Third in a series.
Re: “Just Waking up to Long-running Drought”
Charles Herbertson thinks it is “pretty interesting the way the state Water Board is proposing reductions in water usage.”
The longtime Public Works director was referring to the formula dictating the assigned number of gallons per capita per day.
Mr. Herbertson was scanning the Water Board’s limit for each California community in Year Four of The Drought.
“The city of Arcata (almost 18,000 residents) in Northern California is using 43.5 gallons per person per day,” he said. “So they only have to reduce their water usage by 8 percent.
“The city of Inglewood is using 65.1 gallons per day. They must reduce by 12 percent. The Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power is averaging 91 gallons a day, and they have to reduce by 16 percent.”
Culver City turf and humans are much thirstier.
Mr. Herbertson said the community is consuming 113 gallons per person per day, and must reduce by 24 percent.
Almost identical is Santa Monica at 111 gallons each day.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Burbank, where Culver City’s former City Manager, Mark Scott, presides, is using 132.2 gallons per person per day. They must cut back by 28 percent.
Up north, environmentally-centric Davis is using 143.9 gallons per capita each day. They, too, have been assigned a 28 percent pullback.
Finally, in Beverly Hills, each resident is averaging a whopping 235.8 gallons. They have to reduce by 38 percent.
One of Mr. Herbertson’s casual, not all-inclusive conclusions was that the more affluent the community, the higher the water usage.
“Also,” he said, “the more single families you have, the higher the per capita usage. One reason is, people have yards.”
Whatever the explanations, Mr. Herbertson said that all Californians “will have to become more water efficient than we are now.”
