Residents of Windsor, Petaluma and Cotati are doing a great job of reducing reliance on Russian River water, while people in Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park fell well below the countywide average 12 percent decrease in use last month.


Water use statistics compiled by the Sonoma County Water Agency show that pleas for voluntary water conservation efforts were taken to heart by many residents as average daily use dropped from 228.7 acre-feet in July 2004 to 200.4 acre-feet last month.

July was the first month during which the Water Agency has been under a state Water Resources Control Board order to reduce Russian River withdrawals in order to save water in Lake Mendocino so there’s enough for the fall salmon run.

The statistics account for water measured at 150 metering stations used by nine municipalities that contract with the Water Agency to provide water to about 600,000 residents in Sonoma and northern Marin County.

Reductions in average daily water use range from highs of 57 percent in Windsor and 35 percent in Cotati to 6 percent in Santa Rosa and 3 percent in Rohnert Park, both of which use much more water than smaller cities. Only the Valley of the Moon Water District was close to the countywide average, with a 13 percent reduction during July.

Those measurements differ from the 17 percent water reduction that the Water Agency tallied at two stations on the Russian River as required by state water authorities who have ordered a 15 percent reduction in water drawn from the river.

The differences are attributed to a number of reasons, including meter error on both ends, water loss during transmission, leaks in the system and unaccounted-for water deliveries.

Russian River water use has been reduced by 17.1 percent as of Sunday, according to the latest measurements from the Water Agency. It had been reduced by 16.5 percent during the time that average daily uses for July were recorded.

Officials on the Water Advisory Committee, whose members represent Water Agency contractors, decided Monday that residents are responding so well to conservation pleas that they’ll tell county supervisors that they can achieve the state- mandated 15 percent reduction through October without resorting to allocations.

“They are no longer talking about specific allocations to each contractor because they decided they are doing a good job of achieving a 15 percent reduction without it,” said Pam Jeane, the Water Agency’s deputy director of operations. “If they start losing ground, they will revisit it.”

Jeane said decreases in average daily use give cities, which the agency calls contractors, an idea of how well their conservation efforts are working.

“It gives an indication of how, contractor by contractor, they are doing and it helps them focus on what they need to be doing,” Jeane said. “If they are not getting water savings, then they need to go after measures like the water wasters program in Santa Rosa.”

Officials said the Water Agency’s measurements on average daily use don’t include water drawn from city wells, so the numbers don’t provide a full picture of conservation efforts throughout Sonoma County.

In the middle of last month, Santa Rosa put into operation city wells that won’t begin showing an impact on Russian River water use until August’s average daily use is reported.

Glen Wright, Santa Rosa's deputy director of water resources, has estimated that about two-thirds of the reduction in his city can be attributed to conservation and one-third to switching to its own wells.

Some contractors, such as Petaluma and Northern Marin, dramatically lowered their Russian River water use by using recycled wastewater on public golf courses. Windsor lowered its numbers by relying more on city wells, as well as its own conservation programs.

Don Seymour, a principal engineer at the Water Agency, said the order from the state Water Resources Board is concerned only with reducing the amount of water taken from the Russian River and not with how water users are lessening their reliance on it.

“It is interesting to look at the numbers and see how the cities stack up, but the bottom line is that they are all combining to save more than 15 percent,” Seymour said.

You can reach Staff Writer Bleys W. Rose at 521-5431 or bleys.rose@pressdemocrat.com.