May 06--Just hours after approving a conservation plan designed to achieve a mandatory statewide 25% reduction in urban water use, regulators acknowledged the difficulty of slashing usage in the coming months.
In a call with reporters Wednesday morning, State Water Resources Control Board Chairwoman Felicia Marcus called California's current water crisis "the drought of our lives," and defended the board's aggressive action to combat it.
"We're taking what is, admittedly, a very big step and will be a huge lift for everyone," she said of the regulations approved late Tuesday. "We're hoping people will really rise to this occasion as they really must."
California Gov. Jerry Brown mandated the cuts in an April 1 executive order. The water board scrambled to design and approve a reduction plan that could be put into effect before summer, when water use traditionally jumps.
The plan will require more than 400 state water suppliers to cut usage by varying amounts, from 8% to 36%, depending on how heavily their customers consume water. Some suppliers also may be eligible for placement into a 4% conservation tier.
The board's plan has come under fire from water agencies, interest groups and members of the public who have complained about its fairness.
Under the latest framework published by the water board, Beverly Hills and Bakersfield must slash consumption by 36% over the next several months because their residents used more than 215 gallons of water per day last summer. Santa Cruz residents, meanwhile, used only about 45 gallons per day during the same period and have to cut their consumption by just 8%.
Max Gomberg, the water board's senior staff scientist, said Wednesday that some water agencies had been submitting outdated population numbers to the board. In its latest revision, the board accounted for dozens of changes to the data and tweaked which suppliers fell into each tier.
For example, Newport Beach previously was told it would have to cut water use 35%. A revised framework issued last month would have required a 32% cut. Last week that was reduced to 28%.
More movement could occur in the coming weeks as suppliers modify their data, Gomberg said. But the board plans to set a cut-off date of May 31.
"So far we haven't had any reason to believe there has been deliberate gaming," he said.
Marcus on Wednesday continued to defend the board's reduction plan, saying the water suppliers that are "scrambling" are the ones that didn't take conservation seriously in recent months.
She emphasized the need to reduce outdoor watering during the summer. "Turf rebates are not enough," she said, referring to programs that pay homeowners for removing their grass lawns. "It's putting lawn on a water diet.
"People should reduce their watering to one day a week to keep their lawn on life-support," she said. "That's pretty much the right thing to do."
Marcus dismissed the idea that an El Nieather event would be the answer to the state's water problems.
At the beginning of 2014, "everybody wrote the stories that El Niight save us and people didn't start conserving. As you may have noticed, it did not [save us]."
Data released Tuesday also painted a stark portrait of the uphill struggle Californians face to reach Brown's mandate. Cumulative water savings since last summer totaled only 8.6% compared with the same 10 months in 2013, the baseline year for saving calculations.
In March, California residents and businesses used 3.6% less water than they did during the same month in 2013.
"It is a sobering moment, and one that calls on all of us to step up," Marcus said.
