San Francisco declares water scarcity emergency, asks metropolis customers to preserve 5%
San Francisco has some of the most environmentally conscious water users in California, and its reservoirs contain enviable reserves, a crucial resource two years after a nationwide drought.
Now the city is asking its water customers to use even less.
Members of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission voted Tuesday to declare a water shortage emergency and enact a 10% system-wide reduction in water use.
They aim to do so by asking city dwellers and businesses to cut water use by 5% and calling for more than two dozen agencies in Alameda, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties that buy water from San Francisco to save even more , by reducing water consumption by 14%.
The statement requires the city to impose a temporary surcharge on city users’ water bills of up to 5% — the amount they are told to cut from customers — to ensure rates stay within what the city wants to pay for water bills running their water systems costs . The surcharge is measured against water consumption in fiscal year 2019-2020, a timeframe chosen prior to the pandemic. At most, it is expected to increase consumer bills by about $6 per month.
Steven Ritchie, deputy director general for water at SFPUC, said at Tuesday’s meeting that the planned cuts are intended to offset the long-term impact of the drought on the city’s water resources. October’s storms brought temporary relief to northern California’s water reserves, but it wasn’t enough to erase the effects of two dry winters.
“It doesn’t look like there are any storms on the horizon,” Ritchie said. “Certainly recent storms have helped, but the drought persists.”
A rainwater collection system helps conserve water at Zan Sterling’s home.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
San Francisco’s reservoir supply remains fairly resilient at nearly 73% capacity, just below the normal 80% capacity typical for this time of year. But about a third of the supply is blocked due to government cut orders issued amid the drought.
Public Utilities Commission officials said they would return to the commissioners next year to discuss the possibility of increasing rates for about two dozen wholesale customers, such as Alameda County and the cities of Hayward, Daly City and Sunnyvale, who get their water from the get city.
San Franciscans use an average of about 42 gallons of water each day, less than the statewide average of 90 gallons.
Saving water means, among other things, turning off the tap while you lather your hands with soap and brush your teeth. On a larger scale, water collection systems can be used to collect rainwater for use in gardens.
Zan Sterling, who is working to reduce water use at her Bernal Heights home, inspects a clay watering pot she uses for her plants.
Stephen Lam/The Chronicle
In Bernal Heights, Zan Sterling welcomes the call to save more water.
Sterling said some of her earliest memories of growing up in the South Bay in the 1970s were when everyone stopped using sprinklers and the lawn turned brown.
“It went from flushing the toilet to ‘if it’s yellow, let it soften,'” Sterling said.
She has installed a special toilet with a faucet on the tank and uses the hand wash water to flush. She built a system to collect water draining from an awning for use in her garden. She buried clay pots at the base of her backyard fruit trees, an age-old method of collecting rainwater and soaking it into the ground when the soil is dry.
“We should all conserve water – 5% isn’t that much,” Sterling said.
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However, some concerns about the impact of the SFPUC’s decision were raised during Tuesday’s meeting.
The declaration of state of emergency could allow the SFPUC to circumvent government restrictions on water withdrawals due to the drought. The State Water Resources Control Board has ordered San Francisco to stop withdrawing water from the Tuolumne River to fill its reservoirs, but the statement allows the city to request an exemption to withdraw some river water.
Peter Drekmeier, policy director for conservation group Tuolumne River Trust, asked commissioners to postpone their vote so they can have a more thorough discussion of the impact of their decisions on the rest of California. Salmon slopes have declined sharply in recent years and rivers have receded, he said in a previous interview.
“Our concern is that the Tuolumne River is in really bad shape,” Drekmeier said. “He has the worst salmon returns of our Central Valley rivers.”
The commissioners did not respond to Drekmeier’s concerns. The five commissioners voted unanimously to accept the declaration.
SFPUC President Anson Moran described the statement as a normal step during the drought. Ritchie, the PUC’s water manager, said it could be lifted once the city met its goals.
That would end the surcharge.
In an earlier version of this story, the process for a water user surcharge was misrepresented. The surcharge is 5% until the declaration of emergency is lifted.
Julie Johnson is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: julie.johnson@sfchronicle.com. Twitter @juliejohnson
