Fun in California with the water district.

[OneEyeJack]

Before the current declared drought here in California and over the past 3 years my wife worked at converting our property to drought resistant plants and gradually got rid of most of her roses, regular grass and other landscaping that required lots of water. She reduced our water usage by a bit over 40% according to our water bills while neighbors did nothing. Now we are restricted to watering twice a week which is fine but we are being required by the water district to reduce our water use by 14%. For our neighbors it's easy. For us it may be almost impossible. Currently we use about 20% as much as neighbors that have smaller yards based on comparing water bills. We have talked to the people at the water district and explained our situation with all our water bills in hand. Their answer was that we would be automatically penalized for not complying, that what we did before had no baring what so ever on the current requirements. They told us they had no provision or instructions to handle a problem like this. Without instructions they told us they were powerless to help.

We are going to continue to try to fix this but so far we are being made to feel that we should consider ourselves lucky that they will allow us to have water at all.

 

[spasm3]

That would make me want to drill my own well, if you could in that area.

 

[NMBurb02]

Originally Posted By: OneEyeJack
They told us they had no provision or instructions to handle a problem like this. Without instructions they told us they were powerless to help.

Bureaucracy at its finest!

 

[spackard]

Your 14% penalty will be 20% of your neighbors.

I don't know why you'd think it's easier for your neighbors, who now have to compete for limited cactus along with 38.8 million other potential buyers. There are some Forrest Gump cactus sellers who are going to clean up.

 

[bluestream]

Reduce toilet consumption: If its yellow let it mellow, it its brown flush it down!

 

[Merkava_4]

OneEyeJack,

Over here in Clovis we're required to cut back our water usage by 36% from our 2013 average. You people are lucky that you're only getting hit by 14%. HOWEVER, cutting back BEFORE the restrictions were set in place by taking out your roses and your lawn was a BIG MISTAKE.

 

[Chris142]

I'm on my own well. I have not gotten any letters but the people in town have. I have "water rights" whatever that means. We are already using very little water. About 150 gallons a day for 3 ppl,4 cats,2 dogs and 6 chickens.

I read that the average person uses more than all of us do in a day

 

[Nick1994]

How much is the fine? If it's cheap and less than what you used to pay for water when you had a lawn and thirsty plants then I'd just pay the fine every month and keep on going.

 

[Sunnyinhollister]

We are in the same boat because we did the same thing by getting rid of the lawn and going with low maintenance plants. Just wait when the water bill goes up by 20% to cover the lost revenue from rationing.

 

[Kuato]

If you have the before and after water bills, I would think that you could show them that you proactively reduced early, on purpose, because you knew it was coming. Something I would fight in court if necessary, ESPECIALLY if there is no specification in the law as to the earliest implementation date.

 

[slowdime]

Just leave your faucet running for a few days this month then go back to business as usual next month if they're going to completely ignore the fact that you don't actually have a lawn to water.
Or better yet, contact your local news station. You're ahead of the water conservation curve and you're being penalized for it... I bet a news station would eat that right up.

 

[hatt]

Leave pan of grease on stove. Collect insurance. Move to free state.

 

[Brybo86]

I agree you should contact the local news station

 

[HTSS_TR]

My water company also informed us that we need to reduce water usage by 20%. I already use 40% to 60% less than monthly allocation for our family.

I tried every which way to use minimum water possible, such as when I take shower I use a 2.5 gallon bucket to collect water until hot water comes out of the shower head, use it for gardening or for washing dishes. I also practicing "If its yellow let it mellow, it its brown flush it down!". When we have 1/8" to 1/4" rain I turn off the sprinkler for a week, more than 1/4" then 2 weeks.

Reducing 20% from the already minimum usage is very difficult. But that what we have to do to conserve whatever little water we have now after more than 4 years drought.

 

[Killer223]

leave Cali!! best thing i EVER did was leave that state.

 

[umungus1122]

How about rain barrels? You could fill several 55 gal. drums from the down spouts.

 

[bvance554]

Originally Posted By: umungus1122
How about rain barrels? You could fill several 55 gal. drums from the down spouts.


It doesn't rain, thats the problem.

Reading through all of this, and understanding the OP's dilemma made me have a strange thought of people stealing water. Its bound to happen eventually right? Sneak over to your neighbors who have the higher water allowance and fill up a couple 5 gallon buckets

 

[Benito]

Couple of ideas for saving water.

1) Water Softener

Make sure your water softener is set up right. Mine had several parts and settings that were incorrect which meant I was using twice as much water and salt as needed. If you had a water softener sized for your house and / or you use less water than normal, the settings may be set to regenerate too often.

If you can't figure out how to change the installer settings and / or check you have a efficient install, then try these quick fixes:

a) Don't let it regenerate automatically. Figure out how to regenerate manually and only regenerate when you feel the water losing it's softness.

b) The regeneration step that flushes the resin uses the most water. Reduce the time spent on this. If you're not happy with the water quality after a regeneration, then increase it before the next regeneration.

2) Reverse Osmosis

a) there is a check valve which controls whether water goes down the drain. If it is faulty, you can be wasting a lot of water.

b) There is a flow restrictor which controls how much water is allowed to go to the drain when RO water is being produced. You can change the sizing of this to waste less water. At some point though it will reduce the life of your membrane.

 

[OneEyeJack]

There's another problem here in Southern California. In the very affluent areas such as Fairbanks Ranch, Rancho Santa Fe and La Jolla people are getting exemptions because conserving water would damage sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars of landscaping. It's not much of a process if you are a known democratic party supporter and donor. It's so blatant, they're not even trying to hide it until someone calls them out and the media here does not consider it a story worth covering. They understand that important people have their rights and ordinary people should not get in their way.

The lesson here for me is don't every get ahead of the curve on conserving resources because you'll only get penalized for it, later.

Before we started our three year process of conserving water our usage was well below average. After about two years of reducing our usage our unit cost went up because of the reduction. Then at three years we got hit with this new requirement of 14% or else.

Our government has been taken over by those that are totally incompetent. There answer it everything is more laws and more taxes. They have no other solutions.

 

[Lolvoguy]

it's stuff like this that makes me happy I live in Canada and bathe in glacier fresh water