State may fine water-wasting
Rules would ban washing cars without a shut-off nozzle on hoses and other wasteful practices
Amid one of California’s driest winters in modern history, state water regulators on Tuesday met in Sacramento to consider making permanent the water-wasting rules that were in effect during the last drought — rules that would carry fines of up to $500 per violation.
Members of the State Water Resources Control Board and representatives of several cities and water agencies indicated general support for the proposal on Tuesday, but the debate became bogged down in legal disagreements over whether the way the draft rules were written could threaten water rights, and the board delayed a final vote until next month.
The rules were put in place temporarily between 2014 and 2017 under emergency orders from Gov. Jerry Brown.
Those emergency orders expired on Nov. 25. With Brown’s endorsement, the staff of the State Water Resources Control Board began moving forward to make them a permanent part of California law, whether or not the state is in a drought. Under the proposal, it would be illegal for anybody in California to:
• Irrigate their lawn so much that water runs off onto the sidewalk, an adjacent property or the street.
• Wash a motor vehicle with a hose, unless it has a shut-off nozzle.
• Hose off a driveway or sidewalk with potable water, although there are exceptions for health and safety needs, such as pressure washing public sidewalks or street sweeping.
• Run an ornamental fountain that does not recirculate the water, unless the fountain is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Often federal and state laws make it difficult or impossible to modify structures on the historic list.
• Water landscaping within 48 hours of “measurable rainfall,” defined as a quarter-inch.
• Provide new towels and sheets in a hotel or motel without notifying guests through signs in the rooms that they have the option of re-using them.
• Water grass in public medians along sidewalks and roads. That rule would take effect in Jan. 1, 2025, allowing cities time to adjust. An exception was made for cities that use recycled water. The original rule
said the recycled water systems must be in place by Jan. 1, 2018, but after hearing pleas from cities that had new recycled water systems planned or under construction, the state board agreed to extend the deadline to Jan. 1, 2019, the reason its staff gave for delaying a final vote until next month on the entire rules package.
Environmental groups supported the rules, and requested they be made tougher.
“We are always for stronger and broader efforts on conservation and efficiency,” said Kyle Jones, a policy advocate with Sierra Club California.
“They are the most costeffective and best thing we can do to prepare California for what could be another drought this year, and droughts that will be caused in the future by climate change.”
In particular, environmental groups said they supported an earlier draft version of the plan that would have prohibited restaurants from serving water unless customers requested it. But the California Restaurant Association objected, saying that the amount saved was small and the fines were “excessive.” So the board’s staff changed the proposed rule to apply only if there is a drought emergency as declared by the governor.
“It’s an important tool to raise awareness during a drought,” said Charlotte Ely, a water board staff member.
Representatives of some cities and water districts told the board on Tuesday that they support most of the rules in concept, but objected to the way they were legally framed. The board staff said that it has authority to pass the rules under a provision of the California Constitution that bans “waste or unreasonable use” of water.
That sweeping power, approved by voters in 1928, has for decades made cities, farmers and others fearful that it could be used by the state to limit their water rights. For example, a future water board could argue that irrigating a certain type of crop in dry areas of the state constitutes “waste or unreasonable” use of water, and because of examples like that, many water agencies have been suspicious of any new use of the doctrine.
“We support the policy. But we are concerned about the means and the precedent,” said Robert Donlan, a Sacramento attorney representing the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and 26 cities, water districts and private companies in the Bay Area that receive water through the Hetch Hetchy system.
Although the board staff said Tuesday that the draft rules wouldn’t affect water rights because any city that saved water with them could use the same amount the next day on non-wasteful uses, at least one of the five board members seemed to agree with critics.
Calling the rules “lowhanging fruit,” board member Dorene D’Adamo said: “I support the policy, but I’m a little uncomfortable about the tool that we are using.”
Meanwhile, the board received an update on this winter’s dry weather pattern, which showed that the Sierra Nevada snowpack is only 20 percent of normal. Precipitation patterns across much of the Sierra — which provides onethird of California’s water — are among the lowest December-January-February totals back to the 1920s.
“This is a very ugly picture,” said John Leahigh, principal engineer for water operations at the California Department of Water Resources’ State Water Project.
Leahigh noted that in the historic record going back roughly a century, the lowest April 1 Sierra snow pack was 5 percent in 2015, followed by 25 percent in 2014.
“If this pattern continues this year, we are looking at three of the last five years having the lowest three snow packs for the entire historical record,” he said. “Either this represents a statistical fluke, or more concerning, we are looking at a long-term pattern change.”