Merced could be ordered to reduce water use by 35 percent

Gov. Jerry Brown ordered a 25 percent cut in water use statewide this month due to the ongoing drought, but a host of Valley cities could have to cut back even more.

Merced, Los Banos, Madera County, Clovis, Visalia and Hanford are among the Valley’s biggest water users, and as a result may have to meet a 35 percent water conservation goal under a proposed plan released this week by the state Water Resources Control Board.

According to state officials, residents in the city of Merced and unincorporated Madera County ranked second and third in water use, at 280 and 298 gallons per person per day, respectively. They were topped only by people in Kingsburg, who use 308 gallons per person per day.

Los Banos residents were only a few spots down the list at 229 gallons per person per day, officials said.

The draft plan, released Tuesday, sets water reduction targets for cities throughout the state as part of the effort to stretch California’s dwindling water supply. The state is in its fourth year of a historic drought, and Brown has enacted emergency measures to slash the state’s overall urban water usage by 25 percent.

As part of that plan, the board is proposing a series of conservation targets for communities based on how good a job they have been doing at saving water. It looked at the amount of water saved from June 2014 to February 2015 and compared that with a comparable period in 2013, the baseline year.

The board has created a sliding scale so communities that have been conserving water will have lower goals than those that haven’t significantly conserved this past year, or over the past decade since the last major drought.

The board’s conservation goals range from 10 percent to 35 percent.

George Kostyrko, spokesman for the board, said it will accept public comment on the proposal for a week as it prepares emergency conservation regulations. The board is expected to vote on those regulations in early May.

Kostyrko said the state will want to see communities moving toward meeting their conservation goals by the summer.

Merced may have to meet a 35 percent conservation target. It reduced only 9 percent of its water usage from June 2014 to February 2015.

Michael Wegley, director of water resources for the city of Merced, said the city is looking at several new programs and plans that could help it reach the stricter goal, but it will be a tall order. “That’s going to be difficult,” he said.

Vegetation in street medians likely would go without any watering, he said. City parks also would see stricter water conservation, including ceasing sprinkling of large swaths of park grass.

He said the city will look at trying to keep community baseball or other sports fields green, but probably would have to let the other grass turn brown.

He said he expects the proposed order or something like it for further reductions in water use to become reality. “It may not be exactly in the form it is now, but I think it will be close to it,” he said.

Los Banos, similar to many cities, has implemented restrictions but has not hit the mark set by the state.

Schools in Los Banos are working with the city to reduce their water use by 35 percent, according to Mark Fachin, the city’s public works director. He said it remains unclear how the mandate would affect dairy producers and other industries that use large amounts of water within the city.

Los Banos will have to step up its enforcement on water-wasters as it moves into the summer, he said.

Parts of unincorporated Madera County have already gone to no outdoor sprinkling. That soon could become the reality for all parts of the county, said Madera County Public Works Director Johannes Hoevertsz.

For the most part, he said, homeowners have been on board with reductions. The biggest offenders are larger complexes, such as apartment buildings, schools, publicly owned properties and commercial developments.

“A lot of people seem to be unaware of how severe this drought is, but I think cities, counties, shopping centers, they should be more sensitive to this,” he said.

This story was originally published April 9, 2015 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Merced could be ordered to reduce water use by 35 percent."