Roseville Must Change Its Rules, Despite Meeting State Conservation Requirements
ROSEVILLE (CBS13) — The water cutbacks are about to get more severe as California's drought enters its fourth year.
The city of Roseville will have to change the way it's saving water, despite meeting the governor's 20 percent reduction goal.
Like many people in Roseville, Bill Thomas has made changes when it comes to saving water in the drought.
"Instead of watering it at 10 minutes at one time, I break it up into three watering of 3 minutes each so you don't get the runoff," he said.
Over the past year, Roseville residents have consistently reduced their water use almost every month by about 20 percent, but the state still wants them to change how they do that.
"It's a difficult situation now because were in limbo where we're looking at a plan," said Lisa Brown with the city's water conservation department. "We don't have one in place yet so we're still operating as we normally would."
She says even though the city was saving the required amount of water, the state now wants water agencies and cities who don't have a water-by-day schedule to adopt one. Roseville currently leaves it up to residents and businesses to decide how they want to get that 20 percent savings.
Now Brown and her staff have 45 days to come up with a new plan and get that information out to the public.
"What we would probably likely propose is a three-day-week irrigation schedule for the summer months and then a two-day-week irrigation schedule for this fall and for spring and then one day for winter if needed," she said.
While it will require more work, Brown understands what the state is trying to do—get more uniformity throughout California when it comes to saving water.
