Home-By-Home Water Rationing May Be Spreading If California's Drought Worsens
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — State and local water agencies in California are considering rationing daily water use for individual homes and businesses.
So far, only about 4 percent of larger water districts in the state are setting limits on individual water use. But in the San Juan Water District where people rely on Folsom Lake for all their water, individual household water allocation could become a reality too.
"If you start having a house by house type, or family by family, different rationing, you're going to have some issues," said Land Park resident Ted Boughton.
Judy Johnson with the San Juan Water District says it has already done research on how feasible that would be in the area.
"It's labor-intensive to implement because you have to collect your data on the number of residents in a household, number of bathrooms, size of landscaped area, whether they have a pool," she said, "there's a number of factors that go into play when you are going to implement water budgets."
Johnson says her district is already meeting the state mandate of 20 percent water use reduction. At this point, she says, the allocation rates could still be several years in the future.
"With the current drought situation it's not severe enough where we feel we would have to spend the money at this point to implement such a program," she said.
Boughton thinks the whole process is intrusive.
"The idea is something that does cause me some concern and I think what we are doing now we oughta continue with for awhile before we do anything drastic," he said.
Water agencies already send their total municipal water usage data to the state every month, but by late October, water suppliers will also be required to specifically provide monthly water usage estimates per person per day.
