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Santa Cruz Enforces Summer Water Use Rules

Erika Mahoney
Maggie Haddon is the City of Santa Cruz's Water Conservation Assistant. It's her job to drive around Santa Cruz and make sure residents are following the city's summer water restrictions.

The City of Santa Cruz relies on the San Lorenzo River for its primary water supply. After a dry year, the river is running low. So as the city begins tapping into its backup water supply, it’s also enforcing water restrictions.   

Maggie Haddon spends most mornings driving around Santa Cruz. She’s the city’s Water Conservation Assistant and it's her job to help enforce Santa Cruz's summer water rules. As she drives around, she's looking for people who are breaking the rules. 

Haddon usually heads out in the morning. That’s when most sprinkler systems are on and the most common violation happens - excessive watering.  

“If a sprinkler head is broken [and] spraying on the sidewalk, if it’s spraying too long and there's water running down the street, that's what's not allowed,” Haddon says.

Another rule is no watering the yard between 10am and 5pm. If Haddon catches someone breaking the rules, she gives them a warning.

“They get a warning letter first and then if they don't fix whatever we ask them to fix, then they can get a penalty,” says Haddon.

The penalty is a $100 fine added to the water bill. Third violation is a $300 fine. The city will shut off a household’s water if there’s a fourth violation.

So far, the city has only handed out warnings this summer; a total of 76 since May.

This is the sixth time in the past ten years the city has implemented restrictions and employed a Water Conservation Assistant like Haddon. So Water Conservation Manager Toby Goddard says residents are onboard with the rules.

“There’s a continuing awareness that lingers over from a few years ago when the state was in drought and I think there's an underlying strong conservation ethic in this community that was there even beforehand,” Goddard says.

Right now the San Lorenzo River is running quite low. So this week, the city began pulling extra water from the Loch Lomond Reservoir. Water restrictions remain in place through the end of October. Click here for a full list of the rules. Residents are allowed to wash their cars. 

Erika joined KAZU in 2016. Her roots in radio began at an early age working for the independent community radio station in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado. After graduating from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 2012, Erika spent four years working as a television reporter. She’s very happy to be back in public radio and loves living in the Monterey Bay Area.
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