Compton passes water conservation ordinance
Sharis Delgadillo | 11-18-2009 | Comments |
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California’s three-year drought will require residents and business owners from the city of Compton to reduce their water consumption by 10 percent beginning January 2010, in a conservation ordinance that was passed by the City Council on Nov. 3. Compton is participating in the “Shut Your Tap” campaign along with another 23 Los Angeles County jurisdictions that make up the Central Basin Municipal Water District.
Compton Municipal Water Department Administrative Analyst Tanya McCoy said residents will be able to trade in their washers, toilets, shower heads, and sprinklers for high water efficiency ones through the SoCal Water$mart rebate incentive program.
People will be restricted to watering their lawns before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m. on alternate days and must use automatic shut off nozzles for their water hoses. Business owners will have to meet mandatory water department regulations such as using recycled water for decorative fountains. In the services sector, customers will be served water only when they ask for it.
If a consumer’s water bill indicates their water consumption has not decreased, the department will issue up to three warnings. After the third one, consumers will be penalized with a fine.
“If they are a complete water abuser,” said McCoy “their water bill may be doubled. “ But such a penalty would have to be approved by the water department’s General Manager Kambiz Schogi.
“Until California has at least two or three rainy seasons, these restrictions will stay,” said McCoy.
The Metropolitan Water District supplies half of the water to Compton and the Central Basin. But its supply has been curtailed because of the drought and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta environmental crises.
The northern Delta provides most of the water to California and millions of farmland acres.
Water reserve levels have dropped close to empty because a record dry spring has curtailed the Sierra Nevada Mountains’ snow run off into the Delta.
Last year, federal orders forced water authorities to restrict the use of large water export pumps because they were sucking and killing the indigenous longfin smelt fish to near extinction. This has resulted in a dust-bowl like condition for many farms.
The island-like water reserves are protected levees. Because of the drought, the reserves have dropped below sea levels. Seismologists believe that there is a two-thirds chance the levees could collapse due to earthquakes. The reserves would find themselves submerged by salt water from the San Francisco Bay making it undrinkable.
In June 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought, the first in the history of California according to MWD of Southern California. This was followed by a State of Emergency declared by the governor in February 2009.
On Nov. 4, 2009, the governor signed a series of bills surrounding the Sacramento-Delta crisis calling for new dams; aggressive water conservation goals and the monitoring of groundwater use in California. The legislation also paves the way for a new canal that would move water from the north of the state to the south.
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