real, but water is always here thanks to mother nature. We moved from LA to Placerville in 1977 and they have been talking about water shortage since then. Those of you that have Netflix watch "Water and Power: The California Heist"
ReplyDarleneJune 07, 2018 - 2:41 pm
Did they teach you that the exact same amount of water falls each year? I must have gone to a better school than you. They taught us that CA has periodic droughts of unpredictable severity and duration.
ReplySharJune 08, 2018 - 11:05 am
So are family gardens going to be outlawed for excessive water usage? Scary if the government keeps people from growing their own food. And heating their homes with wood even when the power grid goes down. Third world countries have hungry people in the cold, now California?
ReplyWatt BradshawJune 09, 2018 - 1:22 am
Shar, if the government already controls how much water your toilet can flush, there is virtually nothing they won't try to regulate.
ReplyMike GJune 10, 2018 - 6:12 pm
This isn't about water. It is about government control, power and greed.
Reply