Southern California Edison, the utility serving Santa Catalina Island, has imposed Stage 3 rationing, requiring everyone to slash their water use by 40 to 50 percent.
“The only way to eliminate Stage 3,” Ron Hite, Catalina district manager for Edison, told the Los Angeles Times, “is rain.”
Drought is not new to island and its 4,500 residents, who, according to the newspaper, rely on modern desalination plants and a network of old wells, pumps, tanks and miles of 10-inch pipelines to serve their water needs and those of the 700,000 tourists who visit each year.
In recent months, islanders have already cut their water consumption by 40 percent, even though restrictions called for cutbacks of roughly half that. But reservoir water is now reported at the low 139 acre-feet level, and meteorologists are predicting more drought, so the time has come to cut back again, Hite said.
With the new restrictions, all ratepayers served by the island’s two desalination plants are required to reduce usage by 40 percent and those served solely by groundwater resources must cut back by 50 percent.
Some of the angriest responses to Edison’s rationing plan are from 188 ratepayers in Hamilton Cove, a luxury condominium complex served by groundwater resources and, therefore, required to reduce water usage by 50 percent.
In a protest filed with the California Public Utilities Commission, they argued the plan is unfair because Hamilton Cove was built by a developer who gave the island’s first desalination plant to Edison in the early 1990s.
Edison counters that its rationing plan is intended to preserve dwindling groundwater supplies and does not discriminate against any class of customers.
