Drought on the way? Officials asking for conservation efforts.
Agency says it’s holding off — for now — on requiring mandatory restrictions in area
In the latest sign that California is entering a new drought, Silicon Valley’s largest water provider on Tuesday asked the public to step up water conservation efforts.
“We have no idea how long it will last or how bad it might get,” said Tony Estremera, chairman of the board of the Santa Clara Valley Water District. “Clearly we can’t just sit back and wait for more rain.”
The district, a government agency based in San Jose that serves 2 million people, stopped short of announcing immediate mandatory water restrictions, like asking cities and private water companies who buy its water to implement oddeven lawn watering days for their customers, or to impose rates that set a penalty for residential water use above a certain level. Both practices were among the tools used in Santa Clara County and across the Bay Area and California during the last drought, a historic emergency that stretched from 2012 to 2016.
Instead, the district took the approach Tuesday that many other large water agencies around the Bay Area have embraced after two consecutive dry winters: asking the public for more conservation, but not yet cracking down to get it. A decision on whether to move toward tougher measures will likely be made by May, Santa Clara Valley officials said.
“We’re hoping you will continue to conserve,” said Aaron Baker, the chief of the district’s water utility. “If as we move forward, we see we need to call for additional restrictions or mandatory conservation, we will be making those decisions shortly. But at this time please continue your voluntary conservation.”
Baker said the decision will be made based on how much people conserve and how much extra water the district is able to buy from other parts of the state to boost its supplies.
Some critics said the agency should do more.
“They don’t want to make people conserve as much because they want to sell water,” said Katja Irvin, co-chair of the conservation committee of the Sierra Club’s Loma Prieta chapter, based in Palo Alto.
Irvin said the district should step up ads on radio, billboards and other media emphasizing the new drought. Katja said the district should boost funding for its conservation efforts, which include paying people to replace lawns with drought-tolerant plants, and offering rebates for water-efficient appliances.
The district’s 10 reservoirs on Tuesday were 16% full. The Sierra Nevada snowpack was 61% of normal. And rainfall this winter in most Bay Area cities is only at about 40% of the historic average.
“The reservoirs are low,” Irvin said. “If there’s another one or two years of drought, we are in big trouble. We won’t be able to get water from somewhere else because everybody else will also want it.”
In 2015, during the peak of the last drought, the district asked its retail providers in Santa Clara County for a 30% reduction in water use compared with 2013 — and got 27%. Former Gov. Jerry Brown also set mandatory conservation targets for cities.
Both moves led to higher water rates, “water cops” knocking on doors of people overwatering landscaping, restaurants ordered not to serve glasses of water and other restrictions.
After the drought ended in 2017, with massive atmospheric river storms drenching California, the spillway at Oroville Dam in Butte County failing, and major flooding in downtown San Jose causing $100 million in damage, the water district asked the public to continue conserving water voluntarily, at levels 20% below 2013. The public met that target through 2019, and last year reduced consumption slightly less, by 16%.
Other Bay Area water agencies say they are not yet considering specific targets for mandatory or voluntary water reductions. The Contra Costa Water District, which serves 500,000 people, says it has ample supply, with its largest reservoir, Los Vaqueros, 80% full.
“We think we’re in a good spot,” said Jennifer Allen, a spokeswoman for the district. “Obviously, it could change. We’re being very mindful of what’s happening. We feel we have enough to meet our customers’ demand, but as always there’s no room for wasting water.”
The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves 1.4 million people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, will decide in late April whether to set targets, based on how much more rainfall comes, said district spokeswoman Andrea Pook.
“We ask our East Bay community to be smart about how they use water,” Pook said, “and to stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks as we finalize our water supply outlook for the year. Our customers have done an amazing job over the past decades reducing their water use.”
The Santa Clara Valley Water District has a bigger challenge than most of its Bay Area counterparts. Anderson Reservoir, near Morgan Hill, the district’s largest, was ordered to be drained last year by federal regulators who were concerned that its 70-year-old dam could collapse in a major earthquake. That reservoir, which holds more water than all of the district’s other nine reservoirs combined, will remain empty for the next 10 years until a $576 million project to rebuild its 240-foot earthen dam is completed.
Until then, the district plans to rely on pumping local groundwater, which normally makes up about half its supply. It also plans to continue to import water from the state and federal governments from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. And it will draw more on underground supplies it has banked at the Semitropic Water Storage District in Kern County, while also boosting recycled water, looking to buy more on the open market and asking for more conservation.
“We want to get everybody aware and prepared,” Baker said.