Rural Sonoma County residents ordered to conserve water use

Rural Sonoma County residents are about to fall under state mandates to conserve water, largely through cutting back on outdoor irrigation, under an emergency measure aimed at protecting endangered coho salmon.

The water limits, including prohibitions on watering lawns and washing vehicles, initially will apply to the owners of about 3,750 parcels who rely primarily on private wells in the “critical areas” of four watersheds key to young coho salmon. The board has the option to expand the rules to all 13,000 parcels in the watersheds.

Adopted by the state Water Resources Control Board last month, the conservation measures are scheduled to take effect Monday amid concerns that the rules are flawed.

“Too little, too late,” said Grif Okie, whose property straddles Mark West Creek north of Santa Rosa.

The creek is “alarmingly low” and conserving water “is a good idea, of course,” Okie said. But after living on the creek for 15 years and watching vineyard plantings in the watershed, he contends the county, state and federal governments are “all derelict in having any coherent plan for saving the fish.”

State officials have conceded that the two-part order was quickly conceived and enacted in response to an urgent need to boost the flow in Mark West Creek, Green Valley and Dutch Bill creeks in west Sonoma County and Mill Creek west of Healdsburg.

Critics have faulted the conservation plan for exempting irrigation of “agricultural commodities,” including vineyards.

“It’s a good start,” said Larry Hanson of Forestville, who lives near Green Valley Creek and has watched it shrink prior to the beginning of the current four-year drought, a trend he attributes to vineyard expansion. The state order “missed the biggest target” by exempting vineyards, he said.

Caren Trgovcich, chief deputy director of the water board, said the regulation applies to “discretionary outdoor water use,” similar to the restrictions that have applied to city water users for months. Over the past year, California cities have saved about 237 billion gallons of water, compared to the same period of the prior year, the water board said Wednesday.

The curbs on rural well-water use are intended to provide a “minimal increment of water” to the four creeks, where juvenile salmon must survive in pools through summer and early fall, Trgovcich said. Nearly $10 million has been invested over the past decade in improving the fish habitat in the four watersheds, officials have said.

Implementation of the more controversial part of the state order - a requirement that all landowners, rural residents as well as businesses and grape growers, submit detailed water use reports to the state - has been postponed pending a series of public meetings scheduled by the water board next week.

Trgovcich said the so-called information order must be issued by the end of July in case the water board needs to take a stronger step, issuing curtailments that could reduce or cut off use of well or surface water.

“The idea is to get a handle on where all the diversions are occurring,” she said, and to determine which diversions impact stream flows.

The board has the discretion to allow residents under curtailments to continue using water that is “essential to their primary health and safety needs,” typically defined as 50 gallons of water per person each day, Trgovcich said.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore and Kara Heckert, executive director of the Sonoma Resource Conservation District, said Thursday they are working on a plan to link voluntary local efforts with the state’s regulatory actions. Heckert said she was concerned that curtailments “would punish the good actors along with the bad actors - then everyone starts shutting their doors.”

Gore said he has heard from rural residents “who want more input” into the water plan. “Everybody has to play ball,” he said. “Nobody’s exempt.”

Dorene D’Adamo, a water board member who met last week with Gore, Heckert and other local officials, said she was open to the idea of a “collaborative approach” involving state and local efforts.

The Sonoma County Farm Bureau is on record as opposing the water use reports based on their cost to farmers and the possibility the requirement would discourage voluntary conservation.

State Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood, both Healdsburg Democrats, said people are concerned that details of the water use might not be confidential. The information “could well be considered public record,” Trgovcich said, noting that recent legislation made well logs accessible to the public.

A map-based tool for landowners and water users to determine if they are in one of the watersheds is available by clicking here.

Information on the water-use regulations can be obtained by calling 916-322-8422.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.