As drought conditions worsen across Northern California, the Marin Municipal Water District is about to become the Bay Area’s first major water agency to make the leap to mandatory water restrictions.
The utility is expected to adopt a plan Tuesday that would require nearly 200,000 residents of southern and central Marin County to limit outdoor watering to one day a week as well as to stop washing their cars, refilling their swimming pools and power-washing their homes, among other things. Offenders could face fines of up to $250.
[...]
A handful of small communities in the Bay Area, including Inverness in western Marin County, along with Calistoga and St. Helena in Napa County, have already begun requiring customers to limit water use because of shrinking reserves. Several larger areas, including the South Bay, are asking for voluntary conservation. San Francisco is expected to soon join the call and request 10% cuts in outdoor watering by city households.
Officials at the Marin Municipal Water District, though, say they can’t wait to move from voluntary action, which they sought in February, to mandatory measures. The agency’s seven reservoirs that capture rain, much of it from the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, have just 57% of the water they normally hold this time of year, their lowest point in nearly 40 years.
Good for them, though fines of $250 are nothing unless that's per day or per violation. I know not all of Marin is wealthy, but there's plenty of people there who paid tens of thousands of dollars...
Good for them, though fines of $250 are nothing unless that's per day or per violation. I know not all of Marin is wealthy, but there's plenty of people there who paid tens of thousands of dollars for landscaping, and they're unlikely to want to let it dry out over a measly $250 fine.
Edit:
... a first violation would trigger a warning, a second would result in a $25 fine and subsequent violations would carry $250 penalties.
From the article:
[...]
Good for them, though fines of $250 are nothing unless that's per day or per violation. I know not all of Marin is wealthy, but there's plenty of people there who paid tens of thousands of dollars for landscaping, and they're unlikely to want to let it dry out over a measly $250 fine.
Edit:
Excellent.