The City of Roseville is making recycled water available for outdoor use by residential water customers for a nominal monthly fee.
Recycled water is used mainly in parks, medians and golf courses in Roseville.
Now, for a $20 annual fee, Roseville residential utility customers can collect up to 300 gallons of treated wastewater from a station near the city's Pleasant Grove Water Treatment Plant. There is no limit to the number of withdrawals.
Commercial customers can collect a higher volume of water.
Instead of discharging the treated wastewater into area creeks, the city is making it available to customers for outdoor use.
Using the recycled reduces the use of potable water for landscaping.
"It allows people to use this water outside of the watering day restrictions and also supplement tree watering," says Maurice Chaney, with Roseville's Environmental Utilities Department.
To get the recycled water, people fill-out an application, attend a training session and have to supply their own containers.
Roseville's recycled water program started in the 1990s with one commercial customer.
The move comes as California Governor Jerry Brown has issued a new Executive Order in response to California's ongoing drought.
The order says if the drought persists in January 2016, "the State Water Board shall extend, until October 31, 2016, restrictions to achieve a statewide reduction in urban potable water use."
The current order mandates a 25 percent conservation rate through next February compared to water use in 2013.
Brown declared a State Emergency in January 2014 due to severe drought conditions.
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