IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Six months after Gov. Jerry Brown asked everyone in California to cut their water use, most state agencies are unable to report how much of a reduction they’ve made.
No state agencies are required to compare how much water they’re using this year with last year, and few have made the comparison on their own, according to an Associated Press report.
The news organization asked 11 state agencies or departments that use large amounts of water to match up their water use during the first half of this year with the first six months of 2013.
Only four of those agencies could provide sufficient data detailing the amount of water they used, and several took several weeks to put their numbers together. Others provided several utility bills, but admitted that those bills didn’t account for all of their water use.
In January, faced with the state’s worst drought in a generation, Brown declared an emergency and asked everyone in the state – businesses, residents and public entities – to reduce their water consumption by 20 percent.
That didn’t work, so the California Water Resources Control Board recently implemented fines of up to $500 a day for excessive water use. For example, someone who waters their lawn so that water runs off the sidewalk could be fined.
Compiling water data is difficult because the state has thousands of accounts and water use is measured in different ways and at different times, according to the report.
