California Drought: Water Restrictions Return for Coastside Residents
SAN MATEO COUNTY (KPIX ) -- The Coastside County Water District declared a water-shortage emergency Thursday, bringing back some water-use restrictions for the approximately 19,000 customers it serves in Half Moon Bay, El Granada, Princeton, and Miramar.
"We are going into a third consecutive year of drought," said Cathleen Brennan, a water resource analyst with the CCWD. "The CCWD does have local sources, but they are impacted by the drought, and we rely on purchases from SFPUC to serve our community. When SFPUC declared a water shortage emergency and gave us an allocation, that prompted us to declare a water shortage emergency and mandate certain water use restrictions so we could try to meet that allocation."
According to a CCWD ordinance, "except where necessary to address an immediate health and safety need or to comply with a term or condition in a permit issued by a state or federal agency," the following actions are prohibited for all customers:
1. The application of water to outdoor landscapes in a manner that causes more than incidental runoff such that water flows onto adjacent property, non-irrigated areas, private and public walkways, roadways, parking lots, or structures;
2. The use of a hose that dispenses water to wash a motor vehicle, except where the hose is fitted with a shut-off nozzle or device attached to it that causes it to cease dispensing water immediately when not in use;
3. The use of water for washing sidewalks, driveways, buildings, structures, patios, parking lots, or other hard surfaced areas;
4. The use of water for street cleaning or construction site preparation purposes unless no other method can be used or as needed to protect the health and safety of the public;
5. The use of water for decorative (decorative water feature) fountains or the filling or topping-off of decorative lakes or ponds, with exceptions for those decorative fountains, lakes, or ponds that use pumps to recirculate water and only require refilling to replace evaporative losses:
6. The application of water to Irrigate turf and ornamental landscapes during and within 48 hours after measurable rainfall of at least one fourth of one inch of rain. In determining whether measurable rainfall of at least one fourth of one inch of rain occurred in a given area, enforcement may be based on records of the National Weather Service, the closest CIMIS station to the parcel, or any other reliable source of rainfall data available to the District.
7. The use of water for irrigation of ornamental turf on public street medians.
The focus of the restrictions is primarily on reducing outdoor water usage and reducing water waste.
"The biggest change is, if you have spray irrigation, you're limited to two days a week of when you can irrigate. It's by your address, so on even days you're allowed to irrigate on Mondays and Wednesdays, and if you have an odd address, you're restricted to Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can't have spray irrigation between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., and you can only have each station running for 10 minutes maximum," Brennan said. "If you have drip irrigation – which we consider more a more efficient irrigation system – you don't have those same restrictions. Hopefully it encourages people to upgrade their irrigation systems to drip."
The CCWD has a goal of reducing total water use in its service area this year, according to Brennan.
The water district wants all customers to use a maximum of 50 gallons per day, per person. However, it will not fine or penalize those who use more than that.
"We thought it would be good to put in the ordinance a gallons per day threshold or goal for our customers to meet so we could reassure them that if they're already down there, they don't really have to do much more," she said. "A lot of our customers are already doing really well and there's really no way they can cut back much more. But there are others that could do more – they could reduce their irrigation or install high-efficiency toilets, things like that."
You can read the entire ordinance at the Coastside Water website.
On Friday, state water officials will conduct the critical fourth snow survey of the season, and expectations are not good.
The April 1st survey is considered a key measurement of water conditions for the rest of the year, since it's typically when the snowpack reaches its peak water content before the snow melt picks up in the spring.
It comes as the latest drought map showed more than 40% of the state is under extreme drought conditions, including parts of Sonoma and Napa counties.
The rest of the Bay Area currently falls in the severe drought category.
