California Water Restrictions Not Likely to Hobble Ski Areas

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02 April 2015

Push to The Latest: No

SAM Magazine—Mill Valley, Calif., April 2, 2015—This week, California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered mandatory water use reductions for the first time in California's history, saying that the state's four-year drought had reached “near-crisis proportions.” Nonetheless, ski industry officials in California told SAM that ski areas are not likely to be hit hard by water restrictions, though they caution that the final language of the mandate is still forthcoming.

Brown's executive order directs the State Water Resources Control Board to impose a 25 percent year-end reduction on the state's 400 local water supply agencies. State officials said cutbacks on water use would be applied to varying degrees to homeowners, farms, and other businesses including golf courses.

And winter resorts? “The focus of the governor's announcement was on the urban usage, primarily residential,” said Bob Roberts, president of the California Ski Industry Association. He added that California delegates regulatory authority to each of its regional water districts for enforcement.

“To date, our resorts have found that their water districts have considered snowmaking a non-consumptive use,” he said. Studies show that 80 percent of the water used for snowmaking ultimately returns to the watershed.

“That said, we have yet to see the wording of the new regulations, and as you know, the devil is always in the details,” Roberts said.

The governor made the announcement on a field trip into the Sierra Nevada near the town of Phillips, as water officials made a token gesture to measure snowpack. Typically, the location chosen for the announcement has several feet of snow at this time of year, but there was no snow in sight. State officials estimated that statewide snowpack was about 6 percent of normal.

“We are standing on dry grass, and we should be standing on five feet of snow. We are in an historic drought,” Brown told reporters.