Is water rationing coming to San Jose?
Utility plan would bring back similar rules used in 2015-16
Highlighting the deepening drought, San Jose could soon become the largest city in California where residents are given monthly allotments of water with financial penalties for exceeding them.
San Jose Water Company, a private utility that provides water to 1 million people in and around San Jose, has filed a plan with state regulators that would require each of its residential customers to cut monthly water use by 15% from their 2019 levels and pay $7.13 in surcharges for every unit of water they use above that amount.
The rules are a possible precursor for similar limits in other communities across the state, experts said.
“If a water system is worried about running out of water, you have to have mandatory rationing with penalties for people who don’t conserve,” said Jay Lund, director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “Otherwise it’s a free-rider problem and some people will say, ‘I don’t need to conserve water because all my neighbors are,’ which undermines the whole effort.”
Sometime soon after Tuesday , San Jose Water will decide whether to put the new plan in place, said John Tang, the company’s vice president for regulatory affairs, once it reviews water use numbers from July and August to better understand conservation trends. Under state law, the company also is required to hold a public hearing first, which so far has not been scheduled.
“We are putting the pieces in place so that if and when we do need to enact it then we’re ready to go,” Tang said.
One complicating factor: Because
of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are still working from home, using more water than they did in 2019.
The last time San Jose Water put in place such a system was in 2015 and 2016, during California’s last drought, when Gov. Jerry Brown ordered mandatory conservation for urban residents statewide.
One other water utility in Santa Clara County already has put in place monthly water allotments, with a 15% mandatory cut and penalties for overuse. Great Oaks Water Company, which provides water to 108,000 people in San Jose’s Blossom Valley, Santa Teresa, Edenvale, Almaden Valley and Coyote Valley areas, began the system July 13.
“There was no need to risk water supply issues, so we took immediate action,” said Tim Guster, general counsel of Great Oaks Water Company. “This drought is serious. We did not believe delaying the process was good for anybody.”
Statewide, California’s current drought is the most severe since 1976-77.
This past year, San Jose experienced its driest year in 128 years of record-keeping, receiving only 5.33 inches of rain from July 1 to June 30. That’s about the same amount as Las Vegas or Palm Springs gets in a typical year. San Francisco had its third-driest year since the Gold Rush in 1849.
As the drought continues to expand, Santa Clara County is in worse shape than many other counties. Its largest reservoir, Anderson, near Morgan Hill, was ordered drained last year by federal officials to rebuild the dam to improve earthquake safety. On Friday, the 10 reservoirs in the county, collectively, were just 13% full.
The county suffered another hit when federal agencies announced earlier this summer they would be cutting water allocations to cities by half from the Delta due to a meager Sierra Nevada snowpack.
To make up for the shortfall, groundwater pumping in Santa Clara County is increasing. But if the upcoming winter is dry, water tables could drop to emergency levels next year, engineers at the Santa Clara Valley Water District say. That would increase the risk of the ground sinking, a phenomenon known as subsidence which could lead to cracked roads, sidewalks, home foundations, and natural gas and water pipes.
“If it doesn’t rain this winter, we are going to be in a grim situation next year,” said Gary Kremen, a board member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
The district, based in San Jose, is a government agency that is the wholesale water provider for Santa Clara County. It sells water to 13 cities and private companies known as retailers who send bills to customers.
The largest retail provider in the county is San Jose Water Company.
On June 9, the district declared a water shortage emergency and told its 13 retailers to cut water use 15% from 2019 levels, the most recent non-drought year. That cut is the equivalent of 33% from 2013 levels — the baseline before the prior drought. In response, local cities and other water providers have asked the public to conserve, by such measures as watering landscaping no more than twice a week. But there is almost no enforcement. And so far county residents are not meeting the 15% conservation target. In June, they used the same amount of water as they did in June 2019.
During the last drought, the company put in place water allocations and surcharges and met a 30% conservation target from the water district. But the rules were controversial. In an attempt to not penalize people who already had been conserving, the company gave every residential customer the same monthly allotment — causing bills to skyrocket in wealthy areas like Saratoga where homeowners have big yards.
This time the company’s proposal, which it sent to the California Public Utilities Commission on Aug. 5 and awaits PUC approval, is an attempted compromise. It would allow an acrossthe-board 15% cut, so people using lots of water would only be required to reduce their use by 15%. But it also would set minimal use amounts, ranging from 6 to 13 units a month, below which people would not face surcharges. That way, residents already conserving could avoid penalties.
A unit of water is 100 cubic feet, or 748 gallons — the standard measurement found on most water bills.
Other areas, including Marin Municipal Water District and the city of Santa Cruz, have said they are likely to impose similar monthly water budgets and surcharges to avoid running out of water.
“Watersheds are so dry, and reservoir levels are tremendously low, and groundwater levels are low,” Lund said. “It’s hard to recover. The likelihood that next year is going to be dry is pretty high. This is a very reasonable thing to do to prepare for it.”
Contact Paul Rogers at 408-9205045.