Soquel Creek Water District discusses water rationing

3 on to santa cruz county, …where the “soquel creek” water district is holding a community meeting tonight! it’s taking a hard look at potential new water restrictions… 3 water levels are already low….and of course, the drought hasn’t helped… #### but central coast news reporter cassandra arsenault says… even more rainfall *won’t be enough to solve the problem… cassy? 3 the district says the basin is running low and changes have to be made. tonight’s meeting in soquel is one of many discussions they’re having with the community. before they introduce new water rules, and the penalties that go with them. 3 *trt:outcue::*makes amess of the environment16-211:11-1:20 nat sound of water pouring/cutting chicken michael’s on main has been a popular restaurant in soquel for 13 years. nats michael clarke owner and chef says a restaurant by nature uses a lot of water to cook delicious meals, and clean silverware nats but they still have to conserve…bite: water wise it’s so important one thing is to let our customers know. michael’s on main uses all water efficient appliances, and even use plants as decor that dont need water. and they make people aware of how precious water is with these signsbite: do you really need a glass of water its something that we don’t automatically do 3 anymoreaccording to soquel water district conservationist, ron duncan for every glass of water that is asked for at a restaurant it takes 8 glasses of water to clean that glass. he says business like michaela’s have made it possible to reduce water usage 20% in the last ten years, but they need to reduce 30% more. to do that they need a planbite: water budgets, give guidance to how much water they should be using or be allocatedright now an average person in their district uses 70 gallons a day but in the summer that number doubles. they are hoping to reduce that number, and to do it they have a penalty that will make people listen.bite; what we are proposing is something like fort ten percent you go over you might be charge a dollar or two then once you go over 110 percent of the budget it could be 4 dollars per every 100 gallons but they don’t want to hurt their economy by limiting business’s like michael’sbite: don’t want to limitbusinesses bc if they are successful that just penalizes them.they are going to ask businesses to switch out for water efficient appliances, and if their refuse to cooperate then they will have to face the penalty. but people like michael who went green years ago say if people dont conserve it hurts the whole communitybite : it makes amess of the environment 3 the soquel creek water district says the penalties under consideration are less about collecting money– and more about making people aware. again this is only a conversation… nothing has been implemented yet.