City Plan Calls for Residential Water-Use Cuts

San Diegans will face mandatory, restrictive schedules for watering their lawns, washing their cars and filling their swimming pools beginning in July, if the City Council adopts a $5.1-million water conservation program to be unveiled at Tuesday’s council meeting.

The 12-point conservation program, described by the city staff as “the broadest, most extensive set of long-range programs proposed by any water agency or district in the state,” also recommends $100 rebates for installation of ultra-low-volume toilets, banning the hosing down of sidewalk and patio areas, and a three-year crash program to outfit all homes and apartments built before 1981 with water-saving plumbing devices.

The multifaceted program is targeted at both household use of water and outside irrigation, which consumes 40% of the city’s water supply, said Marsi Steirer, who developed the program for the city.

“What we were trying to do is satisfy the needs and the interests of the people of San Diego who are our customers” with a primarily voluntary program, Steirer said.

Originally scheduled to be unveiled March 7, the program is being brought before the City Council on Tuesday because of pressure from the Sierra Club, which will ask a federal judge Wednesday to build water conservation requirements into a proposed legal settlement that governs construction of the city’s $2.8-billion secondary sewage treatment system.

The Sierra Club wants U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster to mandate measures that the organization claims could reduce sewage flows by 50 million gallons daily over the next eight years, allowing for a substantially smaller and less-costly sewage system than the one designed by city planners.

The Sierra Club believes that this could be accomplished by replacing every toilet in the 1.7-million-member Metropolitan Sewerage District with ultra-low-volume 1.6-gallon toilets.

City attorneys, and their counterparts from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Justice Department and the state Regional Water Quality Control Board, will argue that a legal settlement that governs treatment of waste is no place for water conservation requirements.

City staffers also want city lawyers to propose adoption of the conservation programs in lieu of monetary fines that the city may have to pay the federal government for sewage spills into local waterways between 1983 and 1988.

Some council members have demanded to know how the city proposes to conserve water if it refuses to adopt the Sierra Club’s demands.

The answer is contained in a lengthy report that outlines 12 separate programs ranging from extensive public education and data collection to a mandatory odd-even schedule for watering lawns and washing cars.

Under the plan, residents with even-numbered addresses could use potable water for outdoor purposes within certain hours on even-numbered days, and residents with odd-numbered addresses would be restricted to odd-numbered days, Steirer said. Washing sidewalks and paved areas, and operating ornamental fountains would be prohibited.

City staff is asking the council to adopt the program next month for implementation in July.

Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who has not decided whether she supports the concept, said that the program “is very likely to come this summer. I don’t know that you have to do that all the time, but in San Diego, with our shortages” it may become necessary.

“It may be as (residents’) water and sewage bills go up, they may do it of their own accord, because it saves them money,” McCarty said.

The staff also is recommending a pilot program to test the effectiveness of ultra-low-volume toilets and water-efficient testing devices, followed by a one-year program to retrofit 3,000 homes with 6,000 new 1.6-gallon toilets, which, under state law, will be mandatory in new construction beginning in 1992.

Toilets installed before 1981 use five to seven gallons per flush, while toilets installed since then use 3.5 gallons per flush, Steirer said. Replacement with a 1.6-gallon toilet would save a family of three living in a post-1981 home 48 gallons of water each day, or 17,250 gallons per year.

But the program must first be tested to ensure that it works with older plumbing systems. “We know for sure that they work in new construction. There have been studies,” Steirer said.

But the city does not yet know whether the low-volume toilets provide “satisfactory transport of waste from the toilet through the sewer line,” she said.

Another point of the plan proposes a $100 rebate for every retrofitted toilet, which would pay for a substantial portion of the estimated $160 to $220 cost of purchase and installation of each unit, Steirer said.

The rebate program would add $1 million to next year’s budget. Currently, there is no funding reserved for any of the water conservation programs.

The most expensive proposal, at a cost of nearly $2.9 million over the next 14 months, is a recommendation to outfit more than 100,000 pre-1981 single- and multifamily residences with water-saving shower heads, toilet dams and dye tablets that would reveal if water is leaking from toilet tanks into toilet bowls.

The metal and rubber dams would displace 1 gallon of water from toilet tanks, and along with the shower heads and dye tablets could save the average household 20.2 gallons of water each day.

Under the plan, the first 50,000 homes would be given the devices during a 10-week period this spring.

City inspectors would follow up by touring neighborhoods to determine how many homes had posted a sign indicating use of the devices, Steirer said.

A later telephone survey would gauge customer satisfaction with the devices, she said.

The Metropolitan Water District has agreed to pay $425,000 toward installation of the first 50,000 sets of devices.

The program has been implemented by the cities of San Jose, Irvine and Pasadena.