Is the state’s water conservation proposal too restrictive? Some experts say yes | Opinion
Two independent and respected monitors of California government are warning the state’s top water regulator that it is dangerously off course by proposing massive cuts in water use for residents throughout the state, particularly in the Central Valley, in the name of better day-by-day conservation.
No regulation is final. So for the sake of the State Water Resources Control Board and a whole lot of everyday Californians who have no idea double-digit water cuts are being proposed for them, a course correction seems in order.
Opinion
“Some communities are looking at 20 to 40 percent reductions in their water use,” said David Mitchell, an economist who consults for water districts and is also an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. He and PPIC’s long-time (and retiring) water leader, Ellen Hanak, have published a blog that detailed a multitude of ways in which the state water board is erring on implementing a whole new way to approach water conservation in California.
When it rains, the government leaves everyone largely alone. When it doesn’t rain and supplies begin to get scarce, the state suddenly tells everybody to cut water use. In the last two drought cycles under two different governors, everybody faced the same percentage reduction targets - a mandatory 25 percent by Jerry Brown, and a voluntary 15 percent by Gavin Newsom. It is a classically California cookie-cutter approach to regulation.
The State Legislature in 2018 thought it had a way out of water’s regulatory whiplash. It passed a law advancing conservation as “a way of life,” a term coined during the Brown years. While some of its details are complex, the Legislature’s underlying intent was pretty straightforward. It directed the water board to establish some water use targets for each major supplier in California that should take into account both local weather conditions as well as “existing and planned future uses.”
Five years later and behind schedule, water board staff in October floated an initial proposal. For some Central Valley communities, the Board was proposing water use reductions greater than any governor had ever proposed in any drought crisis in history.
Kingsburg in Fresno County, for example, was facing a 2035 target of reduced water use of 53 percent. Fresno, 30 percent. Sacramento, 17 percent. Folsom, 34 percent.
Coastal communities by and large were spared massive conservation cutbacks.
“The largest reductions and the highest costs are in communities that are in the Central Valley,” Mitchell said. And not its most affluent cities. The biggest water cutbacks “skews towards the smaller communities and lower-income communities. There are some unintended consequences.”
How did the water board staff go wrong? PPIC said the water board grossly underestimated the costs of driving down water use while inflating the financial benefits. In some cases, the board wildly underestimated how much water it takes to efficiently irrigate an existing landscape, particularly in hotter climates.
PPIC, with its impressive stable of academics, is traditionally a staid commenter on policy matters. The red flag being waved by Hanak and Mitchell is about as strident as the institution gets.
Yes, Mitchell comes from the water industry. But he and Hanak have some company. The state Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal and policy advisor, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, recently came to eerily similar conclusions.
The water board, writes the LAO, “proposes such stringent standards for outdoor use that suppliers will not have much “wiggle room” in complying.”
Asked about these separate, independent and similar findings, water board spokesman Edward Ortiz declined to elaborate on specifics.
He said, “At this time, the regulation is an initial draft and we are in the middle of the rulemaking process, which features an extensive public process. A subsequent draft informed by the feedback received will be released this spring, and the board will consider a proposed regulation for adoption this summer.”
As someone who worked in the water industry for 16 years, I learned it is hard to turn any ship around mid-course. Governments are driven by humans with the human tendency to defend established processes rather than acknowledge errors. It is too easy for staff to make some minor changes, contend that stakeholder concerns have been adequately addressed and gamble that a majority of the five-member board will eventually go along.
That could be disastrous in this case. Imagine Sacramento dictating unreasonably stringent water conservation thresholds for communities throughout the state, and then fining your water district $10,000 every day during a drought, costs you ultimately pay in your bill.
Lowering water use both indoors and outdoors is beyond important. But this legislation was not designed to rip out every lawn. It was to make water efficiency a constant and not the backup plan when it happens to be dry.
Summer residential landscapes in the Central Valley and elsewhere too often look like some lush greenery in Scotland. Careful efficiency limits advance sound policy that respects nature’s limits regardless of whether the upstream reservoir is empty or full.
Chelsea Haines, the regulatory relations manager for the Association of California Water Agencies, has been concerned that the water board staff’s initial conservation proposal represented a “deviation from legislative intent.” But she is optimistic that board leadership is listening. “We’re encouraged by the conversations that we have been having,” she said.
Time will tell. This is a rare and difficult attempt by legislation and a regulator to change the day-to-day water behavior of most of us. But to successfully make conservation a way of life in California, it cannot be an errant regulatory hell.
