County Water Works Rules For Malibu Are Full Of Errors, County Issues Clarification
Written by 991KBU on May 31, 2022
L A County Waterworks District 29 dropped an email late Friday afternoon … at the start of a three day weekend.
Mandatory water restrictions have been implemented in Malibu.
Problem is … the email is confusing …leaves out some important information … and in one case is flat out incorrect…
It contradicts itself.
Late last Friday … the county ordered Malibu residents to water twice a week. If your street address ends in an even number … water on Tuesdays and Fridays. Odd number addresses. … water on Mondays and Thursdays.
Here’s the problem.
Does that mean your watering period begins at midnight on your designated days … end at 6 and then resume at 10 p-m??? Or does that mean your watering period starts at 10 p-m and then ends at 6 a-m the next day??
There’s a big difference. It means that someone who waters their yard early in the morning … should actually set their timers for one day after their designated day. The 10pm window may start on Tuesday, for example, but that means setting tour timer for Wednesday, if the timer goes off after midnight.
The county got back to us Sunday and said … yes … your designated water day starts at 10 p-m and ends at 6 the next morning. Makes perfect sense.
Except … for people with timed sprinklers … who water early in the morning … that means starting the sprinklers one day after your authorized day. A house that has been told to water on Tuesdays and Fridays needs to set their timers for early in the morning Wednesdays and Saturdays.
And to top it off … the two days of the week chosen by L A County are different than the two days of the week chosen by the City of Los Angeles last week. That means the big P-R campaign for City of LA will be for the wrong days in Malibu.
And if that is not confusing enough … more confusion from the county. The county says to water for no more than 10 minutes per authorized day. It is not made clear if that is 10 minutes per lot, or 10 minutes per sprinkler zone.
And the county’s new total ban on watering during the daytime??? It does not apply to hand watering.
In fact … hand watering can be done at any time of day … any day of the week … according to the county’s clarification.
These clarifications came in an email reply to KBUU’s questions late last Friday.
And they make sense … but they are not what the county announced.
