Managing for Sustainability: Are you ready for permanent water rationing?
GUEST COMMENTARY: Managing for Sustainability: Are you ready for permanent water rationing?
Commentary written by John Kingsbury, Executive Director of the Mountain Counties Water Resources Association:
Poised to seize control of water districts, the State plans to mandate permanent water conservation regulations while circumventing long standing water rights laws….
This approach represents a fundamental shift of control away from local water districts and their communities to state mandated permanent water conservation standards. The proposed recommendations in this framework are intrusive, inequitable, and cost prohibitive for water districts and their ratepayers. Long-term, these proposed standards would erode water rights, and adversely affect local control over land use decisions, wildlife and aquatic habitats, recreation, tourism, our economies and the quality of life people enjoy in this region. The new water-use standards have the potential to increase fire-prone vegetation, tree mortality and the risk of catastrophic fire in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) which characterizes the mountain counties region
