Crews with a Southern California water district have started installing devices to limit water flow at homes that use too much water.
The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which serves communities in western Los Angeles County including Calabasas and Agoura Hills, has installed four water flow restrictors since Wednesday, KABC reported.
The device, about the size of half a dollar, reduces the amount of water a home can use by a “considerable amount” and would remain in place at each home for at least two weeks, according to the outlet. Those who remove the devices will be fined $2,500.
Mike McNutt with the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District told KABC that he hopes the devices will show residents that officials will not tolerate residents using too much water during a severe drought.
“We had 20 and we dwindled down because, of course, there was people at the last minute that were saying we want to sign this commitment form so we only installed four,” McNutt said.
“We’re getting people to pay attention, and they’re saying we need to be part of the solution.”
The water district also started once-weekly watering restrictions on Wednesday, with exceptions for the hand-watering of trees and other perennials, drip irrigation systems and areas irrigated with recycled water.
In early April, the water district announced that the amount of water allotted for outdoor uses would be reduced from 75% to 50% based on drought conditions after “a historic three-month stretch of the driest winter months on record.”
“Outdoor water uses, such as filling pools and landscape irrigation, account for up to 70% of all residential water usage, so here lies the greatest opportunity for savings. Much of the low-hanging fruit to reduce water use indoors has already been ‘picked,'” the water district said in a news release.
“Most customers have installed water-efficient appliances, low-flow toilets and shower heads, and do a pretty good job of turning off the faucet when they brush their teeth and take shorter showers.”
It was not immediately clear if any restrictions have been imposed specifically on commercial enterprises notorious for high water consumption, such as golf courses and cemeteries.
The Southern California Golf Association in April advised golf courses to start conserving water before facing mandatory restrictions, according to the golf course maintenance industry news portal TurfNet.
“Document what you are doing and be a good corporate and environmental citizen and life will go better for us,” the golf association’s public affairs director Craig Kessler told TurfNet.
“I still think we’re going to see mandatory restrictions, but we won’t see mandatory restrictions like what we saw before. I believe it will be much more nuanced, and not like the numbers that were assigned before.”
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It would be easier for all of us if the geniuses in charge could just write out a script for our day and we could follow it to a T. Get up, eat a vegan breakfast, perform daily ablations using 6 OZ of water, watch an approved news outlet to get the talking points of the day, walk an electric generating treadmill to offset any power my solar panels didn’t cover, eat a vegan lunch, fart no more than 4 times, check Twitter on my iPhone at Starbucks to see if my government check posted. If it did, buy a LGBTQIA+ themed latte, go home, eat a vegan dinner and watch some approved programming, go to sleep, dream of a socialist utopia where everyone has the same amount of money and possessions whether they work or not. Wake up, repeat.
That way I could be certain that my life had meaning and a positive impact on the global community.
Don’t forget the 4 Pills that we will have to take every Morning. Too.
YOU VILL BE controlled by the govt.. TAVORISCH..
How is California now any different than Venezuela? When did we empower the government to confiscate our water? Next, they will want to cut off your power if you go over your daily electricity ration after they turned off your air conditioner with the centralized A/C switches.
They are working on that now, Setting up all of the solar and wind mills and the Battery storage company.
They are going to shut down PGE Powerplant in 2024, and then it will start.
I’ve already heard of some folks, who’s “SMART METERS” have done just that. SHUT OFF their power, after a certain # of KW’s got used..
Send back to 5-10 million illegal aliens back from Califonia alone, to their water rich Jungles and there would be plenty of water avilable to Californians. The air would be al lot cleaner not having to burn the gas in all their hundreds of thousans of over aged cars they drive, and the sewage systems would not be overflowing like a Washinton D.C. swamp. But then California would have not crisis that the Democrat could not let go to waste to oppress them with executive dicatations based on fake science, voo doo economics, and socialist mind bending based on fear as your main source of controlling TH E . Fear and failure are their friend which keeps the masses building their yellow brick road to nowhere.
So true.. IF THE WHOLE nation didn’t have to suffer 20+ MILLION ILLEGAL INVADERS, there would be plenty of water for the LEGAL CITIZENS to use..
California, as with everything else they do, is totally inept at water management—and forestry management.
The foundation of this problem started in the mid-1970’s, and the first eight years of Jerry Moonbeam Brown, as Governor and his leftist minions, when they stopped any future plans for any future reservoirs, stopping any additional collection of water during the rainy seasons. It also stopped any future production of additional electricity from potential new hydro-electric plants.
Since then the population grew steadily, and new resident dwellings were going up everywhere.
And despite the exodus of so many to other more friendly States, many are still coming in, many migrants and foreign drafted workers, so the construction of new dwellings continues. Not so much single family homes, but concentrated condominiums and townhouses to maximize population density without any substantial upgrade of the grid or water resources.
And with his second, illegal eight years, Moonbeam doubled down on stupid and did nothing to improve anything, and was even trying to tear down existing reservoirs, despite the cycles of drought and heavier rainy seasons, and the seriously increasing population, including Hetch Hetchy, one of the biggest water suppliers in the State, and provider of electricity for much of the Bay Area, including San Francisco.
It was a great intersection of small minds and stupid thinking.
I wonder, how many new homes get built with SWIMMING POOLS?!
Hey, Governor NEWSOM, it is way past time to Build those desalination plants for water. Take a look to your west , that is a very big ocean to use.
Desalination Plants have been in use for 100 years. Instead of your Bullet Train to SAN Franciso, that money should have been used for the Plants.
He’d need a brain transplant to even think of that.
the 4th reich now resides in california! seig heil!
Seig hey, man.