July 29--Voter concern over California's drought is "extremely high and intensifying," according to a new poll, while a majority of respondents said they would willingly pay "a few more dollars a month" to improve state water infrastructure.
As residents struggle to meet mandated cuts in urban water use, voter concern over drought has now eclipsed concern over jobs, the economy and eduction, according to researchers.
As a result, poll sponsors say Californians are now more open than ever to long-term changes in the way the state manages its water resources.
"The public wants more to be done to address this issue," said Lester Snow, executive director of the California Water Foundation, which commissioned the survey. "They don't think this is temporary. ... They really see it as a long-term problem."
Among other findings, researchers said that 62% of poll subjects said they would be very willing or somewhat willing to pay $4 more a month for water if the funds were used to improve water supply reliability. Such an increase, if applied to the entire state, would generate roughly a billion dollars, according to poll sponsors.
The non-profit water foundation, which supports water sustainability programs, hired the bipartisan public opinion research firm of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz Associates (FM3) to conduct the poll. The researchers telephoned 1,000 randomly selected California voters and surveyed them over landlines and cellphones between July 6 and July 13. The results were released Wednesday morning.
Among other questions, voters were asked to rate their level of drought concern on a scale of zero to 100, where zero means "not concerned at all" and 100 means "extremely concerned. Half of the respondents rated their concern at 90 or higher, while 23% rated it at 100.
When researchers inquired about a list of other issues facing the state, voters repeatedly put drought at the top.
Though 86% of respondents said they were either "very concerned" or "extremely concerned," about the drought, only 65% said the same about the quality of public education, and just 55% said the same for jobs and the economy, Snow said.
"This is probably the first time we've seen that kind of high margin for concern about the drought," Snow said.
Since Gov. Jerry Brown imposed a mandatory 25% reduction in urban water use on April 1, there has been friction between urban water users, agricultural users and environmentalists.
However, the water poll suggested that these divisions were not as deep as they might appear. While 85% of voters said the drought's effect on the environment has been "extremely" or "very" serious, 81% said the same for drought's effect on agriculture.
"That was encouraging," Snow said. "It helps to break down the finger-pointing."
When asked if they supported a tiered water rate structure, 74% of voters said they either strongly supported or somewhat supported charging heavy water users more in order to encourage conservation.
When asked if they supported higher water rates on the largest water users in order to reduce fees on low-income consumers, 69% said they agreed strongly or somewhat.
"Taken together, these survey results suggest that California voters are ready and willing to support major and permanent changes in how the state manages water," researchers wrote. "Along with the finding that few voters are satisfied with the state's response to the drought, this indicates that legislators who support reform are likely to find that voters support their actions."
Researchers also noted slight variations in attitude among different regions of the state.
Though 65% of respondents statewide said they believed California was facing a serious long-term water shortage that will continue to be a problem even after we have more rain and snow, 73% of voters in the Bay Area and 70% of voters in Southern California said this was the case.
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