Under the city of Healdsburg’s stage 3 emergency water conservation mandates, which were approved by the city council on June 7, those who continuously violate the rules could face a fine of up to $1,000, according to the Healdsburg Utility Department.
The Healdsburg City Council approved stage 3 emergency water regulations in response to the severe drought that’s led to a notice of unavailability to the city’s water rights to the Russian River.
The state water board issued notices of unavailability on May 25 to all post-1914 water right holders in the upper Russian River basin. The notice means that right holders can no longer divert water from the Russian River for their use.
The strict move from the water board is an effort to drastically conserve water to try to prevent parched Lake Mendocino from going dry this October-November.
Lake Mendocino is currently at 37.9% of its target water supply levels and this year’s rain totals are only 38% of normal.
“We do have a scarcity of a precious resource,” Felicia Smith, Healdsburg’s utility conservation analyst, said during a June 16 informational meeting and Q&A.
The city’s contract with Sonoma Water has been reduced by 20%.
Under these current conditions, the city of Healdsburg is left with enough water through October to supply roughly 60% of the city’s summertime water needs according to Terry Crowley, the city’s utility department director.
Crowley said this is why stringent water conservation mandates are needed.
“It is very very dire. Some say this is similar to the 1970s drought, or potentially worse,” Crowley said.
Understanding stage 3 water rules and water usage
Since the regulations were approved by council, Smith said she’s been getting many calls and questions about what households can and can’t do under stage 3.
“For residential customers we have created a residential water allowance of 74 gallons per person per day. This allowance is really intended to serve all of your indoor water needs, cooking, cleaning, flushing, showering, clothes washing. We did prohibit irrigation, both sprinklers and drip irrigation in order to ensure that people can stay within this allowance,” Smith said. “I know that drip irrigation is more efficient than hand watering, however, any automatic sprinkler system is far too easy to get over budget. We need people to actively manage their water use and our intent is to prioritize indoor water use.”
What’s allowed under stage 3 regulations:
● Residential households can use 74 gallons of water per person per day.
● Hand watering is available to those who have a cushion in their budget to hand water and is intended to be used on high priority trees, shrubs and food producing plants.
● Swimming pool permits will not be authorized unless water is sourced from outside Healdsburg’s potable water system.
● Dust control, compaction and other construction must use recycled water; potable water is prohibited.
What’s prohibited under stage 3 regulations:
● Planting of any new landscaping.
● Carwashing and powerwashing.
● Sprinkler and drip irrigation.
● Irrigation of lawns
● Hosing down driveways and hardscapes
As a caveat to the irrigation prohibition, the city has identified six priority parks that have been authorized to use potable water in order to maintain community gathering and recreation spaces.
These parks include Rec Park, the Healdsburg Community Center, the Plaza, the roundabout, Giorgi Park, the Healdsburg High School (HHS) field and the elementary school.
HHS’s new field is set up and plumbed to use recycled water and they are working to get that established according to Smith. Currently they are using potable water to maintain their field.
“Commercial accounts have to achieve a 40% reduction in their water usage. They look at their total usage and their goal is to just drastically reduce by 40%. Our overarching city goal is a 40% reduction and in order to achieve that, we need our commercial entities to reduce by 40% and we need our residents to meet their water allowance. The combination of those two things, which is 90% of our water usage, will help us meet and ideally achieve our 40% citywide reduction,” Smith said.
Residential water use accounts for most of the city’s total water usage, followed by businesses and schools.
Water customers can monitor their water usage by looking at their water bill or water meter.
Your monthly utility bill will show a 12-month usage history. The last column on the bill shows average gallons used per day. Check your winter months usage to determine your indoor use baseline and divide by the number of people in your household to get your baseline water usage.
You can also read your meter to track water usage. 1 cubic feet equals 7.48 gallons.
On your meter the number with the black background shows how much you have used in cubic feet. Let’s say today’s reading is 10 and tomorrow’s is 13. To find out how many gallons you’ve used in those two days you’d subtract 10 from 13 and multiply that by 7.48 — the number of gallons in one cubic feet — and get 22.4 That’s the number in gallons you have used.
Enforcement
“Our goal and our approach is to work with the community to find ways to save water. We want to find and collect best practices and share those practices and we want to work together with everybody to find the best way for everyone to save water so we can reach this 40% goal, but what we do have hanging over our head from the state board is they will fine us if we don’t get below our allotments for water and those finds are pretty significant,” Crowley said.
Under the city’s measures, violators can be fined up to $1,000 per day.
“We are actively patrolling in the mornings, looking at lawns that are either using overhead sprinklers or laws that are wet,” Crowley said.
He said they’re looking at any type of runoff or any type of water waste, noting it and drawing up courtesy letters to households who aren’t complying with regulations.
“It is just a courtesy letter at this point, we’re really trying to get people to understand that there are some conservation measures that really need to be implemented,” he said.
After a customer receives a courtesy letter, the city will conduct another patrol to see whether the customer is complying with the conservation measures. Gross violations of the city’s water mandates could result in reduced water use or shut off.
“That is not something we want to do, we want to get to compliance as soon as possible.” Crowley said.
