Leaders call for water conservation plan

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer | Friday, September 29, 2006 10:18 PM PDT ∞

SAN DIEGO ---- Saying "the days of excess are over," state and regional water leaders called on hundreds of building, irrigation, planning and landscape officials Friday to help create a game plan to slash outdoor water use in San Diego County by billions of gallons a year by 2030.

Water leaders from Sacramento, Nevada and the San Diego County Water Authority suggested that traditional Western water supplies are being pushed by population growth, drought and environmental change and fragility.

And they asked for help in creating a "culture shift" to help prod county residents into cutting outdoor water use ---- by improving irrigation equipment and techniques, and by swapping plants that use little water and landscapes that fit the region's semiarid climate for current huge lawns, tropical plants and other water-thirsty flora.

One of the principal speakers at Friday's first eight-hour water conservation summit, held at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego was Pat Mulroy, the often-controversial general manager of the powerful Southern Nevada Water Authority ---- which made news in 2002 by paying Nevadans to rip up lawns to save water.

"Life is changing in the urban West, and water conservation has to become part of our reality," Mulroy said.

"If," she said, "we're going into a period of global warming; if we're going into a period where water resources are dangerously low; then the days where we simply used the resource at will ---- and let's be honest, we as Americans are the most voracious users of natural resources anywhere in the world ---- have got to change."

Water Authority General Manager Maureen Stapleton said the goal of Friday's summit was to enlist support to build a plan that would cut outdoor water use in San Diego County by enough to more than double the 14.7 billion gallons a year that county residents already conserve through low-flow shower heads, toilets and other indoor amenities.

Stapleton said that Water Authority leaders did not have a time period, but planned to use input from Friday's summit to create a draft that would ultimately be put into practice. That plan could potentially include tiered water rates to reward and punish ratepayers based on water use and financial incentives to replace lawns and thirsty gardens.

The Water Authority is the wholesale agency that supplies roughly 97 percent of all the water that county residents use annually by delivering water from the Colorado River and Northern California's State Water Project to 23 member agencies.

Other officials who spoke at the summit included Mark Cowin, a chief with the state Department of Water Resources; Jim Bond, chairman of the Water Authority's board of directors; and officials with the California Landscape Contractors Association; the California Urban Water Conservation Council; the Building Industry Association; the California Association of Nurseries and garden Centers; and the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Stapleton and Bond said that San Diego County's water demand increases every year ---- although the rate of increased demand has slowed considerably since 1991. That was the last year San Diego County residents faced mandatory water rationing. Caused by drought, the rationing prompted the Water Authority and its member agencies to push hard to increase indoor water conservation.

Stapleton said Friday that county residents have nearly exhausted avenues to increase indoor water conservation. But, she said, there is lots of room to cut down outdoor water consumption.

Southern California water officials say that at least 50 percent of all residential water use is outdoors ---- much of it spent overwatering gardens, trees and shrubs, or by pouring it onto lawns and thirsty plants like roses, azaleas, and hibiscus that are not native to Southern California.

Over the last few years, the Los-Angeles based Metropolitan Water District ---- Southern California's main water supplier ---- has begun marketing campaigns to tell people that Mediterranean and native California plants use much less water and can be used to create beautiful landscapes.

The Water Authority has also created its own campaign, publishing lists of "California Friendly" plants that could help cut water use, in addition to offering rebates on satellite and weather-based irrigation controllers.

Mulroy, meanwhile, said Southern Nevada has proven that water suppliers, the development community, and even the public, can completely change their states of mind about water if pushed.

Mulroy is undoubtedly one of the most powerful people in Nevada, the head of the massive agency that provides water to Las Vegas, the fastest-growing region in the country, and the Southern Nevada area.

Mulroy said that for years, Nevada's attitude was that it had to use every bit of the Colorado River water it got every year ---- "or else California would take it" ---- and that there was no incentive at all to conserve.

And residential use reflected that feeling. Even though Las Vegas gets 4 inches of rain a year, Mulroy said, the region "lived under the delusion that we were a subtropical climate."

She said that started changing around 1995 when demand on the Colorado River from seven Western states increased, and as Southern Nevada's population boomed.

But in 2002, Mulroy said, her agency was forced to implement Draconian steps to force conservation. An unexpected and unprecedented six-year drought on the Colorado River ---- which supplies 90 percent of Southern Nevada's water ---- cut runoff by 75 percent, and water levels in massive Lake Powell reservoir "dropped like a stone."

Mulroy said the first thing the agency did was offer residents $1 a square foot to tear out water-thirsty lawns. That effort has been wildly successful, handing out $63 million in rebates, and tearing out the equivalent of 1,300 football fields worth of thirsty grass.

The agency also raised water rates by 40 percent; created tiered rates to reward those who watered less and punished those who watered more; changed building codes and ordinances to outlaw grass in front yards and limit the numbers of hours and days people could water; put golf courses on water budgets; and instituted fines for people and businesses that didn't comply.

Mulroy said that Southern Nevada residents have embraced those changes. Initially intended to be temporary measures to survive the drought, they have become permanent. Landscape companies, developers and architects have now created a burgeoning native-landscape industry.

Mulroy said the overall result has been that Las Vegas and Southern Nevada in two years slashed its water demand by 16.3 billion gallons a year ---- enough to sustain 100,000 households a year.

"It dropped like a rock," she said. "This is a permanent change, and a change we're committed to."

Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.