Santa Maria pushes water conservation

The City of Santa Maria is urging residential and commercial water customers to conserve as the Central Coast and California remains in a severe drought despite recent rains and snowfall.

The City of Santa Maria has released a public service announcement encouraging water customers to join the National Mayor’s Challenge in reducing water use.

“It only takes a few minutes, you register online and you might win a prize”, said Mark van de Kamp with the City of Santa Maria, “the bottom line is you’re going to make yourself a promise to reduce your water usage, it will save you money and it’s only all about common sense stuff, I think a lot of people are able to do that very inexpensively.”

Santa Maria is among a handful of Central Coast cities and water districts that are customers of the State Water Project which is expected to once again deliver well below average annual water allocations.

“We have enough water here in Santa Maria to meet foreseeable demand”, van de Kamp said, “it’s a combination of local ground water supplies and supplemental water brought in from the State Water Project, which we’ve been doing for about 21 years now.”

It’s not just the water you use for landscape irrigation but perhaps more importantly the water you use inside your home.

“We find that people have cut back on their consumption of water not only for outside but also for inside”, van de Kamp said, “we also have a water conservation specialist here at the city so if you want to have a free water audit of what’s going on inside your house.”

Chronic water abusers in the city are subject to enforcement measures including steep fines.