PD Editorial: California should rethink its water conservation plan

In the wake of a megadrought, California is planning for a drier future. Regulators shouldn’t rush to impose conservation efforts that cost more than they’re worth.

At the peak of the last drought, efforts to reduce water consumption remained mostly voluntary. The governor asked people to please stop watering lawns, washing cars, taking long showers etc. We all know the drill by now. Californians used less water, though not as much as officials had hoped.

Now the state wants to prepare for the next drought and the ones after that. A 2018 law calls for urban retail water suppliers to reduce usage starting next year. How much they need to save will increase until 2035.

Lawmakers charged the state Water Resources Control Board with working out the details. Its draft rules have come under scrutiny, though. That water utilities and other providers don’t like them is no surprise. That the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has concerns was unexpected.

The legislative analyst conducts nonpartisan public policy research. For example, it was the bearer of bad news when it announced California’s massive revenue shortfall.

When analysts examined the proposed water rules, red flags went up. The rules, the analyst reports, go beyond what the law requires and what the Department of Water Resources recommends. They will set standards that will be difficult to achieve, add significant costs and disproportionately affect lower-income Californians. The report concludes that there are no “compelling justifications” for many of the rules and calls them “unnecessarily complex.”

In other words, water bureaucrats came up with an overly bureaucratic system that doesn’t have clear benefits nor justify its costs. Some communities would have to reduce water consumption by a third in just 10 years.

Californians should take note that political cowardice underlies part of this. Lawmakers and other state officials don’t want to take the blame for imposing consumption-reducing rules on households and businesses. Instead, they will make water utilities the bad guys by imposing reduction targets on them. They in turn will have to come up with policies that affect their customers — the public.

The North Coast is fortunate insofar as there’s a fair amount of water available for urban needs. The Water Resources Control Board calculates that water providers here already meet requirements for 2035. If the population increases, water becomes scarcer or the state increases conservation targets, all bets are off.

Fluctuations in annual and monthly precipitation caused by climate change mean that more and longer dry spells are likely. December rainfall in Sonoma County in December lagged behind the two previous years, and though recent storms have brought snow to the mountains, snowpacks are only about half of normal for mid-January.

The legislative analyst recommends that lawmakers intervene now. The Water Resources Control Board is expected to approve final rules this summer. That leaves a short window during which the Legislature could tweak deadlines and address inequities that will hit low-income Californians hardest.

Lawmakers will be busy trying to close the state’s huge budget gap, but they can’t afford to let ineffective water rules slide.

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