Marin County is first in Bay Area to impose water use restrictions

Marin Municipal Water District is the first major water agency in the San Francisco Bay Area to declare a water shortage emergency and impose restrictions on customers.

The district's board of directors voted unanimously at a Tuesday night meeting to approve parts of a program imposing mandatory water use restrictions, said Jeanne Mariani-Belding, a spokesperson for the district.

The district serving about 200,000 residents is issuing a ban on car washing, power washing up houses and buildings, washing sidewalks and driveways, flooding gutters and more, Mariani-Belding said. The restrictions go into effect immediately and will be enforced beginning May 1.

Golf course irrigation will be restricted to greens and tees starting May 20.

The board opted to not impose a limit on outdoor watering to one day per week, but will revisit this in two weeks.

In February the district adopted a resolution calling for voluntary conservation, but the board has been pushing for more drastic measures as the water outlook for the year ahead is grim. The district's total reservoir storage volume as of April 15 is 57.5% of the historical average, or 52.9% of total storage.

Seventy-five percent of the district's water supply depends on rainfall across the the county's watershed; the remaining 25% is imported from the Sonoma County Water Agency, according to the recommendations posted in the agenda. "In 2020, the district received just over 20 inches of rain, the second-lowest rainfall total for the District's watershed in 90 years," the board said.