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Residents urged to use less water
Conservation will help end Southland drought
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More from County NewsIn the wake of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring a statewide drought, the main water supplier to Southern California is urging all residents to decrease water use indefinitely by 10 percent to 20 percent.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is also asking cities to review their water policies and push "extraordinary conservation" practices.
"Conservation will have to be the new norm for Southern California residents," said John Kightlinger, general manager at MWD. "We're running out of water, period."
He and other water officials held a news conference by phone Friday to announce the water supply alert. The district board is expected to adopt a resolution declaring the alert during its scheduled meeting Tuesday.
To end the drought, water officials said the only solution is long-term conservation.
Anthony Fellow, vice chairman of the board, said the state needs seven years of normal rainfall and snow to end the drought cycle.
After two years of below-average rainfall, low snowmelt runoff and the largest court-ordered restrictions on water transfers in state history, Schwarzenegger declared Wednesday that California was in a statewide drought.
The declaration is the first since 1991, when Gov. Pete Wilson acted in the fifth year of a drought that lasted into 1992.
The MWD of Southern California is a cooperative of 26 cities and water agencies serving 18 million people in six counties. It acts as a wholesale water supplier, which then sells to district agencies.
One of the agencies is Calleguas Municipal Water District, which serves Camarillo, Moorpark, Oxnard, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Port Hueneme, including Naval Base Ventura County.
Kightlinger said California residents are not excessive users of water.
"We're using the same amount of water in California that we did in 1980," he said.
The district used 2.1 million to 2.2 million acre-feet of water this year, about a 500,000 acre-feet shortfall. The district had to pull water from reserves.
The goal, he said, is to reduce this year's pull from reserves by 250,000 acre-feet.
An acre-foot measures volumes of water, typically for use in irrigation. One acre-foot is the volume of water sufficient to cover an acre of land to a depth of 1 foot. On average, 1 acre-foot of water is enough to meet the demands of four people for a year.
In Southern California, the MWD recently raised its water rates by 14 percent. Kightlinger said rates to agencies will increase an additional 30 percent over the next three years.
The water district also launched a $10 million advertising campaign urging homeowners and businesses to reduce outdoor watering by at least a day.
Conservation suggestions included city hotlines for people to report an inefficient use of water, three-minute showers, turning off water while brushing teeth and placing bricks in toilet tanks.
"People have to take more serious steps toward conserving water," Fellow said.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Posted by RedTail on June 7, 2008 at 9:16 a.m. (Suggest removal)
As a female, I can do everything except the three minute showers. I have a low-flow shower head and I don't take baths, so at least I'm trying to do my part!
Posted by harlan on June 7, 2008 at 9:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The planet is covered in water. If we wind up suffering because the freaking braniacs in Sacramento and Washington want to keep pretending that nobody has ever figured out how to turn salt water into fresh water, then we need all new government from the bottom all the way to the top. But wait -- that's nothing new, is it?
Posted by harlan on June 7, 2008 at 9:40 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Something else: I live in a neighborhood where some guy put in a quarter acre of soccer field lawn last year during the middle of the hottest, driest summer we'd had in years. He waters it every single day. There's another guy in the neighborhood who just bootlegged a swimming pool (didn't pull any permits) and who'll probably lose 10,000 gallons of water to evaporation each summer.
Is it really fair that people who voluntarily cut their usage back 20% last year are now being asked to cut it back another 20% this year so that we can, in effect, subsidize the water usage of people who want to continue to act act if we lived in a land of plentiful rainfall? Are we supposed to wear shirts twice without washing them so that a very small percentage of county residents can smack a little white ball around at Spanish Hills and other local golf courses? Is the entire West supposed to cut back on water usage so that Las Vegas can continue to build and operate casinos with huge water features that lose millions of gallons of water each year to the hot Nevada sun for no better purpose than to delight passersby? Are we supposed to quit flushing our toilets when we urinate so that we can drive down Victoria or Telephone or Main or Telegraph or a thousand different county side-streets and watch private and commercial irrigation systems run needlessly for hours and hours, sending God knows how many gallons of water into the storm drains, day after day after day?
Posted by potatoebay on June 7, 2008 at 12:10 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Harlan, You make a lot of sense. People need to start planting more native plants that survive during drought years. I have been spending a lot of time in Baja lately and there are lots of beautiful plants down there that survive on little water.
Posted by potatoebay on June 7, 2008 at 12:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
After all, we do live in a semi-desert region. Do we really need to make our homes look like a tropical rain forest?
Posted by sparks240 on June 7, 2008 at 1:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)
harlan, good point. I'm taking long hot showers at full pressure until government and industry grow a pair and show some leadership.
Posted by tsetsaf on June 7, 2008 at 1:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The state should just jack up the price of water. Like gas, if it hurts enough, people will use less.
Posted by RedTail on June 7, 2008 at 6:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Harlan, good post.
Potatobay, I agree. Even though I take semi-long showers, I do have native plants in my backyard. I hardly water them, and they look beautiful.
Posted by Nosmo_King on June 7, 2008 at 7:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The rates for water are going to HAVE to go up to pay for the $10,000,000.00 advertising campaign.
Posted by Tom_Johnston on June 7, 2008 at 7:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
For pete's sake....yes there is a lot of water on the Earth, some right past our beaches, but we can't use it without a lot of processing/desalination.
The nearby presence of the Pacific Ocean has no bearing on the availability of fresh water...don't be such Bozo's!
Southern California ia a semi arid climate that we have tried to tweak into a temperate climate by way of planting practices That needs to change.
So..if this is what government is coming to us with, why is the City of Ventura putting live grass in the new Ventura park off of Kimball road?
Why not some sort of astro-turf?
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