County-Operated Facilities Cutting Back Water Use

By City News Service

Riverside County agencies will be tightening controls on water consumption at county-operated facilities and taking steps to curb water waste in unincorporated communities countywide to comply with drought mitigation mandates imposed by the state, officials said today.

During a “Water Conservation Workshop” convened by the Board of Supervisors, county department heads and representatives from five area water agencies reviewed strategies underway to cope with the four-year drought.

“What I’m hearing from the agencies is pretty well uniform,” said board Chairman Marion Ashley. “They’re doing about everything they can possibly do and are now being asked to do much more. Whether it’s a small effort or a huge effort -- we need all those efforts.”

Among the speakers was Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Chairman Randy Record, a longtime Riverside County farmer.

Record said the drought had precipitated a “cultural change,” making more people conservation-minded, which was good, but he felt some of the regulations imposed by the governor and the California Water Resources Control Board were overly onerous and failed to register progress some agencies had already made reducing water use.

The control board, working from Gov. Jerry Brown’s April 1 drought emergency executive order, developed a nine-tier system under which water agencies throughout the state will be required to slash consumption levels between 4 and 36 percent compared to what they were in 2013.

Four area water agencies are in the top -- 36 percent tier -- the Coachella Valley Water District, the Palm Springs-based Desert Water Agency, the city of Norco and the Temecula-based Rancho California Water District.

The Perris-based Eastern Municipal Water District, of which Record is a governing member, will be required to hit a reduction target of 28 percent between June and February.

“We support the governor, and we’ll work directly with the state board, but this is very challenging,” Record said. “There’s been no credit to agencies that achieved conservation goals prior to 2013.”

The Riverside-based Western Municipal Water District’s chief administrator, John Rossi, told the board that he was “a little stressed from the way the rules came down” regarding the state’s conservation mandate.

“We can’t cut consumption by 32 percent overnight,” he said. “But we’re in a real crisis, and we’ll do our part.”

He said the WMWD is focusing heavily on turf replacement to scale back outdoor water use, which accounts for the largest drain on supplies everywhere. But like other agencies, there’s limited funding available for rebates and other incentives to encourage property owners and businesses to get rid of their lawns.

“The state needs to step up and make turf removal funding available,” Rossi said.

The Desert Water Agency is contesting the state water control board’s imposition of a 36 percent cut because it is based on flawed calculations that fail to recognize that a third of the service area’s population is only part- time, according to agency spokesman Mark Krause.

He told the supervisors that the DWA has implemented a string of measures to deter excess water use, including restricting outdoor irrigation to three nights per week and prohibiting people from refilling or draining their pools between June 1 and Oct. 31.

The agency has also promoted the use of “smart irrigation” technology and offered incentives for the purchase of low-flow toilets and turf replacement, according to Krause.

Don Ackley, with the Coachella Valley Water District, said comments by the governor and others painting the CVWD and its administrators as “bad boys” for overseeing a district that ranks at or near the top statewide in water consumption was unfair.

“Our domestic potable water use is down 23 percent since 2009,” he said, acknowledging that the golf courses, industrial and agricultural operations in the district remain major water siphons.

“We’re recycling through water reclamation,” Ackley said. “Right now our (water) imports are stable.”

He said mandatory water-use restrictions have been put into effect that will apply “to all sources,” not just potable water consumption.

Within county government, water efficiency remains at the forefront of planning, Transportation and Land Management Agency Director Juan Perez told the board.

He said the agency will be bringing forward a proposal to eliminate the planting of natural lawns outside new homes in unincorporated communities. He said the county has had a general prohibition on natural turf fronting industrial and commercial projects, as well as decorating parkways and street medians, since 2009.

According to Perez, the TLMA will also be putting an emphasis on having new developments rely on “gray water systems” -- water captured from bathrooms, laundry machines and similar sources -- for irrigation.

Economic Development Agency Director Rob Field said the county’s 540 buildings were using reclaimed water “where available.”

He pointed to the Indio Law Building and the Mead Valley Public Library, with low-flow toilets and drought-tolerant landscaping, as examples of the county’s shift toward conservation.

“We’ll be very aggressively implementing conservation standards going forward,” Field said.

County fire Chief John Hawkins told the board that the fire department was sensitive to the plummeting levels of ponds and lakes, but water-dropping helicopters would continue to tap them because “when it comes to saving life or property, we’re going to take that water.”

The board concluded the workshop with a 4-0 vote -- Supervisor John Tavaglione was absent -- directing the Executive Office to provide quarterly reports on agencies’ “water conservation” efforts; to examine the possibility of a “hotline” for county residents to report “drought regulation violations”; and examine the feasibility of a rebate program intended to help residents purchase smart irrigation systems.

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