Californians cut water use 26%, but 4 communities earn big fines

This Sept. 17 photo shows boat docks sitting empty on dry land, as Folsom Lake reservoir near Sacramento stands at only 18 percent capacity as a result of the drought. This Sept. 17 photo shows boat docks sitting empty on dry land, as Folsom Lake reservoir near Sacramento stands at only 18 percent capacity as a result of the drought. Photo: Mark Ralston, AFP / Getty Images Photo: Mark Ralston, AFP / Getty Images Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Californians cut water use 26%, but 4 communities earn big fines 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Californians slashed their water use 26 percent in September, meeting Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of a 25 percent reduction for the fourth straight month even as the specter of complacency rises with forecasts of drenching El Niño rains, according to state data released Friday.

But state water officials, rather than relishing in modest progress, toughened their stand against those getting in the way of even greater savings.

The State Water Resources Control Board announced for the first time that it was slapping fines on four urban water suppliers that haven’t conserved as much as they should. The Southern California cities of Beverly Hills, Indio and Redlands, as well as the Coachella Valley Water District, face penalties of $61,000 apiece, officials said.

The communities have missed state-ordered conservation targets every month since June, when officials, amid a fourth year of punishing drought, began threatening fines for laggards.

Punishing water wasters

Under the Brown administration’s drought policy, water agencies are required to cut back between 4 and 36 percent from what they used in 2013, before the call for conservation was sounded. Bigger users are pegged for larger reductions, with an aim of saving 25 percent collectively.

“There was nothing I would like better than to not have issued fines to purveyors,” said Cris Carrigan, the state water board’s chief of enforcement. But some, he said, “weren’t making a strong enough effort, or the customers in their district did not respond to the efforts they were making.”

Beverly Hills, with its sprawling backyard landscapes that are often well watered and hidden behind tall fences, is widely seen as a thorn in the side of state water managers pushing for savings. The community, like the others penalized, has 20 days to appeal.

State officials, who left it up to individual water agencies to figure out how to meet their conservation targets, said the four hit with fines would probably not be the last.

Reaching out to top users

Statewide, 72 percent of the roughly 400 water agencies met, or were within one percentage point, of their conservation standard.

In the Bay Area, eight of the region’s nearly four dozen water suppliers fell short, including the city of Palo Alto, the Marin Municipal Water District and the Bear Gulch division of the California Water Service Co., which serves Atherton, Portola Valley, Woodside and parts of Menlo Park.

“We’re looking at seeing what we can do to market more strongly our conservation programs,” said Dawn Smithson, manager of the Bear Gulch district. “We’re conducting focus groups, and we’re doing outreach and trying to reach out to our highest users.”

The district, like other Bay Area suppliers that fell short of targets, met state goals in past months and remains on track to hit its mark cumulatively through February, when the state cuts expire. State officials say water agencies with total savings above their goals are unlikely to face penalties.

The privately owned utility, unlike some water agencies in the region, has ruled out publicly naming its top guzzlers, which some see as a way of shaming people into saving more.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District made news this week when it released a second list of customers failing to meet district water caps, exposing sports stars, tech titans and financial heavyweights to a squall of scrutiny.

As a whole, the Bay Area logged a 25.1 percent reduction in September compared with the same period in the baseline year of 2013. While the region has typically been at the fore of conservation, the latest figures put the area slightly behind most other parts of the state.

San Jose, Contra Costa cuts

Efforts to cut back remained strong in the San Jose area, which reduced its use 31 percent, according to the water board, while residents and businesses in Menlo Park lopped off 56 percent. The Contra Costa Water District clipped 41 percent.

“Customers are doing a good job,” said Jennifer Allen, a spokeswoman for the Contra Costa County agency.

Like other utilities, Allen’s district is trying to keep the conservation message front and center, especially as residents may be tempted to become less diligent in the face of forecasts of a wetter-than-average winter.

“People are hearing the reports of El Niño, but we don’t know exactly what it is going to look like,” Allen said. “There are still a lot of unknowns.”

California reservoirs remain near their lowest levels in a generation, while the Sierra snowpack that fills them is virtually nil. Water managers say that even with a rainy winter on par with the strongest El Niño years of the past, the state probably won’t get enough precipitation to end the drought.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, serving the city of San Francisco, reduced water use by 13 percent in September, surpassing its 8 percent target.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District cut back 23 percent, above its 16 percent target. The San Jose Water Co. also surpassed its 20 percent goal.

Collectively, California reduced water use by 27 percent in August, 31 percent in July and 27 percent in June.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander