Gov. Jerry Brown reacted angrily to a state appeals court ruling Monday that will hamper his efforts to force urban water users to cut their use by 25%
“The practical effect of the court’s decision is to put a straitjacket on local government at a time when maximum flexibility is needed,” Brown said in a prepared statement. “My policy is and will continue to be: Employ every method possible to ensure water is conserved across California.”
In the 28-page ruling, the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that while tiered rates that rise incrementally based on a customer’s usage are “perfectly consonant” with the law, the tiers still must correspond to the cost of delivering the service. The case involved San Juan Capistrano, in southern Orange County.
Brown had ordered Californians to cut their water use in urban and industrial areas around the state. Some cities, such as Beverly Hills, would have to cut their usage by as much as 36% under guidelines established by Brown’s administration.
But the court’s ruling effectively makes those regulations impossible to implement. The court struck down the city’s policy of tiered water rates, in which the water district charges customers more the more water they use. Those threats of rate hikes were to be implemented by local water agencies around the state to help the state achieve it’s 25% reduction goals.
The ruling in effect limits water agencies ability to charge more for increased use, removing a tool from the local government tool kit to get Californians to cut their water use.
“The water agency here did not try to calculate the cost of actually providing water at its various tier levels,” the three-judge court wrote in the unanimous ruling. “It merely allocated all its costs among the price tier levels, based not on costs, but on predetermined usage budgets.”