(AP) SACRAMENTO >> Water use must plummet in each California community under Gov. Jerry Brown’s sweeping plan to get through a relentless drought, but regulators on Saturday offered some cities relief from drastic cuts.
Brown this month ordered a 25 percent cutback in statewide urban water use. The agencies expected to make the steepest cuts have said the state’s demands are unreasonable and unfair.
Fresno is facing a 28% cutback, while Clovis, Kerman, Los Banos, Merced, Corcoran and Madera County are being forced to slash water use by 36%.
Visalia, Hanford, Tulare and Lemoore are all facing a cut of 32%.
Regulators have been struggling to figure out how to distribute the burden of conservation. It’s not feasible to expect coastal cities with few lawns like San Francisco to make cuts on the same magnitude as resort towns in the desert. But the state also risks flaring up regional tensions surrounding how water is delivered in California.
“All Californians need to step up more and prepare as if it won’t rain or snow much next year either,” said Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board.
Homes and businesses use less than a fifth of the water Californians withdraw from surface and groundwater supplies, but state officials say conservation is the best way to maximize water supplies to get through the relentless drought.
The water board on Saturday released new mandatory conservation targets from 8 to 36 percent compared with 2013 levels, before the governor declared a drought emergency. The targets are assigned based on water use last summer to reward communities that already started making cutbacks after the drought started.
Some communities are expected to save even more water, including San Bernardino, which must scale back 32 percent compared with an earlier demand of 25 percent. Others have easier targets: Los Angeles and San Diego must cut 16 percent instead of 20.
The updated regulations still didn’t address some of the most common complaints from agencies.
Communities who slashed water consumption before the drought are grouped together with those who didn’t. Water savings are limited by factors unrelated to good conservation, including hotter weather, fiercer winds and economic growth. And some say regulators are ignoring local efforts to wean off the state water system and prepare for droughts, such as paying for desalination plants and local reservoirs.
“There are parts of the state that really haven’t done much of anything,” said John Helminski, assistant director of San Diego public utilities.
He said San Diego residents are being asked to endure new restrictions even though they have been paying higher rates to become more self-reliant for water, such as an upcoming project to purify sewage into drinking water.
“The fact that we are being dinged additional costs doesn’t seem fair.”
The board on Saturday said these concerns are valid but more appropriate for permanent conservation goals.
