Water use penalties for Cambria put on hold

Cambrians can wash their cars now. And although services district customers still must keep their water use within the amount allotted to them, if they exceed those usage levels in the next four months starting March 1, they won’t be financially penalized or surcharged, under actions taken Feb. 18 by services district directors.

After about an hour’s debate that continued what district counsel Tim Carmel called the “robust discussion” that the Cambria Community Services District Board of Directors had on the same topic in January, the board suspended for two billing periods (four months total) the surcharges and penalties that have provided the enforcement tools in the district’s “water conservation measures, restrictions on the use of potable water and maximum water-use allotments.”

The vote was 4-1, with Director Amanda Rice voting against the motion. She said staff hadn’t provided statistics on how many customers have been using more than their allotments, by how much and how often. “We could be talking about 15 people,” she said. “And we don’t know when we’ll have the next rain,” or what the drought conditions will be this year.

“I think this goes much too far,” she said later in the discussion. She wanted to table the discussion for another month.

Finance manager Patrick O’Reilly said he didn’t have those figures handy, but that the district has levied some “fairly consistent, substantial surcharges,” mostly for businesses. In fact, he included a $310,815 estimate of income for penalties and surcharges in the midyear budget adjustment through June 30.

Changes

Carmel said at one point early in the debate that he’d be more comfortable with the proposal if the board had given staff a month to come up with revised wording. “I do have some concern, doing this on the fly,” he said.

The changes in the resolution were complex enough that the board took a second brief break so Carmel and staff members could confer and make sure they were all understood exactly what was being proposed.

Staff had recommended allowing district customers to use some of their restricted water allotments (approximately 50 gallons per day per person) to wash vehicles.

Cambrians already are allowed to use some of that allotment to irrigate outdoor landscaping one day a week (which day depends on their address and if they live in town or are “weekenders” or vacation-rental owners).

After Director Jim Bahringer said he was “pretty surprised” that the only change staff had advocated was permission to wash cars, and that “”we’ll continue to have surcharges,” Sanders added his call to revamp the district’s “archaic” water allocation system that he said is “impossible to administer fairly, a static allocation with a very fluid economy … an administrative nightmare.”

Sanders also said people who live above a business can be unfairly penalized, because their allocation is based on the type of business they have, not their residential use.

The vote

A four-member board majority approved putting the surcharges and penalties on hold through June. They said they’re confident Cambrians will continue to conserve, not just because California, the county and the district require it, but because it’s the right thing to do and, as Board President Gail Robinette said, “I believe if you walk the walk long enough, it becomes a habit.”

Also, the district’s wells are full, and the creeks are running … for now.

Sanders said the caveat is, “we are still in the drought. We have to monitor this very carefully. The community needs to understand that at any moment,” the district might need to reinstitute the penalties and surcharges, especially if there’s limited rainfall, water use skyrockets and supplies begin to dwindle.

Eventually, his motion was to suspend enforcement of surcharges and penalties from March through June and eliminate a resolution clause that no longer applies, due to the new water-rate structure the board adopted Feb. 12. The new resolution also adds some of the state’s restrictions that had been missing from the district’s rules, such as not allowing irrigation with district water within 48 hours after measurable rainfall, no matter what day it is.

All the other previous restrictions remain in force, Carmel stressed.

Californians are to reduce their water consumption by 25 percent compared to their usage in 2013. Cambrians’ conservation level has been up to 43 percent.

The district’s new water rates are based on a conservation level of 30 percent.

Among other actions taken by the board during the meeting were:

▪ Adopting the district’s midyear budget adjustment for fiscal year 2015-16. The projection is for $8,956,399 in revenue and $9,511,049 in expenditures, with $13.6 million in capital projects, the lion’s share of which was for the sustainable water facility (formerly known as the emergency water supply project).

▪ Increasing funding through the month of April to $45,000 (from the initial allocation of $5,000) for the firm that’s been helping to operate the wastewater treatment plant, and which provides a supervisor with the state-required licensing level. The expense is offset by a vacant wastewater supervisor position. The district is recruiting to fill that job.

▪ Declaring that CDM Constructors has completed its nearly $7.4 million worth of work on the $13 million sustainable water facility, and the work conforms to the project’s approved plans and specifications.

The action clears the way for the district to pay more than $358,000 in payment retained until the CDM work — building an advanced water treatment facility, an evaporation pond, a groundwater reinjection well, monitoring wells, a lagoon water discharge and interconnecting pipelines — was deemed complete.

For details, go to www.cambriacsd.org.

This story was originally published February 24, 2016 at 10:47 AM with the headline "Water use penalties for Cambria put on hold."