Lawn watering down to two days

Facing fines of up to $10,000 per day, the City of Arcadia approved further lawn watering cutbacks Tuesday night. Watering will be permitted only two days per week on Tuesdays and Saturdays. City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said during the City Council meeting that the State of California could not only start assessing fines of $10,000 per day but could impose those fines retroactively to June when the City began being out of compliance with Governor Brown’s mandate for Arcadia to reduce water usage by 36%.

Cutting back watering to three days per week, and the City cutting back it’s usage by about 60% made a big difference overall, with savings of 28% or so overall the past few months, and even exceeding 30% one month, but it has still not been enough. Public Works Services Director Tom Tait said that the City has issued more than 300 citations for violators of the current restrictions, but that it is very time-consuming and challenging to find and verify violators even when residents call in to make reports. Unless violators can be caught in the act, officials have to go and collect and analyze data from the water meter of the property owner.

The new mandate requires that no lawn, landscape, or other turf areas shall be watered or irrigated more than 2 days per week — Tuesday and Saturday, Furthermore, outdoor watering of lawn, landscape or other turf areas shall be limited to no more than 10 minutes per station on each day allowed for such watering.

Exceptions may be made by written application to the City’s Public Works Services Director that could allow the owner of property used primarily for commercial, industrial or institutional purposes to irrigate lawn, landscape or other turf areas additional days if the owner reduces overall bi-monthly water use for such property by at least twenty-five percent (25%) from the same bi-monthly period in 2013.

— By Scott Hettrick