California’s consumption goes down as Rancho Santa Fe’s goes up…
It is no surprise California is apparently in a drought. At a time when water conservation should be everyone’s priority, areas such as Rancho Santa Fe and Solana Beach are seeing their water usage rise.
On a monthly average, urban and suburban cities & water districts used roughly 100 to 150 gallons per capita per day. The Santa Fe Irrigation District used 426.6 gallons per capita, per day. Nearly 3x the average use.
On a monthly overall consumption has been reduced by 13%, 12% short of Jerry Brown’s goal of 25%. Many say the high water usage in areas such as Rancho Santa Fe’s and Solana is due in large part to the maintenance of the large estate landscape in the areas.
We asked resident and local Rancho Santa Fe Real Estate Expert, Jason Barry, what his thoughts on the matter are.
The way in which the Water Districts are demonizing Rancho Santa Fe is totally unfair. They are not providing an Apples to Apples comparison when saying the average Rancho Santa Fe resident uses more water than the residents in other communities. The comparison should focus on what is the amount of water used per acre in Rancho Santa Fe compared to per acre everywhere else regardless of how many residences exist on that acre.
If you make this comparison then I suspect you will find that Rancho Santa Fe uses less water than any other area in San Diego county. But I think it is important to analyze the problem more carefully.
Why do we have a water problem? Why aren’t our City and State officials providing solutions for the future to eliminate this problem? What measures are being put in place to prevent future issues? Why aren’t de-salanation plants (there is one in Carlsbad) being pursued more vigorously? However when we dig deeper int the facts we find disturbing information.
One of our educated friends on the matter, Pat Hopf explains that the reasons for the drought is not the lack of rain but in face a condition created by Environmental Lobby and politics. Pat says Environmental uses account for 50% of all water usage in California – not 5% or 15% or even 25%. Farming account for only 10%. So if we collectively reduce residential usage by 30% across the entire State, that represents a 3% reduction in overall usage. Yet, there is ZERO % reduction being required by Environmental users (the smelt and the 500 salmon in the Sacramento Delta among others). If environmental users were reduced by just 6% versus 30% required of people, the problem would be SOLVED. Why isn’t this being discussed?
Here is link to article which explains the situation more indepthly. Click here to read article.