Water Conservation Benefits All Cities Sharing the Same Water Supplies

Reliable supplies of drinking water are so essential to cities for the well-being of their residents and a healthy local economy that cities have become the frontline for investing in sustainable water strategies. In Southern California cities have begun to respond to declining supplies of both local and imported drinking water resources for the foreseeable future.

Over the past century in cities now incorporated across Los Angeles County and Orange County have developed by sharing access first to modest water supplies found in semi-arid local watersheds and secondly to growing dependence on imported water from Owens Valley, the Colorado River, and the California Bay Area. All local water supplies in both Los Angeles and Orange counties are fed by interconnected watersheds the southern Sierra Nevada range where historical over-production of groundwater resources have led to growing local water supply and water quality issues for most cities. Dams built to improve the reliability of water supplies locally and to hold imported water provide storage on which all citles depend for primary supplies or to acquire incremental water as needed to meet growing demand.

Going forward into the next century, the annual amount of water available from local and imported water supplies is expected to steadily decrease as population continues to grow. As the cities in both Los Angeles and Orange counties have similar economic interests tied to their respective reliable water supplies, wasteful water practices become a threat not only to any jurisdiction where it is found, out also to neighboring cities who depend upon the same water resources above ground and underground.

So how are all cities, sharing a responsibility to avoid water waste of any, local or imported water resource? What can be done to update water management practices and building standards so. that more can be done with less water for the foreseeable future by all cities throughout the shared watersheds of Los Angeles County and Orange County?

The Water Committee ot the sierra Club Angeles Chapter undertook a project to address that question. How well are cities enacting ordinances to prioritize water needs, avoid waste, update building standards, and require business practices so that more is done with decreasing water available year-to-year? The Water Committee formed the Water Conservation Measures Scorecard project to evaluate how well cities are doing.

The project began by defining criteria for water conservation measures implemented or updated by Southern California cities over the past 5-10 years.

The project produced 19 categories of water conservation measures, and evaluated how many measures each city had enacted. In some cases, mutltiple ordinances were evaluated for a single city, but the scores for all ordinances of a city were merged such that any of the 19 categories were scored 1 point if any of a city's ordinances addressed the specific technical and enforceability criteria cited for it.

The first group of water conservation measures includes regulations to restrict wasteful water practices and other selected uses of water that generally enforced on a temporary basis when an unexpected water shortage is declared by a city. These measures are usually phased-in and become more restrictive as the temporary water shortage becomes more severe. These 'Restricted Use' measures include all enforceable measures recommended by the California Department of Water Resources and included in the Water Conservation Model Ordinance proposed by the Metropolitan Water District.

Remaining measures have been enacted to enforce 'Efficient Use' of water in buildings, for landscapes, and for commercial operations. Usually these measures are enforced as new building permits or business licenses are awarded by a city or when new, building or business are connected to the local water supplier.

Probably the most famous water efficiency standard in California history involves the steps taken to require new buildings to install toilets rated at no more than 1.6 gallons per flush. The first use of this standard was a state law in 1980 prohibiting sales of new toilets in the state to those that met this standard. Over the next 20 years the City of Los Angeles along with many other cities invested in retrofit programs to replace older toilets that used 3 to 5 gallons per flush with new toilets to meet specific ater conservation goals.

Since that time, plumbing engineering standards have continued to improve and cities have begun to update their building codes and re-visit their retrofit programs accordingly. Water conservation measures enacted or updated more recently comply with federal and state standards such as the EPA Water Sense plumbing standards and the California Efficient Landscape legislation.

The last set of water conservation measures evaluated include best practices for water use as promoted by the California Urban Water Conservation Council along with other measures enacted by one or more cities that may be applicable to other cities as they continue to update their municipal code.