Water conservation methods that were issued by Gov. Jerry Brown last year as a response to the historic drought will soon become a normal part of life of Californians.
Permanent restrictions will be issued on water agencies and other suppliers as well as businesses golf courses throughout the state with a goal of a 25% reduction in usage. Farmers are exempt from some of the new restrictions.
Agencies that fail to meet the reduction usage can be fined up to $10,000 per day.
“Californians stepped up during this drought and saved more water than ever before,” Brown said in a statement after his May 9 edict. “But now we know that drought is becoming a regular occurrence and water conservation must be a part of our everyday life.”
Other permanent conservation measures include the prohibition from irrigating public streets’ median turf areas, mandating that all new construction homes must use drip or micro-spray irrigation, having all water suppliers to adjust pricing structures to penalize excess usage and making significant changes to environmental and landscape restrictions to decrease water usage.
Last year in the wake of the drought, Culver City implemented Level 2 water conservation limits. They include reducing watering to two days per week or one day from November to March, requires landlords and homeowners to fix all leaks within 48 hours, prohibits the filling or refilling of ornamental lakes or ponds more than 1 foot unless it is needed to sustain aquatic life as well as no filling residential swimming pools or outdoor spas with potable water.
Councilman Thomas Small backs the governor’s order and says his city needs to do more on both water conservation and water capture. We’re going to have to continue to up our game and make sure that our runoff is as clean as possible,” Small said. There are a lot of different technologies out there that we could be availing ourselves to that we haven’t yet.”
During his campaign for city council, Small, an architect, proposed building at least 10 additional stormwater treatment facilities in Culver City over several years in order to tackle the regions stormwater problems and suggest developers could help fund the sites.
“We’re going to begin very soon looking at other transit-oriented developments [near the Expo station] and we should consider having them create their own water infiltration systems,” he said.
“It’s a good idea. California needs to make water conservation a priority to avoid serious drought problems in the future. It would be a shame if the state started to backslide on this issue after the recent progress we collectively have made across the state,” added Culver City Public Works Director Charles Herbertson.
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Gary Walker contributed to this story.