SANTA CRUZ >> The Santa Cruz City Council will be awash with water issues Tuesday night, the biggest ticket item a consideration of reinstating mandatory water rationing after a four-month hiatus.

Activating the dormant Stage 3 Water Reduction Emergency will not require additional water reduction cutbacks. Customers, who have been voluntarily reducing water usage since December, will simply be held to the same standards as last year, with fines targeting residential water scofflaws.

Santa Cruz city leaders has stepped the city up into increasing levels of water emergency since 2012, meeting much of the new state-mandated reduction goals before Gov. Jerry Brown announced them this month.

In Santa Cruz, winter rainfall, mostly confined to December and earlier, represented about 73 percent of the normal area rainfall, at 20.3 inches in the past five months. Last year’s rainfall and Santa Cruzans’ 25 percent use reduction in 2014 helped, officials have said, but will not cancel out the Stage 3 emergency expected this year.

The state Water Resources Control Board, while calling for an overall statewide 25 percent water use reduction in 2015, is requiring Santa Cruz to cut back by just 10 percent.

The city’s Stage 3 water shortage emergency declaration requires mandatory rationing for single family and multi-family residential customers, who face fines if they exceed their assigned water budgets. Large irrigation customers also will be asked to scale back their water budgets, and large commercial customers will be on the hook for mandatory water audits, conservation plans and signage.

If approved, rationing to begin May 1 will allow single-family households about 249 gallons of water per day, based on a four-person household, though customers can request more. Condominiums, apartment buildings and duplexes will have from 124 to 174 gallons per residence per day, depending on the number of units.

Consumption exceeding those limits by 10 percent will cost $25 per unit of water. Using more than 10 percent of a household’s water budget will cost $50 per unit of water. In 2014, some $1.6 million in fines were assessed, but about half were waived through attendance at the city’s one-day conservation education “water school,” city Water Department spokeswoman Eileen Cross.

Later in the meeting, the council also will consider entering into an agreement with the Soquel Creek Water District to establish guidelines for shared pumping from sandstone aquifers known as the Purisima Formation, which supplies between 4 and 5 percent of the city’s water supply. Both water agency established a new well close to the intersection of 41st Avenue and Soquel Drive in recent months, and are now considering a joint management agreement that will ensure responsible use of the groundwater supply.

City Public Works and Water department officials also will request unexpected $150,000 extra funding to relocate an underground water main at the Municipal Wharf roundabout construction project. The roundabout is directly above an existing water main that was damaged during site preparation work, leaving Wharf businesses without water for hours on March 18. The additional funds will be used to move the pipes to an adjacent site that will not require disturbances of the roundabout for future issues.

Santa Cruz City Council meeting

What: Consideration of Stage 3 Water Shortage Emergency and mandatory rationing

When: 2:45 p.m., Tuesday

Where: Council Chamber, 809 Center St.

Information: cityofsantacruz.com