By Nick Cahill, Courthouse News Service
SACRAMENTO (CN) – Three years after issuing California’s first mandatory water restrictions during a historic drought, Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday inked legislation creating permanent water-use goals for households and suppliers.
“In preparation for the next drought and our changing environment, we must use our precious resources wisely. We have efficiency goals for energy and cars – and now we have them for water,” Brown said in a statement.
Brown signed a pair of bills creating framework for statewide water savings mandates that will take effect in 2022. Residents will be asked to cut back on indoor and outdoor water use while water suppliers will have to submit water budgets and increase water recycling projects.
The legislation establishes a per person goal of 55 gallons per day until 2025 and eventually 50 gallons per day by 2030. According to state data, Californians used an average of 90 gallons of water per day in 2017.
Supporters hailed the Democratic measures, Assembly Bill 1668 and Senate Bill 606, as a jolt to the status quo and a means to permanently nix water waste, not just during periods of drought.
“Water efficiency can’t be something we think about only in times of drought – it has to be our way of life in California,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in a statement. “SB 606 and AB 1668 are important steps toward confronting the state’s water challenges, securing our most precious resource, and creating the more sustainable and resilient future that Californians deserve.”
Brown ordered cities and water suppliers to cut back water usage by at least 25 percent in 2015, after spring surveys pegged the crucial Sierra Nevada snowpack at just 5 percent of average. State regulators relaxed the 25 percent mandate late 2016 and Brown ended his drought declaration in 2017.
The five-year drought was driest stretch in the state’s recorded history.
While statewide urban water usage dropped following Brown’s mandatory cutbacks, it has crept up since the drought.
The laws task the Department of Water Resources and the State Water Resources Control Board with studying and developing new water recycling methods for agricultural and urban water suppliers. The state will be able to fine suppliers that don’t meet their targets once they take effect in 2022.
The water bills passed both Democrat-controlled chambers on a party-line vote.
Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District – the nation’s largest urban water supplier – said the bills give agencies enough flexibility to come up with attainable water saving targets.
“It leaves to local water managers the decision how best to produce water savings in their communities and where best to make investments in local supplies and storage to manage water supplies in a future of climate change,” Metropolitan representative Kathy Cole said in a statement.
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18 Comments
You mean like developers ?
Everybody pays for the water they use wasting or not wasting. The government needs to stay out of our lives especially when they keep allowing all this building ?
I hope that includes businesses and city owned areas.?
Tax spend regulate
Just going to leave this here: https://sandiegofreepress.org/2015/04/california-water-restrictions-must-include-nestle-big-ag-and-big-oil/
Stop allowing all the building is SCV and save the water you need to save. Nothing but corrupt politics once again. ?
Agree about developers,etc but we all should endeavour to conserve water,drought or not. It’s important to be good stewards of the environment.
i live in a mobile home so my water is included with my space rent….im so thrifty …its not whether i pay more or less…i know someday we may really be restricted….its not just about not running the water when you brush your teeth or shower or even doing dishes…i have to brag how good i am about it….lol
They need to crack down on themselves. Allowing millions of gallons to flow to the ocean instead of letting the farmers in the Central Valley use it to grow crops instead of leaving dustbowl conditions and causing higher temperatures and less rainfall to occur
If you want to end this water ? saving fraud then you need to vote for Travis Allen for Governor!
Good thing Jerry Brown spent that bond money on water infrastructure that we gave him years back.
Nope. The last cutbacks were followed by talk of price hikes because the rain collector didn’t plan for revenue decline. They can kiss my soaking wet feet. Mic drop. Hear my tunes or don’t http://www.jaredaxenworld.com/music
yes people are wasteful but so are alot of the businesses….we got to get use to being a desert and green grass soon to be history
Agenda 21 bullsh-t.
Seriously???? Quit building new homes, or it’s all just a big joke!!!!!
But not illegal immigration. What a surprise
Just quit building so many new homes!Why do we homeowners who have lived here for years have to let our property die & look horrible just so the developers can become rich!
The worst waste I see is usually at parks and on freeways, so maybe the state needs to police it’s own first.