Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Common Ground On Water Conservation

With California’s water future uncertain, California’s largest water agencies and leading environmental groups today signed a key 10-year agreement to conserve water in the state. The Memorandum of Understanding caps a year of intense negotiation, and offers agencies a series of best practices to conserve water.

"In 1997, a 10-year time frame for meeting conservation goals was set to end in 2008. By approving a new 10-year period, adding flexibility to the Best Management Practices and reorganizing them into programmatic groupings, California continues its role in leading water conservation and innovation in the United States," said Lynn Florey, Sonoma County Water Agency representative and emeritus Council Convener.

Water conservation is going to become even more important in California in the future. "By showing we could work together, we are setting a path for meeting even greater challenges in future years," said Jim Metropulos, Sierra Club California representative anewly appointed 2009 Council Convener. "We will need these new Best Management Practices to help meet the governor’s call for 20 percent conservation by 2020; and to address an uncertain water future with the third year of drought and potentially drier years ahead."

With an overwhelming majority vote in favor of the 8 critical changes and additions to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Best Management Practices (BMPs), the Council will continue to play a key role to the hundreds of members who implement these BMPs across the state.

"These revisions will give us the tools necessary to address the ongoing needs across the state by extending the life of the MOU, giving agencies more flexibility in achieving water conservation and by automatically updating as new technologies become available," stated Florey.

The new BMPs will become effective July 1, 2009 and will benefit all of the Council’s members, which include water providers, public advocate agencies and various other parties invested in water conservation in California.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

There's so much water wasted - the California Aqueduct isn't covered, it's still legal to hose off your driveway with imported drinking water in northern California, and even new homes have water-wasting lawns.
We flush our toilets not with gray water, but with pure water.

We do not need more dams, we need to stop wasting what we already take from the rivers.