The City Manager received a question about how water conservation can be met with the additional homes that are being built in Glendora. I wanted to share his response. It’s important to remember that water conservation is not just a Glendora problem, it’s a statewide problem and we can only deal with this if we all work together. Paul Harvey used to quote “Self Government doesn’t work without Self Discipline”. We can’t control what others do, but if we all do a little, we will make a difference.
Below is Mr. Jeffers response:
“Thank you for our comments. I would like to point out that Glendora requires all new residential development to either supply new water rights or pay a fee that allows us to acquire them. Simply stated is we want them to be self-sufficient. I know no other community that makes this a requirement in Los Angeles County.
The impact on water conservation is more due to highly dense communities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego where their high density has lowered the residential consumption as they likely have no outdoor areas unlike traditional single family lots. The state is measuring us against them hence our 225 R-GPCD seems be low for most suburban communities but with traditional urban areas they are using 70 R-GPCD. R-GPCD stands for residential gallons per capita per day.
We disagree with the formula being applied for many reasons but also because if puts the incentive on communities to lessen single family homes and increase population. Since the number of residents is directly divided into the gallons used by residential customers. We understand the attractiveness of suburban communities to residents like yourself and the desire to leave higher density areas, yet issues like this and State’s mandate that we rollback Green House Gas Emissions are ways they “incentivize” cities to allow more density. We refer to less as incentive more as politely demand.
However, as I stated earlier we make sure these development have no impact upon the current residents water supply. Also, while there is a drought and water tables are at historic lows the impact varies widely throughout the State. We have no shortage in our ability to bring water to you the community. Having said that we realize there are many communities in the Central part of the State that have literally seen their water supply vanish. Others are having it threatened. So as Californians we need to held each other out and show solidarity in this difficult time.
I think the State needs to do a much better job in managing water. For example, the various studies I have seen show Agriculture uses about 70-80% of all the potable water in the State. Urban uses about 15% of the water supply and the rest is basically credited to what they term environmental use. That is a use where the water must be maintained to keep a habitat viable or some environmental requirement needs to be met. Water is a very complex and highly charged area of discussion. Between Federal, state, Courts and citizens the management of this unique and precious resource is difficult even when there is no drought.
I hope this adds some insight and assures you that these new developments will have no impact upon our current water customers. If you would like to discuss further I would be happy to.”
Sincerely,
Chris Jeffers City Manager