The California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) has notified the Rainbow Municipal Water District (RMWD) that they have rescinded the Conservation Order issued to RMWD on August 31, 2015.  The Conservation Order was issued after RMWD failed to meet the mandatory 36% cutback in residential water consumption in the first month that the Emergency Regulations were in place.   RMWD has met or exceeded the standard in the following months, leading to the rescission of the Conservation Order.

In a letter dated March 7, 2016, Christian M. Carrigan, Director of the Office of Enforcement at the SWRCB writes, “Our records indicate that the District has not only increased its conservation program and met the requirements of its Order, but it has also been exceeding its cumulative conservation standard of 36 percent by over 10 percent as of January 2016. For these reasons, the State Water Board is rescinding the Order.”

“All of us at RMWD would like to thank our customers for their extraordinary efforts to conserve water during this period”, said Dennis Sanford, President of the RMWD Board of Directors, adding, “without the efforts of our customers to do even more to use water wisely this would not have been possible.”

“While RMWD sells most of its water to agricultural users who were not subject to the Emergency Regulations, our ag users also cut back in a big way.   This shows that even though our customers are mostly large lot agricultural and residential users, they are among the most efficient consumers anywhere”, said Tom Kennedy, General Manager of RMWD. “We thank them for their continued commitment to eliminating water waste.”

RMWD is a public agency formed in 1953 under Section 71000 of the California Water Code and serves 80 square miles of North San Diego County with water and wastewater reclamation services.