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Beginning May 1st, customers of Palmdale Water District (PWD) will have to limit outdoor watering and increase water conservation to 20 percent.
Monday, the Board of Directors voted to implement the Mandatory Stage 2 of their 2020 Water Shortage Contingency Plan (WSCP) which will require PWD customers to only water their landscapes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. Violators would receive warnings before fines that start at $50 are levied.
As part of the mandatory phase starting June 1, the outdoor usage tier (Tier 2) water allocation for single-family, multi-family, and irrigation accounts will be reduced by 20%. A drought surcharge of 40 cents per unit (one unit is equal to 748 gallons of water) will be applied to the higher, non-essential usage tiers (Tiers 3-5). In other words, the cost of water for customers whose water use stays within Tier 1 and the reduced Tier 2 will stay the same. The drought surcharge will only affect customers who use more than the reduced Tier 2 water allocation.
“We’ve been hoping the rain we had would be enough, but it hasn’t worked out that way,” said PWD Board President Gloria Dizmang. “We must face the reality that we are running out of water, and we must try and save every drop we can. We are out of options. We must conserve.”
Last August, the Board adopted the Voluntary Stage 2 of the 2020 WSCP, calling for voluntary water use cutbacks. Water production for 2021 ended at 0.8% higher than 2020.
“Early analysis of our available water supply shows that we need to conserve 3,000 acre-feet to meet our water demands for the remainder of the year” said PWD Resource and Analytics Director Peter Thompson Jr. “If we all conserve 20% from 2020 usage, we expect that we will have enough water. We need every single one of our 126,000 customers to use water wisely.”
