About 16,000 customers of the Menlo Park Municipal Water District must take stricter water conservation measures than what the state requires — at least over the next three months.
The Menlo Park City Council approved an urgency ordinance Tuesday night that put those measures into effect immediately and mostly affects water users in the Sharon Heights and Belle Haven areas.
The action won’t affect customers served by the California Water Service Co. or O’Connor Tract Cooperative Water District, which have not yet mandated any conservation measures, Interim Public Works Director Jesse Quirion said.
The council’s decision was spurred by Governor Jerry Brown’s executive order to ramp up water saving efforts amid one of California’s most severe droughts, he added.
Quirion said the urgency ordinance incorporates four water restriction measures mandated by the state and adds others called for by a city law adopted in the 1990s for drought emergencies. The urgency measures will remain in effect at least 45 days and likely be renewed for another 45 days while staff crafts a new ordinance to replace the old one.
In addition to the state’s prohibition against using potable water to wash cars without a shut-off nozzle, hose down driveways or sidewalks, irrigate landscaping and run in fountains unless recirculated, the city’s urgency ordinance bans new or expanded irrigation systems and limits new water service connections and use of private wells.
And it forbids using potable water from being used to fill new swimming pools or to control dust at construction sites.
Residential, commercial and industrial customers must reduce their water consumption by 30 percent districtwide, while customers such as cities, schools, apartment complexes and other big water users that irrigate parks, school yards and golf courses must cut back by 45 percent.
Some residents who spoke at Tuesday night’s council meeting said the measures are too drastic and complained that they didn’t get enough notice.
Asked why the city had to enact the measures so quickly, staff replied that the water district would have risked being fined unless it did so by today.
“The state signed the new regulations into law on July 28,” Quirion said, “and water suppliers must be in compliance within 30 days or agencies may face fines.”
City Manager Alex McIntyre said the statewide mandate will be reassessed in April.
“The urgency isn’t on our part, the urgency is the state mandating that we immediately put into effect the next stage of our water shortage contingency plan and ours is just more draconian or extreme than a lot of others because we’ve had this in place since the ’90s,” McIntyre said. “It hasn’t been updated and we are then hamstrung by our own policies.”
As it drafts a revised water conservation plan that likely won’t be as onerous as the emergency one, staff will begin a 60-day campaign to educate residents and neighboring water agencies about the requirements, he added. The city’s outreach campaign will include newspaper postings, mailers, flyers and more.
Quirion noted district customers already have been voluntarily conserving water. Individual water use is down 10.3 percent this month compared to the same time last year and overall use decreased 31 percent.
“In an ideal world, there would be a more thoughtful process for this,” McIntyre acknowledged. “The governor didn’t give us an ideal world.”
Councilman Rich Cline agreed. “This is going to be messy,” he said. “We need to be ready for that.”
Although staff recommended that the city spend about $155,000 to hire a full-time environmental specialist to work with the water district, educate residents and submit monthly reports to the state, the council postponed a decision on that to Sept. 9 to explore other options.
Email Rhea Mahbubani at rmahbubani@dailynewsgroup.com or follow her at twitter.com/RMahbubani.
