Santa Clara County reduces water usage
After being threatened with higher bills, residents cut their use by 20% in November
After months of falling short, Santa Clara County residents have finally begun to hit the target when it comes to water conservation — and the threat of higher water bills may have played a role.
Following two record-dry years, the Santa Clara Valley Water District declared a drought emergency in June and asked the county’s 2 million residents to cut water use by 15% from 2019 levels.
After failing to achieve that goal for four months, county water use fell 16% in October. But there was a catch: Unusually heavy rains that month caused people to turn off yard sprinklers. Now the trend looks more solid. November had dry weather. But new numbers released last week show a 20% savings in November, compared with November 2019.
The trend is a good thing, say water experts, because although big storms in December ended Northern California’s wildfire season and built up the Sierra Nevada snowpack, reservoirs across much of the state remain at below-normal levels — and considerably more rain is needed over the next three months to fill them and end the drought.
“It’s way too early to spike the football this year,” said Jeff Mount, a professor emeritus at UC Davis and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s water center. “We’re halfway through the rainy season. We still have a very long way to go.”
South Bay water managers agree.
“We are not out of the drought,” said Aaron Baker, a chief operating officer with the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the county’s water wholesaler. “We continue to plead with the community to keep up their great work.”
Other parts of the Bay Area also saw conservation in November.
Customers of the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which provides water to 1.4 million people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, reduced water use by 22% in November compared with November 2019. On Wednesday, the district’s reservoirs were 66% full.
One possible reason for the growing water conservation in Santa Clara County? The threat of higher bills.
In November, the San Jose Water Company, a private company that provides water to 1 million people in San Jose, Cupertino, Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga and Monte Sereno, began imposing monthly water budgets on its residential customers, with surcharges for using more than the allotted amount.
Essentially, to meet the water district’s 15% conservation target, San Jose Water Company required its customers to cut 15% from their 2019 levels or pay $7.13 in surcharges for each unit of water above that amount.
“I think that has something to do with it,” said John Tang, vice president of San Jose Water Company. “We’ve been very proactive about getting the message out there about our plan and the drought surcharges.”
Mirroring the countywide savings, San Jose Water customers cut their use 20% in November from November 2019 levels.
The two years ending June 30 were the driest two-year period in Northern California since 1975-77. Drought conditions, made worse by climate change, led to record wildfire years in 2020 and 2021.
The wet December helped, experts say. But so far, January has been fairly dry. And more sunny weather is forecast.
“The next two weeks look dry,” said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay. “There’s a high-pressure ridge off the coast. The jet stream is hanging a left and going to British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.”
Computer models are hinting some storms could return to California in late January, Null said.
“But that’s so far out, my confidence level is in single digits,” he added.
The December rains helped boost reservoir levels. But one or two months of heavy rain doesn’t wipe out two years of severe drought, experts say.
In Santa Clara County, the 10 reservoirs operated by the Santa Clara Valley Water District on Wednesday were 26% full — up from 11% full on Dec. 1. The district has a particular problem: Its largest reservoir, Anderson, near Morgan Hill, is empty for earthquake repairs that were mandated by the federal government, and the cost estimate to rebuild it just doubled.
To make up for the lost water and the drought, the district has increased pumping local groundwater. It spent $35 million to buy water over the past year, mostly farm districts in the Sacramento Valley with senior water rights.
And it has taken 35,000 acrefeet of water — about 15% of last year’s demand — from the Semitropic Water Storage District in Kern County, where it has stored excess water during wetter years.
Among Bay Area counties, only Marin County has seen a neartotal reversal of drought conditions. After Marin was the bull’seye for several drenching atmospheric river storms in December, the seven reservoirs operated by Marin Municipal Water District rose steadily. On Jan. 14, they were 95% full.
The district has delayed for at least a year a $100 million emergency plan to build a pipeline across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to keep from running out of water. And it is preparing to ease water restrictions.
But in much of the rest of the state, big reservoirs haven’t fully recovered. Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, on Jan. 12 was just 33% full. Oroville, the second largest, was 43% full.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack was 130% of its historical average on Jan. 12, down from 160% two weeks ago.
“The jury is still out,” Tang said. “The water industry is breathing a little sigh of relief right now, but we still have another three months left in the winter, and those three months are going to be critical.”