The State Water Resources Control Board approved a nine-month drought emergency plan on Wednesday that scraps previous targets and allows urban water suppliers to set their own water conservation goals.
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Starting next month, 411 urban water suppliers across California will be able to “self-certify” their available water supplies and the levels of conservation they deem necessary.
District officials said the wet winter’s rebound in regional water supplies is adequate to meet the demand of the district’s customers, which include about 500,000 people in the central and eastern parts of Contra Costa County.
“We are not out of the woods yet”, he said. “We have the ability to come back if it doesn’t work”.
Marcus and three other members of the five-person board voted for the changes to the drought regulations.
Tam Doduc abstained from voting, saying the revised approach does not do enough to address the drought emergency spelled out by Gov.
Graham said he’d much rather have the Irvine Ranch Water District, which led the push for local control of conservation measures, decide how much water residents can use. The latter agency – its reservoirs were 97 percent full as of Wednesday – will also look more closely at state water use requirements. But the drought is far from over. Over 70 percent of the state remains in severe, extreme or exceptional drought conditions, and the Sierra snowpack is only 33 percent of normal. “It’s a reprieve though, not a hall pass, for much if not all of California”.
The new approach lifts a statewide conservation order enacted past year that requires at least a 20 percent savings. The AP notes that certain bans, such as spraying down sidewalks with a hose, will permanently remain.
The new desalination plant in Carlsbad may allow San Diego to lift water use restrictions. And officials hope numerous actions taken by state residents-like installing drought-resistant yards-could permanently benefit the state.
At her home in Irvine, Lee Nguyen says she’s done her part to save water and supports local control over conservation efforts.
“California’s water challenges are vast and extend far beyond the current drought”, a letter from the California Coastkeeper Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Pacific Institute said, according to BuzzFeed.
Despite recent achievements in conservation, and they have been outstanding, there continues to be a large and growing gap between the water that is desired and that made available by nature. After it went into effect, Californians reduced water consumption by 24 percent compared to 2013, reports the New York Times.
Marcus called the state’s new approach an experiment.
“What do we think Beverly Hills is going to be proposing in terms of conservation?” she says. “Conservation needs to be a way of life in California”.
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Under the new regulations, local agencies will “self-certify” their water supply, then submit data to the state government for approval.
