California will crack down on future “Wet Princes” – homeowners who use enormous quantities of water during droughts.
A bill signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown this week requires local water agencies for the first time to set limits on how much water residential customers can use after a statewide water emergency has been declared.
For decades, most utilities have allowed customers to pump as much water as they can pay for, drought or no.
Now, if water wasters flout the new restrictions, they will face fines of up to $500 for every 748 gallons of overuse, the new law says.
State Sen. Jerry Hill of San Mateo proposed the measure last year after Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting published The Wet Prince of Bel Air, a story about mega water use during a crippling four-year-long drought.
The so-called Wet Prince was a homeowner on the Westside of Los Angeles who used an astonishing 11.8 million gallons in a single year – enough for 90 families.
Hill said he heard about the issue from an outraged constituent who’d read the story. He said the measure corrects a basic flaw in state water conservation laws.
“You and I could be fined $500 for using a hose without a flow restrictor to wash the car, or if you used your sprinkler on the wrong day of the week,” he said. But mega-users faced no penalties.
The law also will make the names of violators public, Hill noted. Up to now, California water agencies have refused to reveal the names of mega users, citing privacy concerns.
The law requires the utilities themselves to define excessive water use, considering such factors as climate, household size and average local water consumption.
Before the drought, the average California household used about 360 gallons per day, according to a state study. Oakland’s East Bay Municipal Utility District last year began imposing fines on customers who were using more than 1,000 gallons per day.
The law takes effect only after the governor proclaims a drought emergency. California is no longer officially in a drought emergency, thanks to last winter’s rains.
Lance Williams can be reached at lwilliams@cironline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @LanceWCIR.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Republish Our Content
Thanks for your interest in republishing a story from Reveal. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. You are free to embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:
-
Do not change the story. Do not edit our material, except only to reflect changes in time and location. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
-
Please credit us early in the coverage. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. We prefer the following format: By Will Evans, Reveal.
-
If republishing our stories, please also include this language at the end of the story: “This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.”
-
Include all links from the story, and please link to us at https://www.revealnews.org.
PHOTOS
-
You can republish Reveal photos only if you run them in or alongside the stories with which they originally appeared and do not change them.
-
If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting Digital Engagement Producer Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from Getty and The Associated Press; those are not available for republication.
DATA
-
If you want to republish Reveal graphics or data, please contact Data Editor Soo Oh, soh@revealnews.org.
IN GENERAL
-
We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. You also cannot sell our material separately or syndicate it.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If you plan to republish our content, you must notify us republish@revealnews.org or email Sarah Mirk, smirk@revealnews.org.
-
If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately.
-
Please note, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis.
If you have any other questions, please contact us at republish@revealnews.org.