Anyone who lived through California’s last big drought from 2012 to 2016 remembers the rules.
You couldn’t water your yard so much that the water ran off into the street or sidewalk. Or hose down a driveway. Hotels had to put up signs telling customers they could choose not to have sheets and towels washed every day. Ornamental fountains were prohibited unless they recycled water. Watering landscaping within 48 hours of rain was forbidden. Cities couldn’t water grass on street medians. And if you washed a car with a hose, it had to have a nozzle.
Now California is entering a new drought with dwindling reservoir levels. But so far, there are no statewide prohibitions against wasting water.
The previous rules — which were widely considered common-sense ways to conserve water — expired in November 2017, after former Gov. Jerry Brown lifted the state’s emergency drought declaration when soaking winter rains filled reservoirs and caused flooding.
State officials tried to make the rules permanent, with fines of up to $500 for violators. But they quietly dropped the issue in 2018, after lawyers for several water agencies called the rules overly broad and said they infringed on their water rights, hinting at lawsuits.
Some conservation experts say the Newsom administration should put the rules back in place.
“You want to get them out the door now,” said Newsha Ajami, a civil engineer and director of Stanford University’s Urban Water Policy Program. “These are easy things. Every drop of water we save now will be available for us later.”
Some say the state doesn’t need to revisit the rules. They say the decision is best left up to local cities and water agencies, many of which already have some form of water-wasting rules on the books.
“To adopt a statewide mandate by the governor to do something that’s already been done doesn’t seem to be necessarily the most effective use of time and resources,” said Dave Eggerton, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, an influential organization that represents 460 water agencies in California, including most of the largest.
But others say even if the rules don’t save large amounts of water by themselves, they remind the public that California is a dry state and water is a precious resource, a mindset that encourages responsible water use across society.
“As we head into another drought, prohibiting water waste seems like a no-brainer,” said Tracy Quinn, director of California urban water policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “This was a missed opportunity.”
Among the urban areas that still have local water-wasting rules in place are the city of San Jose, the East Bay Municipal Utility District, San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles.
But the rules vary by area. Most places haven’t been issuing fines for violators. And state officials say they don’t know how many of California’s 40 million residents are subject to local water-wasting prohibitions and how many aren’t.
The most recent study, done in 2015 by the State Water Resources Control Board, found that 95% of water agencies had local rules banning overwatering landscaping that allowed water to run into the street, sidewalks or other properties. But only 65% required hotels to notify guests they don’t have to have sheets and towels washed daily, and just 40% prohibited watering lawns within 48 hours of rain, while 18% banned watering grass on street medians.
Why the statewide rules were never renewed remains murky.
“The urgency was less intense, because it was raining, and folks had done a real good job reducing their water use,” said Felicia Marcus, former chairwoman of the state water board. “We got caught up in all the other things we were trying to get done before the end of the Brown administration, and it just didn’t get across the finish line.”
Other sources familiar with the issue said that after the drought ended, Brown was focusing intently on trying to build two giant tunnels under the Delta to deliver water more easily to Southern California, and the threat of lawsuits over the water-wasting rules caused some state officials to back off.
A key moment three years ago revealed how passionate and intense California water debates can become, even over seemingly non-controversial issues.
On Feb. 20, 2018, the state water board, whose members are appointed by the governor, held a hearing to make the rules permanent. Some city water officials quibbled with the particulars.
But attorneys for several powerful water agencies said the rules were tantamount to the state curbing their water rights. They were upset that the water board was citing a provision in the state constitution that prohibits “waste or unreasonable use” of water as the legal basis for the rules, and they worried that if it invoked that authority with the urban water wasting rules, the board would use it in other areas.
Commenting back then, Robert Donlan, an attorney for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, said the rules would set “a dangerous and unnecessary precedent.” Phil Williams, general counsel of Westlands Water District in Fresno, quoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” at the public meeting, recounted societal collapse in Iraq and cited Shakespeare, saying “the erosion of our laws results in the erosion of us as a people.”
Jackson Minasian, a lawyer for the Stanford Vina Ranch Irrigation Company, said at the meeting that if the board passed the rules, it might next tell farmers what crops to grow, or cities that they can’t provide water to undocumented immigrants.
Marcus said this week those arguments were overblown and the state water board has won most lawsuits over water rights.
“I think it would be a good idea to revisit the rules,” Marcus said. “You have push-back from water agencies that don’t like being told what to do, but they are pretty common-sense rules.”
Her successor, state water board chairman Joaquin Esquivel, said in an interview that California’s urban residents are still using 16% less water now than they were in 2013. He said state lawmakers have passed laws that will require further conservation in the years ahead, but if the drought worsens, all options are possible.
“It’s not off the table,” Esquivel said. “We need to be conserving. Even though this summer some agencies might not be in an emergency mode, we need to make conservation a way of life. We’re going to need to be doing more.”
