Pismo building moratorium continues despite improved water supply

A building moratorium imposed in Pismo Beach last year in response to the statewide drought will remain in effect despite an unexpected increase in state water deliveries.

The Pismo Beach City Council imposed a three-tiered system of building restrictions in December and activated the first tier, which bans building permits for vacant parcels and requires owners of existing buildings who want to redevelop them to show that water demand wouldn’t increase with the reconstruction.

The council on Tuesday briefly considered dropping the Tier 1 restrictions after staff said the city’s water supply has improved because of increases in state water deliveries, putting the total expected water supply outside of the moratorium’s “trigger level” of 1,630 acre-feet.

Ultimately, the council decided to keep the current restrictions because they didn’t believe the city’s water supply — namely the questionable health of Lopez Lake — had improved enough to justify resuming building as usual.

“Right now, we are way out of the trigger. But we are, at the same time, still concerned about what’s happening with Lopez, what’s happening with groundwater later on this year — and we have some rain forecast, but we don’t know how much,” Councilman Ed Waage said Tuesday night. “Until I feel more comfortable, I guess I’d rather be a little more prudent and not move forward at this time.”

Signs of improvement

Tier 1 is activated when the city’s total water supply falls below 1,630 acre-feet from two sources: the Santa Maria groundwater basin and anticipated surface water from the state and Lopez Lake.

The tier is activated either when the basin’s deep-well index — a measurement of the basin’s health — is below 7.5 feet and the city’s surface supplies are 1,330 acre-feet or less, or when the well depth is above 7.5 feet but surface supplies are below 1,180 acre-feet.

When the council enacted the first tier in December, the surface water supply for 2016 was about 1,036.8 acre-feet.

Since then, the state has increased its expected water deliveries from 10 percent to 45 percent because of El Niño rains and a healthier snowpack in parts of California. This brings the city’s expected surface supplies to 1,855.8 acre-feet, not including stored water.

As of a January measurement, the basin’s deep-well index has also increased to 9.18 feet.

Ben Fine, Pismo Beach’s public works director, cautioned, however, that the seemingly improved status of the basin could deteriorate this summer.

Lopez Lake still at risk

Despite the rosier state of the basin and state water allocations, council members still worried that the tenuous health of Lopez Lake — which hasn’t seen significant increases in its capacity despite this year’s rains — puts the city’s water resources in danger.

The lake was at about 30 percent of its total capacity as of March 29. Because of the low level, the city can only receive 90 percent of its annual allocation, and that could drop if the water level drops.

“I’m kind of worried about Lopez Lake, and I’m worried about our basin,” Mayor Shelly Higginbotham said Tuesday. “I understand when we set the rules, you want to keep to the rules, but holy smokes — I don’t think we can go through the end of the year and just have Lopez Lake dry up and have the groundwater dry up and say that is OK because we have state water.”

Lake officials also cautioned that the lake could reach “dead pool” — or the level at which water will no longer flow — sometime between March 2017 and 2019, depending on rainfall this year.

This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Pismo building moratorium continues despite improved water supply."