California Mandates $500 Climate Change Fines After Killing New Reservoirs

AGENDA 21 RADIO

CHRISS STREET NEWPORT BEACH, CA

The California Water Resources Control Board will make 7 waste water uses a crime punishable by $500 fine, a week after canceling 12 proposed reservoirs under Prop 1.

The State Water Resources Control Board is expected on Feb. 20 to approve Regulation Prohibiting Wasteful Water Uses. The action will make permanent the draconian conservation measures authorized by Gov. Jerry Brown’s executive order B-37-16 at the height of the 2014 drought crisis. Despite the drought mandates ending on Nov. 25, the SWRCB believes it has climate change authority to implement its “California Way of Life.”

California government’s expected action will come just a week after a Breitbart News reported the California Water Commission killed all the proposed reservoirs under the $7.5 billion Proposition 1 bond approved by voters in 2014, because CWC scored  each of the 12 proposed above ground reservoirs as having less benefit than its cost.

As one of six appointed environmental entities operating under the authority of the California Environmental Protection Agency, the State Water Resources Control Board is expected to issue the following rules that include $500 fines for the illegal:

  • Over watering lawns that result in water flowing into streets;
  • Using water to wash driveways and sidewalks;
  • Washing a car with a hose that does not have a complying automatic shutoff nozzle;
  • Running an ornamental fountain that does not have a recirculating system;
  • Watering lawns and landscapes within 48 hours of a quarter inch of rainfall;
  • Hotels failing to ask guests to not replace clean towels and linens each day; and
  • After 2024, watering street medians that do not have a recreational or civic function.

Climate Change Manager for the State Water Resources Control Board, Max Gomberg, emphasized: “These are permanent prohibitions on wasteful water uses.” When ingrained under law in the California Code, the mandates would allow the California water police to use satellite data to surveil residents, businesses and government for compliance. He is encouraging residents to inform on their neighbors by filling a complaint on the www.savewater.ca.gov.file website to alert authorities of a potential violator’s address.

Gomberg is the lead author of the water section of California’s AB 32 Scoping Plan update to establish a Greenhouse Gas reduction target for California at 40 percent below 1990 levels, through “policy measures, regulations, planning efforts, and investments.”

According to an interview with ‘Water Deeply,’ one of Gomberg’s top priorities is repealing the voter-approved ‘Proposition 218: Right to Vote on Taxes Act,’ sponsored by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that sponsored Proposition 13 property tax limits.

The Prop 218 voter initiative that passed in November of  1996 by over a 13 percentage point margin, amended the California Constitution to protect residents by requiring local governments to get voter approval to increase taxes, fees and charges without taxpayer consent. It also allowed voters to file local initiatives to repeal local government taxes, assessments, fees and charges that had boomed after Prop 13 was passed in 1978.

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