{"id":223620,"date":"2016-05-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/new-state-water-rules-on-the-way\/"},"modified":"2016-05-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T07:00:00","slug":"new-state-water-rules-on-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/new-state-water-rules-on-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"New state water rules on the way"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Doug Curlee<\/p>\n

But picture not as bleak as last year<\/strong><\/p>\n

Californians apparently proved something last year to the people who regulate just how much water we will be able to use this year.<\/p>\n

A lot of people complained when Governor Jerry Brown last year laid down a stringent 25 per cent cut in urban water use. Urban is the water use category that covers what we use to water our lawns, irrigate our plants and trees and wash our cars, among other things.<\/p>\n

We complained \u2014 but we did it. Never in history had people been forced to cut water use significantly in California. Last year, we pretty much met that goal.<\/p>\n

\"31062159_l-1080x675webtop\"<\/a>That in turn has allowed the state to consider and issue somewhat relaxed rules for this year, leaving the responsibility for conserving water up to the local and regional agencies that provide our water.<\/p>\n

The idea that local and regional agencies will be much more in control of our own destiny is just what the San Diego County Water Authority was hoping for, and what it got from Sacramento.<\/p>\n

SDCWA general manager Maureen Stapleton couldn\u2019t be happier about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe appreciate the Tate Water Board\u2019s willing ness to revise its regulation by allowing water agencies to certify the adequacy of their supplies to meet demands\u201d said Stapleton in a press statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will allow agencies to tailor drought responses to the unique situation in each service area across our diverse state, and it supports agencies that have invested in drought-resilient supplies. By working together with water agencies, the State Water Board has charted a course that will not only help California address current drought challenges but encourage communities to continue investing in water supply reliability projects and prepare for future droughts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stapleton says San Diego county is in very good shape for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn San Diego county, supply reliability investments have provided our region with enough water to meet demands even in the fifth year of drought. At the same time, water-use efficiency is a civic is a civic duty and a way of life in our region; per capita potable water use is down nearly 40 percent since 1990.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, El Ni\u00f1o has helped a lot in bringing about the newer, more liberal rules being laid down by the state water quality control board.<\/p>\n

However, El Ni\u00f1o wasn\u2019t the permanent fix to our water problems. It wasn\u2019t the monster series of storms the experts said we needed to cure the drought. In fact, our drought may never be permanently cured.<\/p>\n

But it helped.<\/p>\n

The folks at the Helix Water District are a good case study in what we expect to happen now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very happy about what\u2019s going on with the state and the regional agencies these days\u201d, said Helix spokesman Mike Uhrhammer. \u201cThe fact that local agencies like us are able to work within the framework of the San Diego County Water Authority to determine our needs and make our decisions that way should make things a lot easier on all of us, especially our customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened? Why are most people in the water business smiling about this?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s simple. People got it. People understood.<\/p>\n

\u201cFolks got the message about saving water, and they found out it wasn\u2019t as hard to do as they might have thought. Once people demonstrated that they could conserve, it sort of got infectious in a way.It sort of became the thing to do,\u201d Uhrhammer said.<\/p>\n

All of this conservation, and the decreased demand for water, is what\u2019s motivated the state, and specifically the state water water board, to decide that some relaxation of the rigid controls put in place last year, did not necessarily have to be retained in place this year. They\u2019ve decided that more local control is a better idea, in that local and regional boards and agencies have a better idea of how to keep water demand down than someone hundreds of miles away.<\/p>\n

This is not to say the state is leaving everything in the hands of the locals. There will still be a state presence looming over the process, ready to step in if this somehow runs off the rails.<\/p>\n

\u201cShow us your situation,\u201d said state water board chairwoman Felicia Marcus. \u201cCome up with the conservation standard appropriate to you. We reserve the right to set one if you don\u2019t, and we reserve the right to second-guess you.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the state will be watching. All local and regional agencies will still be required to file monthly reports with the state, and those reports will be read and studied constantly.<\/p>\n

Do not, says the state, revert to your previous water usages. There are things that, legally, you will probably never be able to do again.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t even think of hosing off your sidewalks, washing cars with a hose that doesn\u2019t have a shut-off nozzle, irrigating your lawns with water that spills onto the streets, or watering grass in public medians.<\/p>\n

The days of abundant water on demand are gone in California, probably forever.<\/p>\n

\u2014Doug Curlee is Editor-at-Large for the Mission Times Courier. Reach him at doug@sdcnn.com.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Por Doug Curlee<\/p>","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":223032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11548","_seopress_titles_title":"New state water rules on the way","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11548,11551,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-la-mesa-courier","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}