Santa Rosa reports strong early compliance with new statewide water-use rules

Lisa Cuellar, the city’s water use efficiency coordinator, briefed the Board of Public Utilities on the state’s new “Making Conservation a California Way of Life” regulations and Santa Rosa’s progress meeting the new urban water use objective.

Cuellar said the statewide regulations, adopted by the State Water Resources Control Board and effective Jan. 1, 2025, set a tailored “urban water use objective” for each retail supplier. The objective combines residential indoor and outdoor use, commercial outdoor use, distribution system losses and adjustments for special uses, and will be calculated annually. Enforcement, she said, would be levied on the water provider (the city) rather than individual customers.

The nut of the briefing: Santa Rosa’s first report, covering fiscal year 2023–24, showed actual use nearly 40% below the city’s objective. That result, Cuellar said, ranks among the better submittals across the state and reflects decades of local investment in water-efficiency programs.

Cuellar outlined the reasons the state adopted the new regulatory approach: after emergency-era uniform percent reductions drew criticism for treating all suppliers the same, the state moved to supplier-specific objectives. She traced the legal and policy timeline back to Governor Brown’s 2016 executive order and the subsequent bills SB 606 and AB 1668, through rulemaking by the Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the State Water Resources Control Board in 2024.

City investments described to the board include a current annual water-use-efficiency budget of $1.5 million that supports five full-time staff and rotating interns; roughly $30 million invested since 1990; replacement of about 58,000 toilets with high-efficiency models; conversion of roughly 4,300,000 square feet of turf to lower-water landscaping; and an overall per-capita water use decline of about 50% despite population growth.

Cuellar cautioned that the urban water use objective is a moving target. The indoor-per-capita standard used to calculate objectives will tighten over time, she said: the prior year’s baseline used 55 gallons per capita per day (gpcd), next year’s calculation drops to 47 gpcd, and by 2030 the indoor standard is expected to be 42 gpcd. Cuellar said provisional city data indicate Santa Rosa will likely remain substantially below its objective even as standards tighten.

Board member questions focused on how the rule applies to agriculture and on incentives for reduced turf in new development. Cuellar and Director Burke said the new regulations apply to urban retail suppliers; agricultural rules are handled separately (for example, through the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act or agricultural water management plans) and there is not a directly comparable statewide urban-style target for agriculture. On new development, Cuellar cited the State Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (often applied via local permitting) as limiting turf area for new and rehabilitated landscapes above certain thresholds.

Cuellar also described the city’s Urban Water Management Plan work, a required five-year planning document submitted to the California Department of Water Resources. The city has hired EKI Water & Environment, Inc. to prepare a regional water-demand analysis and conservation-update (project cost about $550,000) with nine other Sonoma water contractors participating. Cuellar said staff expect to submit the updated plan by the statutory deadline of Jan. 1, 2026.

The briefing concluded with board members praising the city’s long-term conservation leadership and no public speakers during the item.