Yesterday’s part one of Joshua Basin Water District’s Wednesday night meeting highlighted the board’s refusal to make a service commitment to NextEra Energy’s proposed solar plant. Today, assignment reporter Mike Lipsitz covers the other significant news coming out of that meeting …
Wednesday night’s decision to deny a service commitment to NextEra Energy was fueled in part by concerns that the solar development would negatively impact the district’s mandated conservation targets. And while the merits of that argument may never be known, the latest data show that district ratepayer’s response to the call to conserve was exceptional. From June 2015 through January 2016, the district saw a cumulative 23.71 percent reduction in consumption, a hair short of the 24 percent adjusted target. Residential ratepayer’s per capita gallons used per day went from 135 to 54 gallons daily. Among institutional users, Joshua Tree Memorial Park and the California Highway Patrol building showed the greatest progress reducing water use by more than 59 percent. General Manager Curt Sauer announced the district’s new mandated conservation target from now through October is a slightly more lenient 20 percent reduction. Sauer urged ratepayers to keep up their diligence.
JOSHUA BASIN WATER PART 2: WATER CONSERVATION
