Heather Cooley, research director at the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank, said conservation and efficiency are the cheapest, fastest way to meet California’s water needs as climate change makes supplies more variable and uncertain.
“We have to take real action to ensure that we can provide safe, clean, reliable water to California’s communities,” he said. “Repurposing and taking out old equipment, changing our landscape, all of these things have a cost. “But this falls far short of developing new sources of supply.”
Mandated by a 2018 package of laws, the rules are intended to make conservation “a way of life” in California. The rules, which are two years behind schedule, are expected to be adopted by the water board this summer before taking effect in October.
The rules do not target individuals or businesses, but instead set individual conservation goals for urban water agencies across the state based on indoor and outdoor water use, leakage and other factors.
By 2035, water providers will collectively need to reduce water use by 14%. This savings would be enough to supply about 1.2 million households every year or about 1% of the state’s total water use.
The report described this amount as “modest”, noting that “the agricultural sector uses about four times more water than the urban sector.”
Water agencies and city officials warned state regulators last year that the waivers and other efforts to reduce residential use would be costly to comply with from 2025 to 2040 — about $13.5 billion. It is estimated that the benefits will reach approximately $15.6 billion, largely because suppliers and customers will buy less water.
The legislative analyst’s report said an assessment by a consulting firm hired by a water supplier raised questions about those calculations. He noted that customers — especially low-income families — would bear the brunt of increased rates to cover the costs.
“Even if the benefits outweigh the costs in the long run, it is currently uncertain whether they are worth the amount of work and costs to implement the proposed requirements,” the report said.
Jay Lund, deputy director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, called the report an “unusually candid assessment.”
“Although there is good scope for further conservation, this additional state effort seems like it is not needed, or at least, does not need to be as drastic and complex as it seems. It begs the question, ‘Is this juice worth the squeeze?'” he told CalMatters in an email.
During the last three years of severe drought, which ended last year, the Newsom administration set voluntary conservation goals that were largely ineffective. Californians used just 6% less water from July 2021 to the end of last year than in 2020, far short of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 15% goal.
Some areas, particularly warmer, inland areas of the state, would require more stringent protection than others under the proposed rules. Inland and Eastern California will require the most reductions, with the largest reductions, up to 34%, being required in desert areas, followed by the Tulare Lake region.
Even in the North Coast region, where overall no cuts need to be made to meet 2035 targets, two large suppliers serving more than 1.6 million customers will still have to pay for their water. Usage would need to be reduced by a quarter.
But increasing conservation in places where it is needed most will appear to be a win-win situation when the inevitable long and dry spells are inevitable, said Felicia Marcus, a former chair of the water board and now a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Water in the West program. There will be drought.
Marcus said, “The goal is to make every locality more resilient to the nightmare we face due to climate change, and to do it in a way that first and foremost puts efficiency in the most cost and carbon effective measures in the long run.” Can be integrated as.” Said.
Sonja Petek, the lead fiscal and policy analyst who wrote the report, said the office is not calling for the protection rules to be abandoned, it is just recommending changes to make them more viable.
“Water conservation is one of the important components of the state’s overall water management strategy,” he said, citing the need to mitigate more severe and prolonged droughts and reduce dependence on depleted groundwater basins. “Our concern is that if these rules were adopted as written, it could lead to a scenario where compliance is not possible for some water suppliers, so the state may not achieve its ultimate goals.
