Hot, inland California cities face steepest water drops under new protection mandate

“It puts us in the position of having to be the bad guy for what may be a tiny amount of savings. So that’s an unpleasant place to be,” he said.

The rules target city water agencies, not residents. Suppliers must develop discounts, rate structures and other ways to encourage people to use less water.

Many large urban authorities near the coast are already well prepared for the cuts, as their water use is expected to fall close to or below targets.

Fog-shrouded San Francisco, with its dense development, sparse gardens and $6 million conservation program, is expected to meet its 2040 target without further cuts.

San Francisco’s roughly 880,000 residents use an average of 42 gallons of water per person per day, according to conservation manager Julie Ortiz. That’s about half the state average from last year, according to water board data.

San Diego, Irvine, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey are among the cities that do not have to reduce their water use to meet state obligations.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation’s second-largest municipal water utility serving about 4 million people, will need to reduce water use by a modest 9 percent by 2040.

That seems like a lot, though, “when you look at the history of our conservation efforts,” said Delon Kwan, assistant director of water resources. Over the past 15 years, Los Angeles residents have reduced their water use by 33%, to 101 gallons per person per day by June 2023.

Los Angeles has had water conservation programs in place for nearly half a century. Toilet renovations, rebates for lawn digging and a mandate that homes for sale have updated plumbing fixtures have been in place for years.

Now the utility, which spends $25 to $30 million annually on conservation, is working to launch a full-scale lawn replacement program for underserved communities with a $14 million state grant.

“The low-hanging fruit — we’ve done a lot of it early on,” Kwan said, adding that the utility already offers rebates on “almost every type of indoor and outdoor plumbing fixture.”

The South Coast region, which includes mostly coastal areas of San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, will reduce its water use by just 10 percent by 2040. With more than half the state’s population, that region’s relatively modest reductions will account for about half of the water savings from the state’s new measures.

The regions facing the largest declines, averaging between 17 and 30 percent, include the Sierra Nevada and mountain communities of Southern California, the deserts, much of the Inland Empire, parts of the Central Valley and remote, sparsely populated areas of the Northeast.

Water suppliers must stay within water budgets calculated based on goals for indoor and outdoor residential use, certain commercial landscapes, and system losses such as leaks. Local climate, population, and landscaped area also factor into the equation, as do livestock, recycled water, swamp coolers, and other factors.

If they serve lower-income areas, agencies facing 20% ​​cuts can choose alternatives that extend their deadlines. Other agencies facing larger cuts can also choose the alternatives, as long as they reduce use by at least 2% per year and meet other requirements, regardless of local income.

Statewide, urban water use per person is expected to decline 21.8% between 2022 and 2050 with the proposed regulations, compared to 17.9% without them. The measures are expected to save an estimated 1.7 million acre-feet of water through 2040 — enough to supply nearly half the state’s population for a year, significantly less than the state’s previous proposals would have saved. Total savings through 2050 could amount to 3.9 million acre-feet.

Most residents will not see higher bills

State regulators weakened the rules after facing criticism from state suppliers and analysts over the high costs of their earlier proposal.

The cost of regulation, much of which is expected to be passed on to customers, is expected to total $4.7 billion through 2050. But state analysts expect the benefits to customers and water suppliers, largely from buying less water, to exceed the cost of funding conservation programs by about $1.4 billion.

For about two-thirds of California residents, the rules would not change average monthly water and wastewater bills from 2025 through 2050, according to the water authority’s analysis. The rules could raise costs for about 5 million people, including 1.7 million who would see an increase of more than 10 cents per month. But 8 million people could see their bills decrease, mostly by more than 10 cents per month.

“It’s always going to be more efficient to help reduce demand than to develop alternative water supplies,” San Francisco’s Ortiz said. “Conservation is our number one strategy for supply management.”

Several smaller suppliers facing massive cuts told CalMatters they expect their anticipated cuts to become smaller as they gather more information about water use in their communities.

Some said they will seek exceptions — such as for water-hungry air-conditioning systems known as swamp coolers — or opt for alternative routes available to lower-income communities and providers facing particularly steep cuts. The state’s projections for regions and individual providers do not yet include such exceptions, and water budgets could still change with new data on landscapes.

The unincorporated, low-income community of Linda in Yuba County faces one of the steepest reductions: 43% to meet the 2040 mandate. In the heart of the agricultural Sacramento Valley and near Beale Air Force Base, many local residents are renters and retirees on fixed incomes, said Davis, the chief executive officer.

“They’re hard to convince to invest money in their old homes to conserve water,” Davis said. “We’re kind of scratching our heads.”

The average monthly bill there is about $35 a month, rising to about $55 in the summer, Davis said. “We know it’s low and we’re working to keep it low in an underserved community.”

With a budget of just $2.8 million, the water agency expects to have to raise money for outreach consultants to support engineers in an entirely new role: educating people about how to save water.

“Maybe the community will rise up and really get into water conservation, and we’ll be seen as the heroes. But it’s a more rural, older community. That’s an unlikely outcome,” Davis said.

It’s the same problem that the relatively affluent city of Glendora in eastern Los Angeles County, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, is also grappling with. Like Linda, the city is facing a 43 percent reduction by 2040.

Glendora recently raised water rates to an average of $95 per month to pay for $350 million in projects needed to improve the water system and repair leaking pipes and reservoirs.

Conservation will reduce the city’s need for expensive imported supplies that replenish local groundwater. But changing behavior can be challenging in a suburban community of longtime homeowners, where much of the water is used for lawns and gardens, said City Manager Adam Raymond.

While the city offers rebates for lawn removal in partnership with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, it can take 15 to 20 years before you see significant water savings, Raymond said.

“That’s the biggest challenge. Because as far as I know, we can’t force someone to dig up their garden,” he said.

Major water outages in inland California cities and deserts

Others facing particularly large cuts include the Central Valley community of Atwater in Merced County, which will have to reduce its water use by 58 percent, preliminary data shows. It’s one of the largest cuts expected in the state.

But Justin Vinson, the city’s public works director, says he suspects these massive cuts reflect miscalculations of leaks in the system, since half the city is still unmetered. Once meters are installed by the end of the year and residents are billed for their usage instead of a flat fee, “we should be able to demonstrate that we can make the cuts.”

In Los Banos, Merced County, Public Works Director Charles Bergson said there is room to save. He worries about the city’s future water supply and capacity, which state projections call for a 38 percent reduction by 2040.

Between the warm climate and large lots, residential use there is higher than the state average, he said. The city also struggles with contaminants in the groundwater it relies on, such as hexavalent chromium — made infamous by the movie Erin Brockovich.

“Reducing water usage will help us in the long run,” he said. “I don’t see too many downsides. A dead lawn or two, I don’t think that’s going to hurt anybody. I’m looking for water sources, and this is clearly a big one.”

In the San Bernardino County desert town of Twentynine Palms, at the gateway to Joshua Tree National Park, extracting an additional 14 percent in savings from its low-income customers by 2040 will be “an incredibly big boost and not an easy feat,” said Yasmeen Nubani, a water utility spokeswoman.

The desert community has little to no outdoor landscaping, Nubani said, meaning conservation must happen indoors. Setting up a rebate program that offers $160 in incentives to about 20 percent of their customers would cost about $300,000 — about half of what they would need to significantly reduce water use.

She is not optimistic about participating, even with a discount program, because customers still have to pay costs to upgrade toilets and washing machines.