BOLINAS COMMUNITY PUBLIC UTILITY DISTRICT
BCPUD BOX 390 270 ELM ROAD BOLINAS CALIFORNIA 94924 415 868 1224
COMMUNITY UPDATE ON THE WATER SUPPLY
Special BCPUD Board Meeting to be held on September 30, 2020
Re: Schedule for Mandatory Rationing of Water
As you all know, on June 18, 2020, the BCPUD Board of Directors issued a community-wide heightened water conservation alert and instructed all customers to reduce their water use by 20-30% or the district may have no alternative but to ration water. This alert was publicized on Nextdoor, the Hearsay News, the BCPUD website and via letters to customers using more than 250 gallons of water per day as their use has a disproportionate impact on the district’s water supply. In addition, BCPUD staff continued to reach out to the district’s highest water users in July and August and asked them to make larger reductions in their water use. We have educated those customers about how to reduce their use, we have posted information on our website at www.bcpud.org (on our home page and under the “Water Conservation” tab) and have updated that information to keep everyone informed. Our staff has been reading every water meter in town on at least a monthly basis to carefully track where water consumption remains high and urge compliance with this conservation request.
Although water consumption in the district has declined by approximately 20% as a result of your conservation efforts (thank you!), the stress on our water sources due to the current drought and unusually hot weather is significant. The creek flow in the Arroyo Hondo (our primary water source) has declined and we have been supplementing with our emergency reservoir water since June to meet demand. At this point in time, the current rate of consumption in the district (even at the reduced level) is not sustainable; we need to do more.
A presentation will be made at the regular (telephonic) meeting of the BCPUD Board of Directors next Wednesday, September 23, 2020 at 7:30 p.m. (see the agenda posted on our website at www.bcpud.org) on the status of our water supply and a special (also telephonic) meeting will be held the following Wednesday, September 30, 2020 at 7:30 p.m. to discuss a schedule for the likely implementation of the mandatory rationing of water for first time in the district since 2009. Please attend these meetings if you can to learn more about the status of our water supply and why the rationing of water is likely. If you cannot attend one or both of these meetings, please contact me for more information.
We certainly appreciate that, in the midst of a pandemic and with the recent acute fire threat to our community and throughout the West, among other things, this is the last news anyone wants to hear. However, we need to confront our challenging circumstances and take the action needed to preserve our water supply as long as possible. We can do this – as the sign downtown so aptly says, Bolinas is “six feet apart but still together”!
Jennifer Blackman
General Manager
September 18, 2020
PRIOR WATER CONSERVATION ALERTS
July 15, 2020 – UPDATED HEIGHTENED WATER CONSERVATION ALERT
JUNE 23, 2020 – HEIGHTENED WATER CONSERVATION ALERT
(Spanish – 23 junio de 2020 – ACTUALIZACIÓN SOBRE AVISO URGENTE DE CONSERVACIÓN DE AGUA)
JUNE 19, 2020 – HEIGHTENED WATER CONSERVATION ALERT
(Spanish -19 de junio de 2020 – AVISO URGENTE A LA COMUNIDAD)